| Declaration of the rights of man and of the citizen of August 26, 1789 |
| Art. FIRST : The men are born and remain free and equal in rights. The social distinctions can be founded only on the common utility.
Art. II : The goal of any political association is the conservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of the Man. These rights are freedom, the property, safety, and resistance to oppression. Art. III : The principle of any Sovereignty lies primarily in the Nation. No body, no individual cannot exert authority which does not emanate from it expressly. Art. IV : Freedom consists in being able to do all that does not harm others: thus, the exercise of the natural rights of each man has terminals only those which ensure the other Members of the Company the pleasure of these same rights. These terminals can be given only by the Law. Art. V : The Law has the right to defend only the harmful actions at the Company. All that is not defended by the Law cannot be prevented, and no one cannot be constrained to do what it does not order. Art. VI : The Law is the expression of the general will. All the Citizens have right to contribute personally, or by their Representatives, with his formation. It must be the same one for all, either that it protects, or that it punishes. All the Citizens being equal in its eyes are also acceptable with all public dignities, places and employment, according to their capacity, and without other distinction that that their virtues and their talents. Art. VII : No man cannot marked, be stopped nor held that in the cases determined by the Law, and according to forms' which it prescribed. Those which solicit, dispatch, carry out or make carry out arbitrary commands, must be punished; but any citizen called or seized under the terms of the Law must obey at the moment: he makes himself guilty by resistance. Art. VIII : The Law should establish only sorrows strictly and obviously necessary, and no one can be punished only under the terms of one Law established and promulgated before with the offence, and legally applied. Art. IX : Any man being supposed innocent until it was declared guilty, if it is considered it essential to stop it, any rigour which would not be necessary to be ensured of its person must severly be repressed by the law. Art. X : No one should not be worried for its opinions, even religious, provided that their demonstration does not disturb the law and order established by the Law. Art. XI : The free communication of the thoughts and the opinions is one of the most invaluable rights of the Man: any Citizen can thus speak, write, print freely, except answering the abuse this freedom in the cases determined by the Law. Art. XII : The guarantee of the humans right and of the Citizen requires a police force: this force is thus instituted for the advantage of all, and not for the particular utility of those to which it is entrusted. Art. XIII : For the maintenance of the police force, and for the expenditure of administration, a common contribution is essential: it must be also distributed between all the citizens, because of their faculties. Art. XIV : All the Citizens have the right to note, by themselves or their representatives, the need for the public contribution, to voluntarily agree it to follow employment of it, and to determine of it the share, the plate, the recovery and the duration. Art. XV : The Company has the right to request account from any public Agent of its administration. Art. XVI : Any Company in which the guarantee of the Rights is not assured, nor the separation of the Capacities determined, does not have a Constitution. Art. XVII : The property being a foolproof and crowned right, no one cannot be private for it, if it is not when public need, legally noted, requires it obviously, and under the condition of a Juste and preliminary allowance. |
