Revolutionary Ideas: An Intellectual History of the French Revolution From the Rights of Man to Robespierre (17 page)

Numerous deputies opposed their principles. To the exasperation of the majority, who preferred to avoid “abstract” rights, the debate occupied the Assembly for a whole month, the process clogged in disputes over words and “metaphysical” battles that turned the chamber into what one irritated observer called a Sorbonne philosophy class. An indignant Jean-Paul Marat, both at the time and later, condemned these “speculations métaphysiques” in his paper
L’Ami du peuple
and urged more direct democracy and that everything be brought to the level of the ordinary person. Malouet was disgusted by the “metaphysics” and wanted no declaration;
³⁸
Lally-Tollendal, a disciple of Voltaire, wanted all “metaphysical ideas” jettisoned and urged the Assembly to base the declaration on the “wise” English Bill of Rights of 1688, that is,
on experience and social hierarchy rather than la philosophie. He and Mounier conceded the need for some concessions to ideas of equality and democracy but believed abstract rights could be broadly withstood, and aristocracy in some form—or at least informal aristocracy—upheld, as in Britain and the United States, by establishing strong, positive “liberties” that safeguarded property and the principle of mixed government and curtailed the democratic tendency.
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Figure 3. (a) Bust of Mirabeau, (b) Sieyès, (c) Brissot, (d) Condorcet. (a) J. A. Houdon (1741–1828), marble bust portrait of Honoré-Gabriel Riqueti, Count of Mirabeau. Preserved in the Museum of the Castles of Versailles and Trianon, Versaille. 1908 © Alinari Archives / The Image Works. (b) Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825),
Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès
, 1817, oil on canvas. Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, USA / Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop / The Bridgeman Art Library. (c) Portrait of Jacques-Pierre Brissot, known as of Warville, 1784. © Roger-Viollet / The Image Works. (d) Portrait of Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet, engraving. © Photo12 - Elk-Opid / The Image Works.

With more than twenty different submissions considered down to mid-August, for weeks the main contest remained between Sieyès and Mounier.
⁴⁰
But for most deputies, adopting the “old constitution” as the base, as Lally-Tollendal, Malouet, and Mounier urged, and their preference for “separation of powers,” had the irremediable drawback of dragging in “ancient rights and liberties,” creating what one democratic révolutionnaire, Villette, scornfully called “un équilibre chimérique” more monarchical and aristocratic than democratic.
⁴¹
Defeated, Mounier and Lally-Tollendal fell back on Lafayette’s brief, non-philosophique, American-style draft, a text later dismissed by Robespierre as “rather banal” and definitely inferior to the other drafts.
⁴²
Before long, Lafayette too was beaten. From mid-August, the debate entered a new stage. A fresh Committee of Five was formed (from which the authors of all twenty main drafts were excluded), comprising Mirabeau, Démeunier, the bishop of Langres, and two lawyers, to select and weld the best elements into a final draft.
⁴³
This change enabled Mirabeau, assisted by his regular editorial team, Duroveray, Clavière, and Dumont—backed by Brissot and Volney—to regain the initiative, and he presented his own proposed, revised text in nineteen articles (against seventeen in the final version) on 17 August.
⁴⁴

Characteristic of Mirabeau was his identifying ignorance and “contempt for the natural, inalienable and sacred rights of men” as the root cause of the misfortunes of peoples. “Every political body,” reads his second article, “receives its existence from a social contract, explicit or tacit, by which each individual puts in common his person and faculties under the supreme direction of the
volonté générale
, and at the same time that body receives each individual as an [equal] portion.”
⁴⁵
Both legislative and executive powers of government exist solely for the advantage of those governed and not to serve the advantage of those that govern. The principles of monarchy, aristocracy, and ecclesiastical authority must all be denied in favor of volonté générale, Article VI affirming “law is the expression of the general will.” Philosophy, commentators agreed, won most clashes but not all, being defeated specifically on Articles X
and XI regarding freedom of expression and religion, clauses provoking many angry exchanges in the Assembly, especially between the clergy and those Brissot called followers of a “philosophy of gentleness and toleration.” The moderates, conservatives, and clergy regrouped around the formulation of one of the thirty “bureaux” into which the Assembly was divided during the intervals between plenary sessions to facilitate detailed business—the Sixth Bureau. Although no important leader, orator, or thinker of the Revolution belonged to this Sixth Bureau, a group of about forty deputies chaired by the bishop of Nancy, the very conservatism and antiphilosophique character of its recommendations led to these figuring prominently during the debate’s final phase.

