The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Constitutional Monarchy

The National Constituent Assembly approved the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen on 26 August 1789. Its first article proclaimed that men are born and remain free and equal in rights, breaking radically with the estate-based system, and it affirmed that national sovereignty resides in the nation rather than in a monarch by divine right. It established liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression as natural rights, guaranteed freedom of expression, press, and religion, defined liberty in its fourth article as the freedom to do anything that does not harm others, and established the presumption of innocence. The Marquis de Lafayette contributed significantly to its drafting, consulting Thomas Jefferson, though the document notably declared property "inviolable and sacred," did not abolish colonial slavery, and left women's rights unaddressed — a gap Olympe de Gouges would challenge in 1791.