Lafayette drafted France's 1789 rights declaration with Thomas Jefferson at his side
The first drafts of France's great charter of rights were written by the Marquis de Lafayette in consultation with his friend Thomas Jefferson, then the American envoy in Paris. Adopted on 26 August 1789, the declaration still opens the constitution of the Fifth Republic and counts as binding constitutional law today.
Lafayette's early draft echoed parts of the American Declaration of Independence, but the Assembly's president, Jean Joseph Mounier, rejected it on 11 July 1789, fearing it would raise expectations no government could meet. Debate then worked from a 24-article draft produced by one of the Assembly's thirty committees, led by Jérôme Champion de Cicé. Most of the final wording came from Abbé Sieyès, with Mirabeau editing, and the National Constituent Assembly adopted the last article on 26 August as a first step toward a constitution.
The text draws on Enlightenment ideas, especially Rousseau's social contract and Montesquieu's separation of powers. Its opening article holds that men are born free and stay equal in rights, and the second names four natural rights: liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression. Sovereignty rests with the nation rather than a divinely appointed king, and public offices are open to all according to talent. Later articles set out the presumption of innocence, bar punishment under laws passed after the offence, protect religious opinion that does not disturb public order, and call free communication of thought one of the most precious rights.
Taxes, it says, must be shared according to ability to pay, and citizens may demand an account from any public official. The historian Georges Lefebvre argued that, together with the abolition of feudal privilege, it stressed equality more than the American declaration had.
Its reach was narrower than its words. The rights applied only to men, and the declaration described an aspiration more than the France of 1789, when democracy was often equated with anarchy. The 1791 Constitution went on to divide citizens into active and passive classes. Even so, the declaration was later placed at the head of the constitutions of 1946 and 1958.
Source: Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
