THE FIRST FRENCH REPUBLIC:
A STUDY OF THE ORIGIN AND THE CONTENTS OF THE DECLARATION
OF THE RIGHTS OF MAN, OF THE CONSTITUTION, AND OF
THE ADOPTION OF THE REPUBLICAN FORM OF
GOVERNMENT IN 1792.
BY
HORACE MANN CONAWAY,
Sometime Fellow in European History in Columbia University.
SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
IN THE
Faculty of Political Science
Columbia University.
New York.
1902.
The present study is one of origins. Our object is to tracefrom the beginning the gradual development of the Declarationof the Rights of Man, of the first written constitution in France,and to follow the movement which led to the abolition of monarchyand to the adoption of the republican form of government.In view of the complex phenomena of the French Revolutionaryperiod, it is advantageous to our understanding of that surpassinglyinteresting era to view the various classes of facts fromdifferent standpoints. The Revolution was social, religious, political,and economic. While the study of any one of these phasesnecessarily involves the others, the best results will be securedby considering the movement now as social, now as religious, nowas political, and now as economic. This paper is an investigationof the early Revolution from the political point of view. Whencearose in the minds of the French the idea of a Declaration of theRights of Man? Where did they derive the principles thereincontained? How were they led to feel the need of a written constitution?Through what series of events were they brought tosuspect, to denounce and to renounce royalty, and to accept theidea of an elective executive? Such questions as these are of interestto the student of political history.
Though the primary sources for the investigation of this subjectare limited in our American libraries, enough has been found tolead to an interpretation suggestive and, we believe, correct.
Recently two important books upon the French Revolutionhave appeared. M. A. Aulard published last year his Histoirepolitique de la Révolution française. In this work he has reexamined,in the light of the voluminous material at hand inFrance, these same questions. Prof. William M. Sloane, of ColumbiaUniversity, has treated the Revolution primarily in itsecclesiastical aspects in his French Revolution and Religious Reform.The manuscript of this thesis was practically completed[6]before either of these works came into the writer’s hands. It didnot seem advisable, therefore, to make any modifications in theconclusions herein reached; they are, however, in the main inaccord with those arrived at by these two authors. The Declarationof the Rights of Man and the origin of the idea of a writtenconstitution are here more fully discussed than by these writers.
H. M. C.
Sheffield, Pa., August 5, 1902.