Question

Did the constitution adhere to the spirit of the declaration of rights of man and citizen?​

Answer 1

Answer:

•The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1791) is a fundamental document of the French Revolution and in the history of human and civil rights. The inspiration and content of the document emerged largely from the ideals of the American Revolution. The key drafts were prepared by General Lafayette, working at times with his close friend Thomas Jefferson.

•The concepts in the Declaration come from the tenets of the Enlightenment, including individualism, the social contract as theorized by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the separation of powers espoused by Montesquieu. The spirit of secular natural law rests at the foundations of the Declaration.

•At the time of writing, the rights contained in the declaration were only awarded to men. Furthermore, the declaration was a statement of vision rather than reality as it was not deeply rooted in the practice of the West or even France at the time. It embodied ideals toward which France pledged to aspire in the future.

•While the French Revolution provided rights to a larger portion of the population, there remained a distinction between those who obtained the political rights in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen and those who did not. Those who were deemed to hold these rights were called active citizens, a designation granted to men who were French, at least 25 years old, paid taxes equal to three days of work, and could not be defined as servants.

•Tensions arose between active and passive citizens throughout the Revolution and the question of women’s rights emerged as particularly prominent. The Declaration did not recognize women as active citizens. The absence of women’s rights prompted Olympe de Gouges to publish the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen in September 1791.

•The Declaration did not revoke the institution of slavery, as lobbied for by Jacques-Pierre Brissot’s Les Amis des Noirs and defended by the group of colonial planters called the Club Massiac. However, it played an important rhetorical role in the Haitian Revolution.

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