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THE REPUBLIC AT WAR
93
6. Members of the civil and criminal courts, clerks of court, national commissioners,justices of the peace.
7. District tax collectors.8. Tax collectors and directors of registration.9. Workers employed in the manufacture of arms and gunpowder.
Source: Gazette nationale ou le Moniteur universel, no. 57, 26 February 1793, vol.15, pp. 549–50.
The Constitution of 1793
The Convention supported the Jacobins’ harsh measures whichthey believed were necessary to secure the Republic to a pointwhere the highly democratic Constitution of June 1793 could beimplemented. This Constitution, largely the work of Robespierre,was remarkable for its guarantees of social rights and popularcontrol over an assembly elected by direct, universal malesuffrage. The results of a referendum on its acceptance wereabout 1.8 million ‘yes’ votes to 11,600 against, from an electorateof approximately six million males. Such was the degree ofindividual freedom guaranteed in the Constitution, however, thatit was suspended until the peace, lest counter-revolutionariesabuse its freedoms. The Constitution is revealing of Jacobinpolitical and social ideology.
DECLARATION OF THE RIGHTS OF MAN AND THE CITIZENThe people of France, convinced that neglect and contempt for the natural rights ofman are the sole causes of the world’s misfortunes, have resolved to set out thosesacred and inalienable rights in a solemn declaration, so that all citizens, being able toconstantly compare the acts of government with the goal of any social institution,will never allow themselves to be oppressed and degraded by tyranny; so that thepeople may always have the basis of their liberty and happiness before their eyes, themagistrate the basis of his duties, and the legislator the object of his mission.
Consequently, it proclaims, in the presence of the Supreme Being, the followingDeclaration of the rights of man and the citizen.
Article 1. The goal of society is common happiness. The government is appointedto guarantee man the enjoyment of his natural and imprescriptible rights.
Article 2. These rights are equality, liberty, safety and ownership of property.Article 3. All men are equal through nature and before the law.
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Article 4. The law is the free and solemn expression of the general will; it is thesame for all men, whether it protects or punishes; it can only order what is right anduseful to society; it can only forbid what is harmful to it.
Article 5. All citizens are equally eligible for public employment. Peoples who arefree know no grounds for preference other than virtues and talents.
Article 6. Liberty is the power belonging to man to do all that does notharm the rights of others: its principle is nature; its rule, justice; its safeguard,the law; its moral limits are in this maxim: do not do unto another what youwould not have done to you.
Article 7. The right to express one’s thoughts and one’s opinions, whether throughthe press or in any other way, the right to assemble peacefully, the freedom to practisereligion, cannot be prohibited. The need to state these rights assumes either the presenceor the recent memory of despotism.
Article 8. Safety consists in the protection granted by society to each of its members,for the preservation of their person, their rights and their property.
Article 9. The law must protect public and individual liberty from the oppressionof those who govern.
Article 10. No man may be accused, arrested or detained, other than in casesestablished by the law and according to the conventions that it has laid down; anycitizen who is called upon or seized by the authorities must obey immediately; hemakes himself guilty by resisting….
Article 14. No man may be judged and punished until after he has been heard orlegally summoned, and only in accordance with a law promulgated prior to the crime.A law that would punish crimes committed before it existed would be a tyranny;giving a retroactive effect to a law would be a crime.
Article 15. The law must only issue punishments that are strictly and clearlynecessary; punishments must be proportionate to the crime and useful to society.
Article 16. The right of ownership of property is one that belongs to each citizen,to enjoy and to dispose at his will of his goods, his income, of the fruit of his labourand his industry.
Article 17. No type of work, cultivation or commerce may be forbidden to citizens’ingenuity.
Article 18. Any man may commit his services or his time; but he may neither sellhimself nor be sold. His person is not alienable property. The law recognises nodomestic service whatsoever; only an agreement of care and recognition between theworking man and the employer may exist.
Article 19. No man may be deprived of the least portion of his property withouthis consent, unless it is when legally recorded public necessity demands it, and oncondition of a just and prior compensation.
