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A twelve member Constitutional
Committee was convened on 14 July 1789 (coincidentally the day of the Storming
of the Bastille). Its task was to do much of the drafting of the articles of
the constitution. It included originally two members from the First Estate,
(Champion de Cicé, Archbishop of Bordeaux and Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun); two
from the Second (the comte de Clermont-Tonnerre and the marquis de
Lally-Tollendal); and four from the Third (Jean Joseph Mounier, Abbé Sieyès,
Nicholas Bergasse, and Isaac René Guy le Chapelier).The main controversies
early on surrounded the issues of what level of power to be granted to the king
of France (i.e.: veto, suspensive or absolute) and what form would the
legislature take (i.e.: unicameral or bicameral). The Constitutional Committee
proposed a bicameral legislature, but the motion was defeated 10 September 1789
(849-89) in favor of one house; the next day, they proposed an absolute veto,
but were again defeated (673-325) in favor of a suspensive veto, which could be
over-ridden by three consecutive legislatures.
A second Constitutional Committee
quickly replaced it, and included Talleyrand, Abbé Sieyès, and Le Chapelier
from the original group, as well as new members Gui-Jean-Baptiste Target,
Jacques Guillaume Thouret, Jean-Nicolas Démeunier, François Denis Tronchet, and
Jean-Paul Rabaut Saint-Étienne, all of the Third Estate. Their greatest
controversy faced by this new committee surrounded the issue of citizenship.
Would every subject of the French Crown be given equal rights, as the
Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen seemed to promise, or would there be
some restrictions?
Fueled by rumors of a reception for the King's bodyguards on 1 October 1789 at which the national cockade had been trampled upon, on 5 October 1789 crowds of women began to assemble at Parisian markets. The women first marched to the Hôtel de Ville, demanding that city officials address their concerns. The women were responding to the harsh economic situations they faced, especially bread shortages. They also demanded an end to royal efforts to block the National Assembly, and for the King and his administration to move to Paris as a sign of good faith in addressing the widespread poverty.
Getting unsatisfactory responses from city officials, as many as 7,000 women joined the march to Versailles, bringing with them cannons and a variety of smaller weapons. Twenty thousand National Guardsmen under the command of La Fayette responded to keep order, and members of the mob stormed the palace, killing several guards. La Fayette ultimately persuaded the king to accede to the demand of the crowd that the monarchy relocate to Paris.
On 6 October 1789, the King and the royal family moved from Versailles to Paris under the "protection" of the National Guards, thus legitimizing the National Assembly.
The National Assembly completed the
draft of the constitution in 1791. After very long negotiations, the
constitution was reluctantly accepted by King Louis XVI in September 1791. Its
main object was to limit the powers of the monarch. These powers instead of
being concentrated in the hands of one person, were now separated and assigned
to different institutions, the legislature, executive and judiciary. This made
France a constitutional monarchy.
The Constitution of 1791 vested the
power to make laws in the National Assembly, which was indirectly elected. That
is, citizens voted for a group of electors, who in turn chose the Assembly. Not
all citizens, however, had the right to vote. Only men above 25 years of age
who paid taxes equal to at least 3 days of a labourer’s wage were given the
status of active citizens, that is, they were entitled to vote. The remaining
men and all women were classed as passive citizens. To qualify as an elector
and then as a member of the Assembly, a man had to belong to the highest
bracket of taxpayers.
Women, children and youth below 25
were not allowed to vote in the Constitution of 1791.
The Declaration of the Rights of Man,
adopted on 27 August 1789 eventually became the preamble of the constitution
adopted on 30 September 1791.
The Constitution began with a
Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. Rights such as the right to life,
freedom of speech, freedom of opinion, equality before law, were established as
‘natural and inalienable’ rights, that is, they belonged to each human being by
birth and could not be taken away. It was the duty of the state to protect each
citizen’s natural rights.
The resentment toward
the Church weakened its power during the opening of the Estates General in May
1789. The Church composed the First Estate with 130,000 members of the clergy.
When the National Assembly was later created in June 1789 by the Third Estate,
the clergy voted to join them, which perpetuated the destruction of the Estates
General as a governing body.The National Assembly began to enact social and
economic reform. Legislation sanctioned on 4 August 1789 abolished the Church's
authority to impose the tithe. In an attempt to address the financial crisis,
the Assembly declared, on 2 November 1789, that the property of the Church was
"at the disposal of the nation." They used this property to back a
new currency, the assignats. Thus, the nation had now also taken on the
responsibility of the Church, which included paying the clergy and caring for
the poor, the sick and the orphaned. In December, the Assembly began to sell
the lands to the highest bidder to raise revenue, effectively decreasing the
value of the assignats by 25% in two years. In autumn 1789, legislation
abolished monastic vows and on 13 February 1790 all religious orders were
dissolved. Monks and nuns were encouraged to return to private life and a small
percentage did eventually marry.
