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The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Table of Contents French: Declaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen (Show more)Ask the Chatbot a Question
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Top Questions What events led to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen?King Louis XVI of France in May 1789 convened the Estates-General for the first time since 1614. In June the Third Estate (that of the common people who were neither members of the clergy nor of the nobility) declared itself to be a National Assembly and to represent all the people of France. Though the king resisted, the people—particularly the people of Paris—refused to capitulate to the king. The National Assembly undertook to lay out the principles that would underpin the new post-feudal government.
Estates-GeneralLearn more about the Estates-General. What were the inspirations for the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen?The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was inspired by the writings of such Enlightenment thinkers as Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Voltaire. Other influences included documents written in other countries, including the 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights and the manifestos of the Dutch Patriot movement of the 1780s. The creators of the declaration went beyond its sources in intending the principles to be universally applicable.
EnlightenmentLearn more about the Enlightenment. Who wrote the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen?The Marquis de Lafayette, with the help of Thomas Jefferson, composed a draft of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and presented it to the National Assembly on July 11, 1789. A committee of some 40 deputies was appointed to decide on the declaration’s final form. Those deputies included Jean-Joseph Mounier, Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, and Alexandre, count de Lameth. The draft was extensively revised before being adopted between August 20 and August 26, 1789.
Marquis de LafayetteRead more about the Marquis de Lafayette. What are the main points of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen?The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen has a preamble and 17 brief articles. The first article contains the document’s central statement: “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights.” It states that the purpose of “political association” should be the preservation of these rights, enumerated as “liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.” It also declares that both sovereignty and law should come from the “general will.” It shields the freedom of speech and of religion and establishes equal treatment before the law. It also asserts that taxes should be paid by all citizens in accordance with their means. It served as the preamble to the Constitution of 1791.
Constitution of 1791Learn more about the Constitution of 1791.Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, one of the basic charters of human liberties, containing the principles that inspired the French Revolution. Its 17 articles, adopted between August 20 and August 26, 1789, by France’s National Assembly, served as the preamble to the Constitution of 1791. Similar documents served as the preamble to the Constitution of 1793 (retitled simply Declaration of the Rights of Man) and to the Constitution of 1795 (retitled Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man and the Citizen).
The basic principle of the Declaration was that all “men are born and remain free and equal in rights” (Article 1), which were specified as the rights of liberty, private property, the inviolability of the person, and resistance to oppression (Article 2). All citizens were equal before the law and were to have the right to participate in legislation directly or indirectly (Article 6); no one was to be arrested without a judicial order (Article 7). Freedom of religion (Article 10) and freedom of speech (Article 11) were safeguarded within the bounds of public “order” and “law.” The document reflects the interests of the elites who wrote it: property was given the status of an inviolable right, which could be taken by the state only if an indemnity were given (Article 17); offices and position were opened to all citizens (Article 6).
The sources of the Declaration included the major thinkers of the French Enlightenment, such as Montesquieu, who had urged the separation of powers, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who wrote of general will—the concept that the state represents the general will of the citizens. The idea that the individual must be safeguarded against arbitrary police or judicial action was anticipated by the 18th-century parlements, as well as by writers such as Voltaire. French jurists and economists such as the physiocrats had insisted on the inviolability of private property. Other influences on the authors of the Declaration were foreign documents such as the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776) in North America and the manifestos of the Dutch Patriot movement of the 1780s. The French Declaration went beyond these models, however, in its scope and in its claim to be based on principles that are fundamental to man and therefore universally applicable.
On the other hand, the Declaration is also explicable as an attack on the pre-Revolutionary monarchical regime. Equality before the law was to replace the system of privileges that characterized the old regime. Judicial procedures were insisted upon to prevent abuses by the king or his administration, such as the lettre de cachet, a private communication from the king, often used to give summary notice of imprisonment.
Despite the limited aims of the framers of the Declaration, its principles (especially Article 1) could be extended logically to mean political and even social democracy. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen came to be, as was recognized by the 19th-century historian Jules Michelet, “the credo of the new age.”
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica This article was most recently revised and updated by Adam Zeidan.