PLAN OF A DECLARATION* OF THE NATURAL, CIVIL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS T OF MAN HE aim of men gathered together in soci ety being the maintenance of their natural, civil and political rights, these rights are the basis of the social compact, and their recognition and their declaration should precede the constitution which assures their guarantee. 1. The natural, civil and political rights of man are liberty, equality, security, property, social guarantees, and resistance to oppression. 2. Liberty is the power to do everything that does not interfere with the rights of others: thus, * Translated from the Oeuvres complètes de Condorcet, Tome XVIII; Pg. 271-278, published at Brunswick and Paris in the thirteenth year of the Republic, 1804. In Dr. John Moore's "Aphorisms, Opinions and Reflections of Thomas Paine" (London, 1826, pp. 3-14) it is stated, on the authority of a personal friend of Paine, that the latter collaborated with Condorcet in drawing up the “Declaration of Rights.” Debrett published a translation of both the Declaration and Constitution (London, 1793). As the Constitution of 1793 was reported by the Constitutional Committee on the fifteenth of February, and as Robespierre objected to the "Declaration of Rights" on the fifteenth of April because it made no mention of a Supreme Being, it must have been drawn up before these dates, probably in January. There does not appear to be any copy extant of Paine's "Plan of a Constitution," which he drafted when a member of the Constitutional Committee.-Ed. the exercise of the natural rights of every individual has no limits save those that assure to other members of society the enjoyment of the same rights. 3. The preservation of liberty depends on obedience to the law, which is the expression of the general will. Anything that is not prohibited by the law cannot be forbidden, and no one can be constrained to do that which the law does not ordain. 4. Every man is free to publish his thoughts and opinions. 5. The freedom of the press, and of every other medium for the expression of thought, cannot be interdicted, suspended or limited. 6. Every man is free in the exercise of his religion. 7. Equality consists in the enjoyment of the same rights by each. 8. The law should be equal for all, whether it rewards or punishes, whether it protects or restrains. 9. All citizens have the right of admission to all public positions, employments and functions. The only motives of preference known to a free people are talents and virtues. 10. Security consists in the protection grant ed by society to every citizen for the preservation of his person, his possessions and his rights. 11. No one should be summoned before a court, arrested, accused or imprisoned except in cases determined by law, and according to the forms which it prescribes. All other acts directed against a citizen are arbitrary and null. 12. Those who solicit, assist, sign, execute or cause to be executed such acts, are criminals and should be punished. 13. Citizens exposed to such acts have the right to repel force by force; but every citizen, summoned or arrested by the authority of the law, and according to the forms prescribed by the law, should at once submit: he is culpable if he resist. 14. As every man is presumed to be innocent until he is proved to be guilty, all rigor that is not needed for the security of his person should be severely checked by the law, in case of his arrest. 15. No one should be punished save by a law enacted and promulgated anteriorly to the crime, and legally applied. 16. A law that punishes crimes committed before its existence, is an act of despotism, be |