The Civil Constitution of
the Clergy, passed on 12 July 1790, turned the remaining clergy into employees
of the state. This established an election system for parish priests and
bishops and set a pay rate for the clergy. Many Catholics objected to the
election system because it effectively denied the authority of the Pope in Rome
over the French Church. Eventually, in November 1790, the National Assembly
began to require an oath of loyalty to the Civil Constitution from all the members
of the clergy. This led to a schism between those clergy who swore the required
oath and accepted the new arrangement and those who remained loyal to the Pope.
Overall, 24% of the clergy nationwide took the oath. Widespread refusal led to
legislation against the clergy, "forcing them into exile, deporting them
forcibly, or executing them as traitors." Pope Pius VI never accepted the
Civil Constitution of the Clergy, further isolating the Church in France.
The revolutionary journalist Jean-Paul Marat commented in his
newspaper L‘Ami du peuple (The friend of the people) on the Constitution
drafted by the National Assembly:
‘The task of representing the people has been given to the rich .
the lot of the poor and oppressed will never be improved by peaceful means
alone. Here we have absolute proof of how wealth influences the law. Yet laws
wi ll last only as long as the people agree to obey them. And when they have
managed to cast off the yoke of the aristocrats, they will do the same to the
other
Jean-Paul
Marat, (born May 24, 1743, Boudry, near
Neuchâtel, Switzerland—died July 13, 1793, Paris, France), French politician,
physician, and journalist, a leader of the radical Montagnard faction during
the French Revolution. He was assassinated in his bath by Charlotte Corday, a
young Girondin conservative.
On July 13,
Charlotte Corday, a young Girondin supporter from Normandy, was admitted to
Marat’s room on the pretext that she wished to claim his protection, and she
stabbed him to death in his bath (he took frequent medicinal baths to relieve a
skin infection). Marat’s dramatic murder at the very moment of the Montagnards’
triumph over their opponents caused him to be considered a martyr to the
people’s cause. His name was given to 21 French towns and later, as a gesture
symbolizing the continuity between the French and Russian revolutions, to one
of the first battleships in the Soviet navy.
The Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen
- Men are born and remain free and
equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general
good.
- The aim of all political
association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights
of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to
oppression.
- The principle of all sovereignty
resides essentially in the nation. No body nor individual may exercise any
authority which does not proceed directly from the nation.
- Liberty consists in the freedom
to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the
natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the
other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights. These
limits can only be determined by law.
- Law can only prohibit such
actions as are hurtful to society. Nothing may be prevented which is not
forbidden by law, and no one may be forced to do anything not provided for
by law.
- Law is the expression of the
general will. Every citizen has a right to participate personally, or
through his representative, in its foundation. It must be the same for
all, whether it protects or punishes. All citizens, being equal in the
eyes of the law, are equally eligible to all dignities and to all public
positions and occupations, according to their abilities, and without
distinction except that of their virtues and talents.
- No person shall be accused,
arrested, or imprisoned except in the cases and according to the forms
prescribed by law. Any one soliciting, transmitting, executing, or causing
to be executed, any arbitrary order, shall be punished. But any citizen
summoned or arrested in virtue of the law shall submit without delay, as
resistance constitutes an offense.
- The law shall provide for such
punishments only as are strictly and obviously necessary, and no one shall
suffer punishment except it be legally inflicted in virtue of a law passed
and promulgated before the commission of the offense.
- As all persons are held innocent
until they shall have been declared guilty, if arrest shall be deemed
indispensable, all harshness not essential to the securing of the
prisoner's person shall be severely repressed by law.
- No one shall be disquieted on
account of his opinions, including his religious views, provided their
manifestation does not disturb the public order established by law.
- The free communication of ideas
and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man. Every
citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom, but shall
be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law.
- The security of the rights of man
and of the citizen requires public military forces. These forces are,
therefore, established for the good of all and not for the personal
advantage of those to whom they shall be intrusted.
- A common contribution is
essential for the maintenance of the public forces and for the cost of
administration. This should be equitably distributed among all the
citizens in proportion to their means.
- All the citizens have a right to
decide, either personally or by their representatives, as to the necessity
of the public contribution; to grant this freely; to know to what uses it
is put; and to fix the proportion, the mode of assessment and of collection
and the duration of the taxes.
- Society has the right to require
of every public agent an account of his administration.
- A society in which the observance
of the law is not assured, nor the separation of powers defined, has no
constitution at all.
- Since property is an inviolable
and sacred right, no one shall be deprived thereof except where public
necessity, legally determined, shall clearly demand it, and then only on
condition that the owner shall have been previously and equitably
indemnified.
Reference
NCERT BOOK ( India and the Contemporary World -II FOR CLASS IX )Wikipedia
http://www.britannica.com
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