Declaration of the Rights of the Man and of the Citizen of 1793

The 1793 version included new rights, and revisions to prior ones: to work, to public assistance, to education, and to resist oppression.

[2] The first project of the Constitution of the French Fourth Republic also referred to the 1793 version of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.

These rights entail a greater government intervention in order to reach society's goal as stated in Article 1: common welfare.

Slavery is prohibited by Article 18, which states: "Every man can contract his services and his time, but he cannot sell himself nor be sold: his person is not an alienable property."

If in a way, this declaration has a more liberal bent in the modern American sense, since it states that there ought to be public policies for the general welfare, it also contains some very strong libertarian aspects.

Article 7 states, "The necessity of enunciating these rights supposes either the presence or the fresh recollection of despotism."

Although this declaration was never enforced (like the Constitution of 1793), history has shown that the French people have followed this advice with many successful (1830, 1848) and unsuccessful (1832, 1870) revolutions throughout the 19th century.