The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Translator’s Preface.
• Preface.
• The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens.
• Chapter I: The French Declaration of Rights of August 26, 1789, and Its Significance.
• Chapter II.: Rousseau’s Contrat Social Was Not the Source of This Declaration.
• Chapter III.: The Bills of Rights of the Individual States of the North American Union Were Its Models.
• Chapter IV.: Virginia’s Bill of Rights and Those of the Other North American States.
• Chapter V.: Comparison of the French and American Declarations.
• Chapter VI.: The Contrast Between the American and English Declarations of Rights.
• Chapter VII.: Religious Liberty In the Anglo-american Colonies the Source of the Idea of Establishing By Law a Universal Right of Man.
• Chapter VIII.: The Creation of a System of Rights of Man and of Citizens During the American Revolution.
• Chapter IX.: The Rights of Man and the Teutonic Conception of Right.

PREFACE.

The following essay has originated in connection with a larger work upon which I have been engaged for some time. May it assist in strengthening the conviction that the ideas expressed in the law of the modern state are to be comprehended not alone through the history of the literature and the development of the conceptions of right, but above all through that history of the institutions themselves that stretches itself over the whole field of our civilized life!

• Heidelberg

, June 23, 1895.