Article 20. No tax may be established unless it is for general use. All citizens havethe right to be involved in the establishment of taxes, to watch over their use and tohave an account given of them.
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THE REPUBLIC AT WAR
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Article 21. Public assistance is a sacred debt. Society owes subsistence to unfortunatecitizens, either by obtaining work for them or by providing means of existence tothose who are unable to work.
Article 22. Instruction is the right of all men. Society must further the progress ofpublic reason with all its power, and make instruction available to all citizens….
Article 25. Sovereignty resides in the people. It is one and indivisible, imprescriptibleand inalienable.
Article 26. No portion of the people may exercise the power of the entire people;but each section of the sovereign assembly must enjoy the right to express its will incomplete freedom.
Article 27. Any individual who would usurp sovereignty should instantly be put todeath by free men.
Article 28. A people always has the right to review, reform and change itsConstitution. One generation may not subject future generations to its laws.
Article 29. Each citizen has an equal right to take part in the formation of the lawand in the nomination of its mandatories or of its agents.
Article 30. Public offices are essentially temporary; they can be considered neitheras honours nor as rewards, but as duties.
Article 31. Offences by the mandatories of the people and of their agents mustnever go unpunished. No man has the right to lay claim to greater inviolability thanother citizens.
Article 32. The right to present petitions to the trustees of public authority may inno case be forbidden, suspended or limited.
Article 33. Resistance to oppression is the consequence of the other human rights.Article 34. There is oppression against the social body when just one of its members
is oppressed. There is oppression against each member when the social body isoppressed.
Article 35. When the government violates the rights of the people, insurrection isthe most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties for the people and foreach portion of the people.
CONSTITUTIONAL ACT
ON THE STATUS OF CITIZENS…Article 4. Any man born and living in France, having reached the age of 20; anyforeigner, having reached the age of 21, who, having lived in France for one year; livesthere from his work; or acquires a property; or marries a French woman; or adopts achild; or supports an elderly person; finally, any foreigner who is judged by the legislativebody as having truly earned humanity; is admitted to the exercise of the rights of aFrench citizen.
Article 5. The exercise of the rights of citizen is lost: through naturalisation in aforeign country; through the acceptance of duties or favours emanating from an
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THE REPUBLIC AT WAR
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unpopular government; through condemnation to penalties involving the loss of civilrights or corporal punishment, until personal rehabilitation…. ON CIVIL JUSTICEArticle 85. The code of civil and criminal law is uniform for the entire Republic.
Article 86. The right of citizens to have a judgement made about their disagreementsby arbiters of their choice may not be undermined.
Article 87. The decision of these arbiters is definitive, if citizens have not reservedthe right to appeal.
Article 88. There are justices of the peace elected by the citizens of administrativedistricts determined by the law.
Article 89. They conciliate and judge at no cost….
ON THE REPUBLIC OF FRANCE’S RELATIONS WITH FOREIGN NATIONSArticle 118. The people of France are the natural friend and ally of free peoples.
Article 119. It does not interfere in any way with the government of other nations.It does not allow other nations to interfere with its government.
Article 120. It gives asylum to foreigners banished from their homeland for thecause of liberty. It refuses it to tyrants.
Article 121. It does not make peace at all with an enemy that is occupying itsterritory.
ON THE GUARANTEE OF RIGHTSArticle 122. The Constitution guarantees equality, liberty, safety, ownership, nationaldebt, the free exercise of religion, common education, public aid, the unlimited freedomof the press, the right to gather in popular societies, and the enjoyment of all therights of man to all the French.
Article 123. The Republic of France honours loyalty, courage, old age, filial devotion,misfortune. It entrusts the guard of its Constitution to the virtues.
Source: Archives parlementaires, 24 June 1793, vol. 67, pp. 143–50.
© D
wye
r, Ph
ilip;
McP
hee,
Pet
er, N
ov 0
1, 2
002,
The
Fre
nch
Rev
olut
ion
and
Nap
oleo
n : A
Sou
rceb
ook
Tayl
or a
nd F
ranc
is, H
obok
en, I
SBN
: 978
0203
4568
35
