French Constitution of 1791

Begun in the summer of 1789, the National Assembly finally completed the Constitution of 1791. The short-lived French Constitution of 1791 was the very first written Constitution of France that would be representative of the nation. One of the basic aspects of the revolution was adopting constitutionality and establishing sovereignty, following the steps of the United States of America. The previously adopted Declaration of Rights was implemented as its Preamble.

The Constitution adopted the preferred idea among reformists at that time - the creation of a French constitutional monarchy. The main controversy was the level of power to be granted to the King of France in such a system. Gilbert du Montier proposed a combination of the American and British systems, introducing a bicameral parliament, with the King having the suspensive veto power in the legislature, modeled to the authorities of the US President. This proposal however, failed.

After very long negotiations, the long expected first Constitution was reluctantly accepted by King Louis XVI on September 1791. Unicameralism was adopted as per the proposal of Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, in order to disable the possibilities of the nobility's overpowering in the assembly. Gilbert's idea of the King's Veto also passed. Sovereignty, though, was clearly defined as belonging to the people: "1. Sovereignty is one, indivisible, inalienable, and imprescriptible. It appertains to the nation; no section of the people nor any individual may assume the exercise thereof."

Redefining the organization of the French government, citizenship and the limits to the powers of government, the National Assembly set out to represent the interests of the general will. It abolished many “institutions which were injurious to liberty and equality of rights”. The National Assembly asserted its legal presence in French government by establishing its permanence in the Constitution and forming a system for recurring elections. The Assembly truly believed in a sovereign nation and made every attempt to achieve equal representation. This can be seen with the separation of powers. {sop paragraph here} The Assembly was afraid that if France was run only by representatives, it was likely to be represented by people with self-interest again; therefore, the King was allowed a suspensive veto to balance out the interests of the people. In the same way, a representative “democracy” was set up to weaken the King’s executive authority.

The principle of Separation of powers was the basis for the Constitution: The National Assembly was the legislative body, the King and the Ministers made up the executive branch and the judicial branch was independent from the other two. On a local level, the previous feudal divisions were formally abolished, and the French state was divided into several administrative units, Departments (Départements), but with the principle of centralism.

The definition of an active and passive citizen was a large result of the constitution. To say that citizens have certain rights was a big accomplishment of the revolution. However, another problem that resulted from the revolution was discrimination against women’s rights to liberties such as education, freedom to speak, write, print and worship. Even though establishing a Constitution was a big accomplishment, it still confirmed many of the ongoing problems in Europe and even in the United States.

Keith M. Baker discusses in his essay “Constitution” the ambiguity there was in writing the Constitution. The National Assembly essentially had two options when drafting the Constitution: 1. they could fix the constitution or 2. they could start over and rewrite it completely. The National Assembly mainly wanted to reorganize social structure and legalize the National Assembly as a change from the 3 Estates General.

A Rousseauian solution to the Constitution problem would be to start a new one, forgetting the traditions of the Ancien Regime and creating a completely new social order. Allow the King to maintain the monarchy, but provide a unicameral legislative body to weaken his executive authority.

A conservative solution to writing the Constitution would be to keep the traditional ideas of the Ancien Regime but fix the problems. To conservatives, there is no need to change the monarchy or to get rid of the social order. However, after the revolution, it was obvious that the problems of the Ancien Regime were too big to simply fix.

With war beginning and with increasingly radical, and ultimately republican, forces coming to the fore in the Assembly, this proved entirely unworkable. The August 10th insurrection was the effective end of the monarchy. The constitution dissolved in a chaos of forces, with the radical and even occasionally terroristic Paris Commune, the municipal government of Paris, holding the balance of power in the country until the beginning of the National Convention on October 1, 1792.

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• </nowiki>history/constitutionof1791.html The Constitution of 1791

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