Declaration Of Man Thesis

Introduction The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen issued by the National Assembly of France on August 26, 1789 was a preliminary step towards developing a constitution for the new French constitutional monarchy. The Declaration was an outline of the rights of the citizen that would theoretically be included into a constitution adopted by the National Assembly. The Declaration also functioned to outline the principles by which the new government would operate, which contrasted with the disregard for the rights of the individual found under the old regime. The Declaration reflected the development of the radicalism in the French Revolution because it contained language emphasizing the responsibilities of the people for holding the …show more content…
The Declaration did not indicate how the general will should be defined. The constitution that was developed by the National Assembly, however, assumed that the general will was expressed by the representative the people in the National Assembly, which is a republican concept of representative government. In contrast, the many groups representing the people of France did not accept the authority of the National Assembly and accepted the premise in Article 6 that every individual has the right to participate personally in …show more content…
Consequently, the declaration had meaning separate from the constitution that described the way the constitutional monarchy would operate. The Declaration gained symbolic significance in French politics at the time (Neely, 2008, p. 86). The people of France looked to the Declaration as a rationale for taking overt action against a government that was not responsive to the will of the people. A particular conflict arose between the principles in the Declaration and the type of government formed by the constitution. The Declaration called for all citizens to take part in the making of laws. The constitution, however, divided the population into active and passive citizens with only active citizens having a vote (Rude, 1988, p. 62). To become an active citizen and obtain the vote for the preliminary selection of delegates to the National Assembly, the individual had to be a male, pay a direct tax, and not be engaged in service. Only those citizens who paid a large amount in tax could make the final selection of the delegates. Because of this system, only the wealthiest individuals representing only 10% of the population had a vote that resulted in meaningful control over the members of the National Assembly (Rude, 1988, p.