well known, Burke and Bentham, and
later Taine, _Les origines de la France contemporaine: La revolution_,
I, pp. 273 _et seq._; Oncken, _Das Zeitalter der Revolution, des
Kaiserreiches und der Befreiungskriege_, I, pp. 229 _et seq._; and
Weiss, _Geschichte der franzoesischen Revolution_, 1888, I, p. 263.]

[Footnote 2: Titre premier: "Dispositions fondamentales garanties par la
constitution."]

[Footnote 3: Helie, _Les constitutions de la France_, pp. 1103 _et
seq._]

[Footnote 4: _Cf._ Jellinek, _System der subjektiven oeffentlichen
Rechte_, p. 3, n. 1.]

[Footnote 5: Binding, _Der Versuch der Reichsgruendung durch die
Paulskirche_, Leipzig, 1892, p. 23.]

[Footnote 6: When considering the constitution, the Reichstag rejected
all proposals which aimed to introduce fundamental rights. _Cf._ Bezold,
_Materialen der deutschen Reichsverfassung_, III, pp. 896-1010.]

CHAPTER II.

ROUSSEAU'S _CONTRAT SOCIAL_ WAS NOT THE SOURCE OF THIS DECLARATION.

In his _History of Political Science_--the most comprehensive work of
that kind which France possesses--Paul Janet, after a thorough
presentation of the _Contrat Social_, discusses the influence which this
work of Rousseau's exercised upon the Revolution. The idea of the
declaration of rights is to be traced back to Rousseau's teachings. What
else is the declaration itself than the formulation of the state
contract according to Rousseau's ideas? And what are the several rights
but the stipulations and specifications of that contract?[7]

It is hard to understand how an authority upon the _Contrat Social_
could make such a statement though in accord with popular opinion.

The social contract has only one stipulation, namely, the complete
transference to the community of all the individual's rights.[8] The
individual does not retain one particle of his rights from the moment he
enters the state.[9] Everything that he receives of the nature of right
he gets from the _volonte generale_, which is the sole judge of its own
limits, and ought not to be, and cannot be, restricted by the law of any
power. Even property belongs to the individual only by virtue of state
concession. The social contract makes the state the master of the goods
of its members,[10] and the latter remain in possession only as the
trustees of public property.[11] Civil liberty consists simply of what
is left to the individual after taking his duties as a citizen into
account.[12] These duties can