Rights on the Press: Sourcing the Declaration of 1789

A Paris Print Shop, August 1789

1In late August 1789, the presses in Marie Dubois's print shop in Paris run day and night. Her workers are setting the type for a new poster: the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Buyers line up at the door. A few years earlier, a printer could be fined or jailed for printing a pamphlet that royal censors had not approved.

2Who wrote it? That summer, representatives of the Third Estate, the commoners who made up most of France, declared themselves a National Assembly that spoke for the whole nation. Some clergy and nobles joined them. On August 26, 1789, the Assembly approved the Declaration. One of its early drafts came from the Marquis de Lafayette, a French noble who had fought in the American Revolution.

3Why does it matter? France was an absolute monarchy. King Louis XVI had not asked for the Declaration, and he delayed accepting it until October, after crowds from Paris marched to his palace at Versailles. The articles drew on Enlightenment writers who argued that people are born with natural rights, that a government's power comes from an agreement with the people it governs, and that dividing power protects liberty.

4In 1766, the king's grandfather, Louis XV, had spoken to a high court in Paris that had challenged his orders. His words, adapted from a translation, appear below the excerpt as a reminder of the old way of ruling.

Excerpt: Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, 1789 (adapted from a translation)

Article 1. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights.

Article 2. The goal of every political association is to protect the natural rights of man, which can never be taken away. These rights are liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression.

Article 3. The source of all sovereignty lies in the nation. No group and no individual may use any power that does not come from the nation.

Article 6. Law is the expression of the general will. All citizens have the right to take part, personally or through their representatives, in making it.

Article 7. No one may be accused, arrested or held in prison except in the cases set by law and in the way the law requires.

Article 11. The free sharing of thoughts and opinions is one of the most precious rights of man. Every citizen may therefore speak, write and print freely, but must answer for abuses of this freedom in cases set by law.

Article 16. A society in which rights are not guaranteed and the separation of powers is not set up has no constitution.