TABLE OF CONTENTS. II. ROUSSEAU'S "CONTRAT SOCIAL" WAS NOT THE SOURCE OF THIS DECLARATION.... III. THE BILLS OF RIGHTS OF THE INDIVID- UAL STATES OF THE NORTH AMERICAN UNION WERE its Models. . . . . . . . . . . . . IV. VIRGINIA'S BILL OF RIGHTS AND THOSE OF THE OTHER NORTH AMERICAN STATES. 22 VI. THE CONTRAST BETWEEN THE AMERICAN AND ENGLISH DECLARATIONS OF RIGHTS 43 VII. RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN THE ANGLO-AMER- ICAN COLONIES THE SOURCE OF THE IDEA THE DECLARATION OF THE CHAPTER I. THE FRENCH DECLARATION OF RIGHTS OF AUGUST 26, 1789, AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE. THE declaration of "the rights of man and of citizens" by the French Constituent Assembly on August 26, 1789, is one of the most significant events of the French Revolution. It has been criticised from different points of view with directly opposing results. The political scientist and the historian, thoroughly appreciating its importance, have repeatedly come to the conclusion that the Declaration had no small part in the anarchy with which France was visited soon after the storming of the Bastille. They point to its abstract phrases as ambiguous and therefore dangerous, and as void of all political reality and practical statesmanship. Its empty pathos, they say, confused the mind, disturbed calm judgment, aroused passions, and stifled the sense of duty, -for of duty there is not a word.1 Others, on the contrary, and especially Frenchmen, have exalted it as a revelation in the world's history, as a catechism of the "principles of 1789" which form the eternal foundation of the state's structure, and they have glorified it as the most precious gift that France has given to mankind. Less regarded than its historical and political significance is the importance of this document in the history of law, an importance which continues even to the present day. Whatever may be the value or worthlessness of its general phrases, it is under the influence of this document that the conception of the public rights of the individual has developed in the positive law of the states of the European continent. Until it appeared 1 First of all, as is well known, Burke and Bentham, and later Taine, Les origines de la France contemporaine: La révolution, I, pp. 273 et seq.; Oncken, Das Zeitalter der Revolution, des Kaiserreiches und der Befreiungskriege, I, pp. 229 et seq.; and Weiss, Geschichte der französischen Revolution, 1888, I, p. 263. ز public law literature recognized the rights of heads of states, the privileges of class, and the privileges of individuals or special corporations, but the general rights of subjects were to be found essentially only in the form of duties on the part of the state, not in the form of definite legal claims of the individual. The Declaration of the Rights of Man for the first time originated in all its vigor in positive law the conception, which until then had been known only to natural law, of the per- ✓ sonal rights of the members of the state over against the state as a whole. This was next seen in the first French constitution of September 3, 1791, which set forth, upon the basis of a preceding declaration of rights, a list of droits naturels et civils as rights that were guaranteed by the constitution." gether with the right of suffrage, the "droits garantis par la constitution", which were enumerated for the last time in the constitution of November 4, 1848, form to-day the basis of French theory and practice respecting the personal public rights of the indi To 2 Titre premier: "Dispositions fondamentales garanties par la constitution." 3 Hélie, Les constitutions de la France, pp. 1103 et seq. |