8. The law should be equal for all, whether it rewards or punishes,
protects or represses.
9. All citizens are admissible to all public positions, employments, and
functions. Free nations recognize no grounds of preference save talents
and virtues.
10. Security consists in the protection accorded by society to every
citizen for the preservation of his person, property, and rights.
11. None should be sued, accused, arrested, or detained, save in cases
determined by the law, and in accordance with forms prescribed by it.
Every other act against a citizen is arbitrary and null.
12. Those who solicit, further, sign, execute, or cause to be executed,
such arbitrary acts are culpable, and should be punished.
13. Citizens against whom the execution of such acts is attempted
have the right to repel force by force; but every citizen summoned or
arrested by authority of the Law, and in the forms by it prescribed,
should instantly obey: he renders himself guilty by resistance.
14. Every man being presumed innocent until legally pronounced guilty,
should his arrest be deemed indispensable, all rigor not necessary to
secure his person should be severely represssed by law.
15. None should be punished save in virtue of a law formally enacted,
promulgated anterior to the offence, and legally applied.
16. Any law that should punish offences committed before its existence
would be an arbitrary act. Retroactive effect given to the law is a
crime.
17. The law should award only penalties strictly and evidently necessary
to the general safety. Penalties should be proportioned to offences, and
useful to society.
18. The right of property consists in every man's being master in the
disposal, at his will, of his goods, capital, income, and industry.
19. No kind of labor, commerce, or culture, can be prohibited to any
one: he may make, sell, and transport every species of production.
20. Every man may engage his services and his time; but he cannot sell
himself; his person is not an alienable property.
21. No one can be deprived of the least portion of his property without
his consent, unless evidently required by public necessity, legally
determined, and under the condition of a just indemnity in advance.
22. No tax shall be imposed except for the general welfare, and to meet
public needs. All citizens have the right to unite personally, or by
their representatives, in the fixing of imposts.
23. Instruction is the need of all, and society owes it to all its
members equally.
24. Public succours are a sacred debt of society; it is for the law to
determine their extent and application.
25. The social guarantee of the rights of man rests on the national
sovereignty.
26. This sovereignty is one, indivisible, imprescriptible, and
inalienable.
27. It resides essentially in the whole people, and every citizen has an
equal right to unite in its exercise.
28. No partial assemblage of citizens, and no individual, may attribute
to themselves sovereignty, or exercise any authority, or discharge any
public function, without formal delegation thereto by the law.
29. The social guarantee cannot exist if the limits of public
administration are not clearly determined by law, and if the
responsibility of all public functionaries is not assured.
30. All citizens are bound to unite in this guarantee, and in enforcing
the law when summoned in its name.
31. Men united in society should have legal means of resisting
oppression.
32. There is oppression when any law violates the natural rights, civil
and political, which it should guarantee.
There is oppression when the law is violated by public officials in its
application to individual cases.
There is oppression when arbitrary actions violate the rights of citizen
against the express purpose (_expression_) of the law.
In a free government the mode of resisting these different acts of
oppression should be regulated by the Constitution.
33. A people possesses always the right to reform and alter its
Constitution. A generation has no right to subject a future generation
to its laws; and all heredity in offices is absurd and tyrannical.