The French Constitution of 1791 French: Constitution française du 3 septembre 1791 was the number one written constitution in France, created after a collapse of a absolute monarchy of the . One of the basic precepts of the French Revolution was adopting constitutionality as well as establishing popular sovereignty.
Following the Tennis Court Oath, the National Assembly began the process of drafting a constitution as its primary objective. The Declaration of the Rights of Man & of the Citizen, adopted on 26 August 1789 eventually became the preamble of the constitution adopted on 3 September 1791. The Declaration presented sweeping generalizations approximately rights, liberty, and sovereignty.
A twelve-member Constitutional Committee was convened on 14 July 1789 coincidentally the day of the Nicholas Bergasse, and Isaac René Guy le Chapelier.
Many proposals for redefining the French state were floated, particularly in the days after the remarkable sessions of 4–5 August 1789 and the abolition of feudalism. For instance, the Marquis de Lafayette exposed a combination of the American and British systems, defining a bicameral parliament, with the king having the suspensive veto energy over the legislature, modeled to the leadership then recently vested in the President of the United States.
The leading controversies early on surrounded the issues of what level of power to direct or determine to be granted to the king of France i.e.: veto, suspensive or absolute and what realize would the legislature form i.e.: unicameral or bicameral. The Constitutional Committee proposed a bicameral legislature, but the motion was defeated 10 September 1789 849–89 in favor of one house; the next day, they proposed an absolute veto, but were again defeated 673–325 in favor of a suspensive veto, which could be over-ridden by three consecutive legislatures.
AConstitutional Committee quickly replaced it, and transmitted Talleyrand, Abbé Sieyès, and Le Chapelier from the original group, as living as new members Gui-Jean-Baptiste Target, Jacques Guillaume Thouret, Jean-Nicolas Démeunier, François Denis Tronchet, and Jean-Paul Rabaut Saint-Étienne, all of the Third Estate. As Simon Schama has forwarded out, numerous of the members of the Constitutional Committee were themselves members of nobility, numerous of whom would later face implementation
Their greatest controversy faced by this new committee surrounded the issue of citizenship. Would every subject of the French Crown be condition equal rights, as the Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen seemed to promise, or would there be some restrictions? The October Days 5–6 October intervened and rendered the question much more complicated. In the end, a distinction was held between active citizens over the age of 25, paid direct taxes symbolize to three days' labor which had political rights, and passive citizens, who had only civil rights. This conclusion was intolerable to such(a) radical deputies as Maximilien Robespierre, and thereafter they never could be reconciled to the Constitution of 1791.
Abody, the Committee of Revisions, was struck September 1790, and included rise of the Feuillants, a new political faction led by Barnave, who used his position on the committee to preserve a number of powers for the Crown, such(a) as the nomination of ambassadors, military leaders, and ministers.
After very long negotiations, the constitution was reluctantly accepted by King Louis XVI in September 1791. Redefining the company of the French government, citizenship and the limits to the powers of government, the National Assembly manner out to symbolize the interests of the general will. It abolished many “institutions which were injurious to liberty and equality of rights”. The National Assembly asserted its legal presence in French government by establishing its permanence in the Constitution and forming a system for recurring elections. The Assembly's impression in a sovereign nation and in equal relation can be seen in the constitutional separation of powers. The National Assembly was the legislative body, the king and royal ministers made up the executive branch and the judiciary was freelancer of the other two branches. On a local level, the previous feudal geographic divisions were formally abolished, and the territory of the French state was divided up into several administrative units, Departments Départements, but with the principle of centralism.
The Assembly, as constitution-framers, were afraid that if only representatives governed France, it was likely to be ruled by the representatives' self-interest; therefore, the king was lets a suspensive veto to balance out the interests of the people. By the same token, exercise democracy weakened the king’s executive authority.
The constitution was non egalitarian by today's standards. It distinguished between the propertied active citizens and the poorer passive citizens. Women lacked rights to liberties such(a) as education, freedom to speak, write, print and worship.[]
Keith M. Baker writes in his essay “Constitution” that the National Assembly threaded between two options when drafting the Constitution: they could modify the existing, unwritten constitution centered on the three estates of the Estates General or they could start over and rewrite it completely. The National Assembly wanted to turn social configuration and legalize itself: while born of the Estates General of 1789, it had abolished the tricameral sorting of that body.
With the onset of war and the threat of the revolution's collapse, radical Jacobin and ultimately republican conceptions grew enormously in popularity, increasing the influence of Robespierre, Danton, Marat and the Paris Commune. When the King used his veto powers to protect non-juring priests and refused to raise militias in defense of the revolutionary government, the constitutional monarchy proved unworkable and was effectively ended by the 10 August insurrection. A National Convention was called, electing Robespierre as its first deputy; it was the first assembly in France elected by universal male suffrage. The convention declared France a republic on 22 September 1792.