Rights of Man and of the Citizen
The French Bill of Rights were declared by the Revolutionaries in Paris as Rights of Man and of the Citizen in 1789. These are 17 in number. It should be noted that while preparing the Fundamental Rights of the Indian Constitution, members of the Constituent Assembly studied this French Bill of Rights along with the Amendments to the Constitution of the USA (1791 onwards) and Bill of Rights of England (1689). As is evidenced from the sequence of events American Bill of Rights in 1791 were prepared after French Bill of Rights of 1789.
Article 1. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good.
Article 2. The goal of any political association is the conservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, safety and resistance against oppression.
Article 3. The principle of any sovereignty resides essentially in the Nation. No body, no individual may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation.
Article 4. Liberty consists of doing anything which does not harm others: thus, the exercise of the natural rights of each man has only those borders which assure other members of the society the fruition of these same rights. These borders can be determined only by the law.
Watch my Videos on YouTube channel
Also Read my articles on
Article 5. The law has the right to forbid only actions harmful to society. Anything which is not forbidden by the law cannot be impeded, and no one can be constrained to do what it does not order.
Article 6. The law is the expression of the general will. All the citizens have the right of contributing personally or through their representatives to its formation. It must be the same for all, either that it protects, or that it punishes. All the citizens, being equal in its eyes, are equally admissible to all public dignities, places, and employments, according to their capacity and without distinction other than that of their virtues and of their talents.
Article 7. No man can be accused, arrested nor detained but in the cases determined by the law, and according to the forms which it has prescribed. Those who solicit, dispatch, carry out or cause to be carried out arbitrary orders, must be punished; but any citizen called or seized under the terms of the law must obey at once; he renders himself culpable by resistance.
Article 8. The law should establish only penalties that are strictly and evidently necessary, and no one can be punished but under a law established and promulgated before the offense and legally applied.
Also Read my articles on
Article 9. Any man being presumed innocent until he is declared culpable if it is judged indispensable to arrest him, any rigor which would not be necessary for the securing of his person must be severely reprimanded by the law.
Article 10. No one may be disquieted for his opinions, even religious ones, provided that their manifestation does not trouble the public order established by the law.
Article 11. The free communication of thoughts and of opinions is one of the most precious rights of man: any citizen thus may speak, write, print freely, except to respond to the abuse of this liberty, in the cases determined by the law.
Article 12. The guarantee of the rights of man and of the citizen necessitates a public force: this force is thus instituted for the advantage of all and not for the particular utility of those in whom it is trusted.
Article 13. For the maintenance of the public force and for the expenditures of administration, a common contribution is indispensable; it must be equally distributed to all the citizens, according to their ability to pay.
Article 14. Each citizen has the right to ascertain, by himself or through his representatives, the need for a public tax, to consent to it freely, to know the uses to which it is put, and of determining the proportion, basis, collection, and duration.
Article 15. The society has the right of requesting an account from any public agent of its administration.
Article 16. Any society in which the guarantee of rights is not assured, nor the separation of powers determined, has no Constitution.
Article 17. Property being an inviolable and sacred right, no one can be deprived of private usage, if it is not when the public necessity, legally noted, evidently requires it, and under the condition of a just and prior indemnity.
ALSO READ MY ARTICLES ON
