August 26, 1789—Before it degenerated into war, terror, reaction and dictatorship, the French Revolution reached its zenith when the newly formed National Constituent Assembly formally adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.
Certain words and phrases spring out at you in both the French declaration and the one that inspired it, America’s Declaration of Independence: “free,” “equal,” “liberty,” “sacred,” and “nature/natural.” The American "self-evident" principles become the French "simple and incontestable" ones. Another word from the French document, “imprescriptible" (rights prior to the state, government and society) is a more intense version of the American “inalienable” (rights that not only cannot be taken away but cannot be given up).
If it sounds at points like the French document echoes America’s, two reasons might explain it:
* Both documents reflected Enlightenment philosophers’ thinking on the relationship between liberty and the state.
*France’s declaration involved two people deeply associated with the United States: the Marquis de Lafayette, onetime general under George Washington, now part of the 30-member committee that drafted the French declaration; and Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, now the American minister to France—and a keenly interested reader of the new document.
And yet, there are signal differences between the two. Start with length: the American document is more than 1,300 words, while France’s was merely 300—short enough to fit on one side of a single paper, virtually guaranteeing that it would be disseminated not only in France, but in every major European language.
Second, France’s declaration reads as a more impersonal document. No person is held responsible for the poverty and lack of freedom that produced the storming of the Bastille the month before, largely because many leaders of the Revolution still believed that, if they could sever King Louis XVI from ministers offering bad advice, they could maintain a functioning constitutional monarchy. (This proved to be a forlorn hope when Louis plotted to escape from France to his royal cousins to the east.)
In contrast, despite a stated need to keep in mind “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind” (a necessity, given that it wanted to secure France as an ally in the struggle against the crown), the Continental Congress spent more time reviewing the middle part of their document—King George’s “long train of abuses”—than the now far more famous preamble (“we hold these truths to be self-evident…”).
Though products of revolutions, both documents were written by men who were anything but the have-nots of society. For every aristocrat like Thomas Jefferson in the Continental Congress, there was a self-made man such John Adams or Ben Franklin, middle-class bourgeois who bitterly resented the encrusted privileges and corruption of a British elite.
Similarly, the Declaration of the Rights of Man was imbued with an upper-middle-class sensibility. It even mentions a word left out of the list of rights enumerated in the American document: property. (Ironically, it did not matter at first to the great majority of Frenchmen, most of whom owned no property when the Bastille fell.)
There are other rights not enumerated in the French document, either: to employment, women’s suffrage, subsistence, public relief, or education. Neither slaves nor freed blacks are mentioned (indeed, though slavery was outlawed in France in 1794, it was re-introduced under Napoleon, and was not finally abolished in the nation and its possessions until 1848.)
The American Revolution, for all the stunning change it introduced in North America, did not influence Europe as decisively as France’s. The National Constituent Assembly produced not just a change in governance, but the overthrow of an entire social order—one based on feudalism and manorial privilege. The great sweep of this change posed a threat to every European monarch.
Declaration of the Rights of Man was the high point of classical liberalism—a movement that
stressed the sanctity of property, individualism, and the universality of its principles. It was a
powerful document.
But, as the French were about to learn, in more ways than one, so much depends on execution.
Certain words and phrases spring out at you in both the French declaration and the one that inspired it, America’s Declaration of Independence: “free,” “equal,” “liberty,” “sacred,” and “nature/natural.” The American "self-evident" principles become the French "simple and incontestable" ones. Another word from the French document, “imprescriptible" (rights prior to the state, government and society) is a more intense version of the American “inalienable” (rights that not only cannot be taken away but cannot be given up).
If it sounds at points like the French document echoes America’s, two reasons might explain it:
* Both documents reflected Enlightenment philosophers’ thinking on the relationship between liberty and the state.
*France’s declaration involved two people deeply associated with the United States: the Marquis de Lafayette, onetime general under George Washington, now part of the 30-member committee that drafted the French declaration; and Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, now the American minister to France—and a keenly interested reader of the new document.
And yet, there are signal differences between the two. Start with length: the American document is more than 1,300 words, while France’s was merely 300—short enough to fit on one side of a single paper, virtually guaranteeing that it would be disseminated not only in France, but in every major European language.
Second, France’s declaration reads as a more impersonal document. No person is held responsible for the poverty and lack of freedom that produced the storming of the Bastille the month before, largely because many leaders of the Revolution still believed that, if they could sever King Louis XVI from ministers offering bad advice, they could maintain a functioning constitutional monarchy. (This proved to be a forlorn hope when Louis plotted to escape from France to his royal cousins to the east.)
In contrast, despite a stated need to keep in mind “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind” (a necessity, given that it wanted to secure France as an ally in the struggle against the crown), the Continental Congress spent more time reviewing the middle part of their document—King George’s “long train of abuses”—than the now far more famous preamble (“we hold these truths to be self-evident…”).
Though products of revolutions, both documents were written by men who were anything but the have-nots of society. For every aristocrat like Thomas Jefferson in the Continental Congress, there was a self-made man such John Adams or Ben Franklin, middle-class bourgeois who bitterly resented the encrusted privileges and corruption of a British elite.
Similarly, the Declaration of the Rights of Man was imbued with an upper-middle-class sensibility. It even mentions a word left out of the list of rights enumerated in the American document: property. (Ironically, it did not matter at first to the great majority of Frenchmen, most of whom owned no property when the Bastille fell.)
There are other rights not enumerated in the French document, either: to employment, women’s suffrage, subsistence, public relief, or education. Neither slaves nor freed blacks are mentioned (indeed, though slavery was outlawed in France in 1794, it was re-introduced under Napoleon, and was not finally abolished in the nation and its possessions until 1848.)
The American Revolution, for all the stunning change it introduced in North America, did not influence Europe as decisively as France’s. The National Constituent Assembly produced not just a change in governance, but the overthrow of an entire social order—one based on feudalism and manorial privilege. The great sweep of this change posed a threat to every European monarch.
Declaration of the Rights of Man was the high point of classical liberalism—a movement that
stressed the sanctity of property, individualism, and the universality of its principles. It was a
powerful document.
But, as the French were about to learn, in more ways than one, so much depends on execution.
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