The Sixth Bureau’s effort to stop the philosophes was a draft declaration of twenty-four articles that were pressed very insistently, but in the end largely, though not entirely, rejected. Its declaration contained four principal conservative points that the Left moved to block: first, Article VI introduced the principle of the “inequality of means” as inherent in nature, claiming that natural inequality counterbalances “equality of rights”; second, Articles VIII, IX, and X broadly offset natural rights with natural “duties” (
devoirs
); third, Articles XVI and XVII proclaimed the maintenance of religion indispensable and something that demanded respect for the “public cult”; fourth, freedom of thought and conscience should apply only insofar as these do not “trouble” the publicly established religion of the state. None of these provisions survived intact.
⁴⁶

Nevertheless, Mirabeau, Sieyès, and the radical leadership failed to secure unqualified freedom of expression or recognition of the liberty and equality of all religious cults.
⁴⁷
The final version of Article XI adopted Mirabeau’s clause, including “free communication of ideas and opinions among the most precious rights of man” but also qualified it by adding the proviso (likewise in Article X) that the individual “accepts responsibility for any abuse of this liberty set by the law.”
⁴⁸
Everyone knew what this meant. Mirabeau recorded his “pain” that instead of fully eradicating intolerance, the Assembly had, as it were, placed its “germ” in reserve, keeping open the possibility of restoring the Church’s authority at some later point. And this in a declaration of human rights! This compromise, he noted, flagrantly contradicted Article III, which averred that no one may “exercise authority not expressly emanating from the nation.”
⁴⁹
The philosophique leadership also partly lost the clash over press freedom; they had to concede the continued banning of obscene and “mauvais livres.”
⁵⁰

Backing Mirabeau and his team in these encounters, Brissot’s
Patriote français
vigorously endorsed Mirabeau’s draft.
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The denouement was now close. In the crucial vote on 19 August, 620 deputies voted for Mirabeau’s formulation, 220 for Sieyès’s second draft, and, despite Lally-Tollendal’s pleas to cut the metaphysics, only 45 for Lafayette’s.
⁵²
Finalized on 26 August, the Rights of Man and the Citizen envisaged society’s renewal on a completely fresh basis, not one supposedly inherent in the nation’s legal past (as with the American Declaration).
⁵³
Where the American Declaration declares natural rights inherent in British constitutional liberties, the French Declaration invokes rights enshrined in laws yet to be made. The Assembly, Mirabeau, Condorcet, and Volney felt, had in some degree “disfigured” the outcome by qualifying freedom of thought and the press.
⁵⁴
Even so, the result was a stunning success for Mirabeau, Sieyès, Volney, Brissot, Condorcet, Destutt de Tracy, Pétion, Rabaut, and, generally, the radical bloc. For the first time in history, equality, individual liberty, the right to equal protection by the state, and freedom of thought and expression were enshrined as basic principles declared inherent in all just and rational societies. The bedrock of democratic modernity was in place. The rights the French adopted for themselves were proclaimed universal rights belonging equally to all of whatever nation, station, faith, or ethnicity. It was undeniably Mirabeau and, outside the Assembly, also Brissot, observed Carra, who eclipsed everyone else in securing the Declaration, the new revolutionary creed: “the nation owes each a fine civic crown.”
⁵⁵
Of course, most contemporaries had little inkling of the republican, democratic, and Radical Enlightenment motivation that shaped this result.

American independence “opened our eyes about the true destiny of peoples,” their “natural rights, and the equality of everyone’s rights,” acknowledged Carra in October, confident the entire world would be transformed by the principle of human rights based on equality. To Carra, the force of “des idées philosophiques” loomed irresistibly: “rois de l’Europe—voyez comme l’empire de la raison étend son influence de toutes parts.”
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Already, “the plains of Mexico and mountains of Chile echo to the exciting call to liberty.” The small principality of Liège “emulated the thirty-two provinces of France,” encouraging the insurgent Brabant Patriots to follow. As for English oppression in India, that would have to end soon. For the same reasons, the Declaration was immediately attacked by the royalist and Catholic press, as well as in Rome and across Europe, though its principles were not formally condemned by Pope Pius VI until 1791.
⁵⁷
Not only ultraroyalist and
Catholic opinion but also most moderate Enlightenment “centrist” liberal opinion rejected basic human rights as formulated by the French Revolution. Portalis, like most lawyers, considered the enactment disastrous, believing it contradicted every tradition of French law and was a device for fomenting despotism based on “idées bien exagérées de liberté et d’égalité.”
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Among the first to denounce these revolutionary new principles abroad were the prestigious German moderate enlighteners August Ludwig von Schlözer (1735–1809) and Justus Möser (1720–94), the latter in the
Berlinische Monatsschrift
. Their attacks opened a deep split within German thought.
⁵⁹
Disciples of Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Hume uniformly rejected equality and human rights, as they rejected la philosophie moderne and the Revolution. Men are only truly equal, insisted Möser, in a Christian sense, spiritually. Nowhere should Christians consider men equal in worldly status or civil rights. Several commentators, including the liberal theologian Johann August Eberhard (1739–1809), in his
Philosophisches Magazin
, disagreed.
⁶⁰
A vigorous reply to Möser, “Gibt es wirklich Rechte der Menschheit?” (Are there really Human Rights?), appeared in Eberhard’s
Philosophisches Magazin,
penned by the Spinozist Carl von Knoblauch (1756–94).
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“The great inequality of force [among men] and consequent insecurity among the weak this creates,” explained Knoblauch, reiterating a key Spinozist argument, “drives people to form a state whose force, resulting from the uniting of many individual capacities and interests, then becomes a purposely directed power,” providing security and stability for all and “protecting the weak against the usurpations of the strong.”
⁶²
“Equality” not only exists, he berated Möser, but is a universal principle, the best of all political and legal doctrines. What does not exist are “rights” conceived as concessions or decreed as gifts and privileges by rulers, lawyers, or priests. Equal human rights exist everywhere, proclaimed Knoblauch, universally.