Explain the french constitution of 1791
Answers
CONSTITUTION WAS DRAFTED BY NATIONAL ASSEMBLY IN 1791 AND IT RETAINED MONARCHY ,BUT SOVEREIGNITY RESIDED IN NATIONAL ASSEMBLY.
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On June 20th 1789 the newly formed National Assembly gathered in a Versailles tennis court and pledged not to disband until France had a working constitution. Their desire for a constitution was a product of the Enlightenment and the American Revolution. The deputies of the Third Estate believed that any reforms to the Ancien Régime must be outlined in and guaranteed by a written framework. A constitution would define the authority, structure and powers of the new government. This would prevent or limit the abuses and injustices of the old order. The National Assembly set about drafting a national constitution almost immediately. The process was a long and difficult one, hampered by differences of opinion, growing radicalism and the events of 1789-91. Their deliberations eventually produced the Constitution of 1791, which was ratified in September that year. This document established a constitutional monarchy and incorporated several political ideas from the Enlightenment. The fate of the 1791 Constitution, however, hinged on the attitude and actions
The French revolutionaries had before them a working model of a national constitution. The United States Constitution was drafted in 1787 and ratified by the American states the following year. The American constitution embraced and codified several Enlightenment ideas, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau‘s popular sovereignty and Montesquieu’s separation of powers. There was one significant difference: the American constitution established a republican political system with an elected president as its chief executive. In France, however, the National Constituent Assembly remained wedded to the idea of a constitutional monarchy. The Assembly wanted to retain the king but to ensure that his executive power was subordinate to both the law and the public good. This presented the Assembly with two concerns. First, they had to find a constitutional role for the king and determine what political powers, if any, he should retain. Second, a constitutional monarchy would be entirely dependent on having a king loyal to the constitution Louis XVI takes an oath to Constitution of 1791
By October 1789, the committee was wrestling with the question of exactly who would elect the government. They decided to separate the population into two classes: ‘active citizens’ (those entitled to vote and stand for office) and ‘passive citizens’ (those who were not). ‘Active citizens’ were males over the age of 25 who paid annual taxes equivalent to at least three days’ wages. This was, in effect, a property qualification on voting rights. In today’s world, where universal suffrage is the norm, this seems grossly unfair – however, property restrictions on voting were quite common in 18th century Europe. Voting was not a natural right conferred on all: it was a privilege available to those who owned property and paid tax. By way of comparison, England in 1780 was a nation of around eight million people, yet only 214,000 people were eligible to vote. The National Constituent Assembly’s property qualifications were considerably more generous than that. They would have extended voting rights to around 4.3 million Frenchmen. Despite this, radicals in the political clubs and sections demanded that voting rights be granted to all men, regardless of earnings or property.
“When the Constitution of 1791 was finally adopted, it embodied a fundamental contradiction and a recipe for constitutional impasse. To safeguard national sovereignty from the dangers of representation it permitted the monarch to veto legislative decrees – and hence paralyse the Assembly… As a result of the veto the Constitution of 1791, as Brissot remarked, could only function under a ‘revolutionary king’… Once it appeare
‘King Janus, the man with two faces’, a depiction of Louis’ split loyalties
Even as the constitution was being finalised, it was being overtaken by the events of the revolution. In June 1791 the king and his family stole away from the Tuileries and fled Paris; they were detained at Varennes the following morning. The king’s attempt to escape Paris and the revolution brought anti-royalist and republican sentiment to the boil. The National Constituent Assembly tried riding out the storm by claiming the royal family had been abducted and reinstating the king – but the Cordeliers, the radical Jacobins and the sans culottes of Paris were not buying it. The Constitution of 1791 was passed in September but was already fatally compromised by the king’s betrayal. France now had a constitutional monarchy but the monarch, by his actions, had shown no faith in the constitution. In a conversation with the conservative politician Bertrand de Molleville, Louis XVI suggested that he would bring about change by making the new constitution unworkable: