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DECLARATION OF THE RIGHTS
OF MAN AND OF THE CITIZEN
On August 26, 1789, the Declaration of the Rights of Man
and of the Citizen was adopted by the French National
Assembly, which also was known as the Constituent
Assembly, owing to its self-appointed task of framing a
constitution for the French nation. This body began as one
of three Estates, or orders, within the Estates-General,
which had been convened in early May by King Louis XVI.
The three orders of which the Estates-General consisted
were the nobility, the clergy, and the Third Estate, made up
of all other French citizens.
This remarkable event—the summoning of the Estates-
General, the first since 1614—was precipitated by the bankruptcy
of the French government and its desperate need to
raise revenue. The crown’s attempts to levy taxes on those
who could afford them generated a power struggle with the
nobility (especially the reform-minded Parlement of Paris),
and both sides decided they had something to gain by convening
an Estates-General. Events, however, soon took on a
life of their own as both the King and the aristocracy found
themselves unable to control the course of events.
The Third Estate first acted in a revolutionary manner
on June 17, when, by a majority of 491 to 89, it renamed
itself the National Assembly. Although deputies from
the other two orders were invited to join the National
Assembly—and were later ordered to do so by Louis XVI
after he had lost a significant political battle—this assumption
of political sovereignty by the Third Estate was a clear
sign that a number of ancient legal privileges that the crown
and nobility possessed would not be permitted to stand.
Indeed, many members of the nobility and clergy strongly
supported the abolition of feudal privileges and other radical
reforms that were about to follow.
The Declaration was intended to serve as a preamble to
the French Constitution of 1791, which established a constitutional
monarchy. (A purely republican form of government
awaited the Constitution of 1793, after the treason
conviction of Louis XVI had led to his execution and the
abolition of monarchy.) Historians continue to debate the
extent to which the Declaration was influenced by American
precedents, such as George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of
Rights (1776) and various state constitutions adopted during
the 1780s. The Marquis de Lafayette, who emphasized the
need for a Declaration of Rights and played a prominent role
in its drafting, was among the 8,000 Frenchmen who had
participated in the American Revolution. Moreover, key
documents in the American struggle, such as Thomas
Paine’s Common Sense and various state constitutions, had
been translated into French and were widely read.
Some historians maintain that this situation is more
a case of correlation than of causation. As the historian
George Rudé observed, “both Americans and Frenchmen
acknowledged a common debt to the ‘natural law’ school of
philosophy, in particular to Locke, Montesquieu, and
Rousseau.” At the least, however, the American experience
provided an inspiration and example, if not an exact model,
for the French Declaration of Rights. According to John-
Joseph Mounier, a member of the National Assembly who
contributed to the Declaration, the American Revolution had
instilled in the French “a general restlessness and desire for
change.” Americans had shown that it was possible to begin
anew and construct a government on rational principles.
The Declaration, which contains 17 articles, is a short
document. The preamble describes it as a “solemn declaration
[of] the natural, inalienable, and sacred rights of man.”
Failures to protect these rights, it notes, are the “sole causes
of public misfortunes and the corruption of governments.”
By codifying the basic rights and duties of citizens, the
Declaration’s intent was to legitimize the new French government
and to encourage respect for the legislative and
executive powers by providing citizens with “simple and
incontestable principles” that could be used to evaluate the
justice and social utility of governmental institutions and
actions.
Article 1 begins with the statement: “Men are born and
remain free and equal in rights.” It should be noted that the
words man and men, when used in this context, referred to
all individuals, male and female alike. Both men and
women were viewed as possessing equal natural rights in
the Lockean tradition. Gender inequalities, such as the
inability to vote—which the Constitution of 1791 did nothing
to rectify—were viewed as an issue of civil rather than
natural rights.