Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, one of the fundamental charters of human freedoms, containing the principles that inspired the French Revolution. THE its 17 articles, adopted between 20 and 26 August 1789 by the French National Assembly, served as the preamble to the Constitution of 1791. Similar documents served as the preamble to the Constitution of 1793 (renamed simply the Declaration of the Rights of Man) and the Constitution of 1795 (renamed the Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man and of the Citizen). The fundamental principle of the Declaration was that all “men are born and remain free and equal in rights”; in the second article they are specified as the rights of freedom, private property, inviolability of the person and resistance to oppression.
All citizens were equal before the law and should have the right to participate directly or indirectly in legislation; no one was to be arrested without a judicial order. Freedom of religion, Article Ten, and freedom of speech were safeguarded within the bounds of public “order” and “law.” The document reflects the interests of the elites who wrote it: property was given the status of an inviolable right, which could be taken by the state only in exchange for an indemnity; offices and positions were open to all citizens, according to article 6. The Constitution was modeled on the Constitution of the United States of America, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, is the summa of Enlightenment thought from Montesquieu to Voltaire, from Diderot to Rousseau.
The exact order of princes that were established (1-17)
Article 1
Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can only be founded on common utility.
Article 2
The aim of every political association is the conservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.
Article 3
The principle of all sovereignty essentially resides in the Nation. No body or individual can exercise any authority that does not expressly emanate from it.
Article 4
Freedom consists in being able to do everything that does not harm others: thus, the exercise of the natural rights of each man has as limits only those that ensure the enjoyment of those same rights to other members of society. These limits can only be determined by law.
Article 5
The Law has the right to prohibit only actions harmful to society. Everything that is not prohibited by the Law cannot be prevented, and no one can be forced to do what it does not order.
Article 6
The Law is the expression of the general will. All citizens have the right to participate, personally or through their representatives, in its formation. It must therefore be the same for everyone, whether it protects or punishes. All citizens being equal in his eyes are equally eligible for all dignities, posts and public employments according to their ability, and without any other distinction than that of their virtues and talents.
Article 7
No man can be accused, arrested or detained except in cases determined by law, and according to the forms prescribed by it. Those who procure, send, execute or have executed arbitrary orders must be punished; but every citizen cited or arrested, by virtue of the Law, must obey immediately; by resisting he becomes guilty.
Article 8
The Law must establish only strictly and evidently necessary penalties and no one can be punished except by virtue of a law established and promulgated prior to the crime, and legally applied.
Article 9
Every man being presumed innocent until he has been declared guilty, if it is deemed indispensable to arrest him, any rigor not necessary to secure his person must be severely repressed by the Law.
Article 10
No one must be harassed for his opinions, even religious ones, as long as their expression does not disturb the public order established by law.
Article 11
The free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of man's most precious rights; every citizen can therefore speak, write and print freely, except to be held accountable for the abuse of this freedom in cases determined by law.
Article 12
The guarantee of human and citizen rights requires a public force; this force is therefore established for the benefit of all and not for the particular benefit of those to whom it is entrusted.
Article 13
For the maintenance of the public force, and for administrative expenses, a common contribution is indispensable: it must be equally distributed among all citizens, based on their assets.
Article 14
All citizens have the right to ascertain, by themselves or through their representatives, the need for public contribution, to approve it freely, to control its use and to determine its quantity, distribution and duration.
Article 15
Society has the right to hold every public agent to account for its administration.
Article 16
Every society in which the guarantee of rights is not ensured, nor the separation of powers determined, has no constitution.
Article 17
Property being an inviolable and sacred right, no one can be deprived of it, except when legally established public necessity clearly requires it, and subject to fair compensation.
The Declaration can also be explained as an attack on the pre-revolutionary monarchical regime
Equality before the law was to replace the system of privileges that characterized the old regime. Judicial procedures were insisted on to prevent abuses by the king or his administration, such as the cachet letter, a private communication from the king, often used to give summary notice of imprisonment. Despite the limited objectives of the Declaration's authors, its principles (particularly Article 1) could logically be extended to mean political and even social democracy. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen became, as the XNUMXth century historian Jules Michelet recognized, “the creed of the new age.”
