An essential cause of the declaration of the National Assembly and the start of the French Revolution was the privileges enjoyed by the First and Second Estates.
Therefore, a crucial part of the Declaration of Rights of Man was establishing a single set of rights that all citizens should enjoy equally. They were considered universal and natural rights and were set out in a collection of 17 articles.
Among those rights were:
- Liberty
- Property
- Safety from Oppression
- Equality under the law
- Due legal process
- Freedom of opinion, speech, and religion
In addition to these rights, the document also contained articles that explicitly rejected absolute monarchy by declaring that sovereignty resided in the nation, not any individual, and stating valid government would have a separation of powers.
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen became a sacred document for the French revolutionaries and foundational to the French Revolution. Both moderates and radicals celebrated its signing and viewed it as a guiding document. For example, the Jacobin's membership manual required that fellows uphold the declaration.
In addition to serving as the preamble of the Constitution of 1791, its elemental assertion that political power should be vested in the citizens, all those citizens should have equal rights and protections under the law, and that the state should protect them guided other events of the revolutionaries, including the more limited reforms of the early stages of the Revolution, the more extreme actions of the radical stage of the Revolution, and even the calls to return to moderation during the reactionary stage.
The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man."3
Influence on the Haitian Revolution
While the Declaration of the Rights of Man did not extend rights to enslaved people, it did contribute to calls for freedom that helped spark the Haitian Revolution. There, a revolt fought by enslaved people would eventually lead to the first black republic. The Haitian revolutionaries were inspired to revolt in part by the ideals expressed in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.
Critics of the Limited Definition of Citizen
Besides not extending the rights to enslaved people, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen also did not extend them to women or non-landholders.
The full rights expressed in the document were only granted to men over 25 years of age who paid taxes and could not be considered servants. In practice, only a relatively small percentage of French males who owned land were entitled to full rights and the vote. This led to criticism from more radical democrats like Robespierre, who believed the franchise should be extended to all men, such as the urban working class of the Sans-Culottes.
The exclusion of women from the document also has been pointed out by women at the time and historians today. Olympe de Gouges published the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen in 1791. Mimicking the style and language of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, she wrote a parallel series of point-by-point responses extending the rights to women and explicitly critiquing the original document. She was later tried for treason and executed for criticizing the National Convention.
Declaration of the Rights of Man Significance
Despite these shortcomings, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen remains important.
It represented a clear break with the past, signaling the end of the Ancién Regime and the preeminence of the ideas of legal equality and natural rights. Besides influencing events in France and the French colony of Haiti, it inspired calls for reform, Revolution, and democracy elsewhere, influenced the adoption of the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution, and contributed to the foundations of modern democracy.
Declaration of the Rights of Man - Key takeaways
- The French National Constituent Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen on August 26, 1789.
- It established the ideas of equality under the law, that government was meant to represent and serve the people and established certain natural rights that all citizens were entitled to.
- Critics pointed out that the rights were only extended to those considered citizens, which were landowning men.
- The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen was important to shaping the French Revolution.
References
- French Constituent Assembly Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen Article 1, 1789
- French Constituent Assembly Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen Article 4, 1789
- French Constituent Assembly Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen Article 2, 1789
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