The present study is one of origins. Our object is to trace from the
beginning the gradual development of the Declaration of the Rights of
Man, of the first written constitution in France, and to follow the
movement which led to the abolition of monarchy and to the adoption of
the republican form of government. In view of the complex phenomena of
the French Revolutionary period, it is advantageous to our understanding
of that surpassingly interesting era to view the various classes of
facts from different standpoints. The Revolution was social, religious,
political, and economic. While the study of any one of these phases
necessarily involves the others, the best results will be secured
by considering the movement now as social, now as religious, now as
political, and now as economic. This paper is an investigation of the
early Revolution from the political point of view. Whence arose in the
minds of the French the idea of a Declaration of the Rights of Man? Where
did they derive the principles therein contained? How were they led to
feel the need of a written constitution? Through what series of events
were they brought to suspect, to denounce and to renounce royalty, and to
accept the idea of an elective executive? Such questions as these are of
interest to the student of political history.
Though the primary sources for the investigation of this subject are
limited in our American libraries, enough has been found to lead to an
interpretation suggestive and, we believe, correct.
Recently two important books upon the French Revolution have appeared.
M. A. Aulard published last year his _Histoire politique de la
Révolution française_. In this work he has reexamined, in the light of
the voluminous material at hand in France, these same questions. Prof.
William M. Sloane, of Columbia University, has treated the Revolution
primarily in its ecclesiastical aspects in his _French Revolution
and Religious Reform_. The manuscript of this thesis was practically
completed before either of these works came into the writer’s hands.
It did not seem advisable, therefore, to make any modifications in the
conclusions herein reached; they are, however, in the main in accord with
those arrived at by these two authors. The Declaration of the Rights of
Man and the origin of the idea of a written constitution are here more
fully discussed than by these writers.