Sophismes anarchiques : un examen des déclarations des droits publiées…

"THE Representatives of the French people, constituted in National Assembly, considering that ignorance, forgetfulness, or contempt of the Rights of Man, are the only causes of public calamities, and of the corruption of governments, have resolved to set forth in a solemn declaration, the natural, unalienable, and sacred rights of man, in order that this declaration, constantly presented to all the members of the body social, may recall to mind, without ceasing, their rights and their duties; to the end, that the acts of the legislative power, and those of the executive power, being capable at every instant of comparison with the end of every political institution, they may be more respected, and also that the demands of the citizens hereafter, founded upon simple and incontestable principles, may always tend to the maintenance of the constitution and to the happiness of all." "In consequence, the National Assembly acknowledges and declares, in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being, the following Rights of the Man and the Citizen." From this preamble we may collect the following positions: 1. That the declaration in question ought to include a declaration of all the powers which it is designed should thereafter subsist in the State; the limits of each power precisely laid down, and every one completely distinguished from the other. 2. That the articles by which this is to be done, ought not to be loose and scattered, but closely connected into a whole, and the connexion all along made visible. 3. That the declaration of the rights of man, in a state preceding that of political society, ought to form a part of the composition in question, and constitute the first part of it. 4. That in point of fact, a clear idea of all these stands already imprinted in the minds of every man. 5.…