Declaration Of The Rights Of Man Research Paper

Sarandeep Singh

History 102

In 1789, the representatives of the French people organized together as a National Assembly to adopt a way to guarantee and protect the rights of individuals in their new nation. They put together the Declaration of The Rights of Man, which contained the ideas and principles from the French revolution and Enlightenment. The Declaration of the Rights of Man was in many ways similar to the recently adopted Bill of Rights in the United Sates and other documents expressing the rights of individuals. The Declaration of The Rights of Man served as the basis for future constitutions, movements, and governments. However, during the violent phases of the French revolution, the basis of the declaration were ignored and replaced during Napoleons reign.

The Declaration was an embodiment of many enlightenment ideas espoused from people the likes of John Locke and Montesquieu, specifically the idea of “natural rights”.

The basic and most important principle of the Declaration was that it declared that all men are born free and have equality of rights. These rights include “liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.” This is contradictory to the divide that existed in France before the revolution where people who born into nobility or other groups received different privileges and rights. The declaration also emphasizes the importance of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly as one of the most precious rights of man. It also asserts that the government and law existed to serve and protect the public as opposed to controlling and suppressing it. It’s clear that the declaration was an explicit attack on the absolute monarchial, privileged based regimes that existed during the pre-revolution periods of

France.
Despite it being a major basis for human rights, the Declaration of the Rights of Men was not without its shortcomings. The declaration was supposed to be based on principles fundamental to all human beings and thus should be universally accepted. However, one of the most glaring gaps is that it doesn’t say anything about the rights of women, slaves, indentured servants etc. The failure to recognize the rights of these women specifically led to the famous book “The Declaration of the Rights of Women” by Olympe De Gouges in which she asserted that women have the natural, inalienable rights as men. However, it wasn’t until many years later where women’s rights would finally be recognized by a constitution.
Unlike the Declaration in the United States at the time, The Declaration of the Rights of Man holds back from affirming that the natural, inalienable rights of man are given by God and not the state when it says “in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being”. However, The United States declaration makes it clear that natural human rights are endowed to the people by God and that the purpose of the state is to protect these rights. The declaration is also weak in guaranteeing and mentioning freedom of religion, right to bear arms, and the freedom of assembly. These differences seem to stem from the fact that France was more concerned with eliminating class issues and establishing strong individual rights as opposed to the issues the Americans dealt with during colonization. However, these issues in the Declaration would eventually need to be addressed.
Despite some shortcomings of the Declaration, it was still influential and important for progressing forward unlike the Carlsbad Resolutions in1819. Unlike the Declarations of The Rights of Man, The Carlsbad Resolutions were used as an instrument to restore the old social order and suppress national and liberal ideas in Germany. One of the architects of this, Metternich, used the murder Kotzebue(a critic of the movement) by a student, Karl Sand to establish strict limitations and impose control on academic freedom. At this time, the ideas of liberal and national movements inspired from the French Revolution were flourishing in school environments. Therefore, once a student committed a murder on the basis of defending the ideas of the French revolution, the government in the leading states of Germany figured they must do something to prevent it from getting out of hand. The Carlsbad Resolutions made it so that there was strict censorship of the press, surveillance of universities, bans on revolutionary/liberal professors and even bans on student groups/fraternities. As a result, there is a mass restriction on cultural and political life and caused a restoration to old monarchial regime system, a complete contrast to the ideals and goals that the Declaration of The Rights of Man had set. Metternich had now created a landscape once again that pushes away from the basic rights of freedom of speech and press and turns back into the pre-revolutionary days of strict government control.
The consequences of the Carlsbad Resolutions would be felt later in 1948. Because of the Carlsbad resolutions, Liberal and national movements were forced to move underground. As a result of the strict government control which also led to a greater desire for a unified Germany. It would all build up until the revolutions of 1948 where full scale uprisings took place against the monarchies. The Carlsbad decrees were repealed by Federal convention during the March revolution. It took a lot needless violence and death for some of the basic principles of the French Revolution and Declaration of Rights of Man to become accepted as they are today.
Despite some of the shortcomings and limited aims of the Declaration of The Rights of Man, it’s principles and ideas have stood the test of time. Its ideas were meant to push the nation into a new political/social democracy landscape. The declaration influenced and paved the path for many more right based democracies throughout Europe and the others parts of the world. It served as one of the tools that led to the death of absolute monarchies in Europe albeit it would take years of more revolutions and violence to do so. The revolutions of 1948, a series of revolts against European monarchies including Sicily, France, Germany, the Austrian empire etc. lead to a lot of further economic distress, death, and failure to achieve its ultimate goals.
Europe was still vastly under the conservative regimes with only some states with successful progressive regimes. Although the ideas from the French revolution and enlightenment that were reflected in the Declaration if the Rights of Man are prominent in most of the western world, they were initially limited in who they protected and not widely accepted by the rest of Europe. It took years of failure and countless movements to finally establish the ideas from the French revolution as accepted . If wasn’t until the 1900s and the end of the second world war where women and slaves rights were finally recognized and liberal democracies finally began to spread throughout the western world. In order for Europe to establish what are seemingly basic human rights and principles, it actually required decades of violent revolutions and oppression among certain groups of people until change finally occurred.