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CHAPTER XVI: Of the Declaration of Rights Proclaimed by the Chamber of Representatives, 5th of July, 1815. - Germaine de Staël, Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution (LF ed.) [2008]

Edition used:

Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution, newly revised translation of the 1818 English edition, edited, with an introduction and notes by Aurelian Craiutu (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2008).

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Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


CHAPTER XVI

Of the Declaration of Rights Proclaimed by the Chamber of Representatives, 5th of July, 1815.

Bonaparte signed his second abdication on the 22d of June, 1815; and on the 8th of the following month the foreign troops entered the capital. During this very short interval, the partisans of Napoléon lost a great deal of precious time in trying to secure, against the will of the nation, the crown to his son.1 Besides, the Chamber of Representatives contained a number of men who would certainly not have been elected without the influence of party-spirit; and yet it sufficed that, for the first time during fifteen years, six hundred Frenchmen elected in any manner by the people should be assembled together and deliberate in public, in order that the spirit of liberty and the talent of speaking might reappear. Men entirely new in the career of politics spoke with distinguished ability: others, who had not been heard of during the reign of Bonaparte, recovered their old vigor, and yet, I repeat it, there were deputies in that Chamber whom the nation, if left to itself, would never have accepted. But such is the strength of public opinion when men feel themselves in its presence, such is the enthusiasm inspired by a forum where you are heard by all the enlightened men of Europe, that those sacred principles, obscured by long years of despotism, reappeared in less than a fortnight; and in what circumstances did they appear! When factions of all kinds were kindled in the assembly itself, and when three hundred thousand foreign soldiers were near the walls of Paris.

A bill of rights, for I have a pleasure on this occasion2 in making use of the English expression, which recalls only happy and august recollections; a bill of rights was proposed and carried in the midst of these disasters; and in the few words we are about to read, there exists an immortal power—truth.*

I stop at this last act, which preceded by a few days the complete invasion of France by foreign armies: it is there that I finish my historical reflections. In fact, there is no more a France so long as foreign armies occupy our territory. Let us cast our eyes, before ending, toward those general ideas which have guided us throughout the course of the work; and let us, if possible, present a picture of that England which we have so often held up as a model to the legislators of France, by accusing them every time that they departed from it.3

PART VI

[1. ] Napoléon II.

[2. ] On July 4, 1815. This declaration, titled Déclaration des Droits des Français et des principes fondamentaux de leur constitution, drew inspiration from the English Bill of Rights of 1689 rather than the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizen of 1789. The new declaration, drafted by Garat, former deputy to the Estates General and former minister of justice, stipulated, among other things, popular sovereignty, division of powers, the inviolability of the monarch, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion. After the entry of foreign armies in Paris (July 5) and the return of Louis XVIII (July 8), the Chamber was officially dissolved on July 13 and Garat’s declaration was abandoned.

[* ] The author intended to have inserted here the Declaration of the Chamber of Representatives, eliminating whatever was not in harmony with the principles professed in this work. This task is of too delicate a nature for the editors to take on themselves to complete it.

This chapter is evidently nothing but an outline. Notes in the margin of the manuscript pointed out the principal facts of which Madame de Staël purposed treating, and the distinguished names she meant to cite. (Note by the original editors)

[3. ] There are significant differences between the published and the original version of this chapter. For more information, see the account given by Chinatsu Takeda, “Présentation des documents,” in Revue française d’histoire des idées politiques (Paris: Picard, 2003), no. 18, 2e., 355–61. Madame de Staël’s original version of this chapter is reproduced on pp. 365–68.