Examinarea Declaraţiei drepturilor omului şi a cetăţeanului decretată de Adunarea Constituantă în 1789
A Critical Examination of the Declaration of Rights

Summary/Abstract: „The Declaration of Rights assumes for its subject-matter a field of disquisition as unbounded in point of extent as it is important in its nature. But the more ample the extent given to any proposition or string of propositions, the more difficult it is to keep the import of it confined without deviation, within the bounds of truth and reason. In a work of such extreme importance with a view to practice, and which throughout keeps practice so closely and immediately and professedly in view, a single error may be attended with the most fatal consequences. The more extensive the propositions, the more consummate will be the knowledge, the more exquisite the skill, indispensably requisite to confine them in all points within the pale of truth. “People, behold your rights! If a single article of them be violated, insurrection is not your right only, but the most sacred of your duties.” Such is the constant language, for such is the professed object of this source and model of all laws—this self-consecrated oracle of all nations. In running over the several articles, I shall on the occasion of each article point out, in the first place, the errors it contains in theory; and then, in the second place, the mischiefs it is pregnant with in practice.”

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