Browse Items (1079 total)
The Revolutionary Tribunal’s Use of the Guillotine 1790
This description of the proceedings of the revolutionary tribunal, and of the physical setting of the Place de la Révolution where the guillotine stood, by an unsympathetic English observer gives the flavor of the workings of revolutionary justice.…
Condorcet, "On the Admission of Women to the Rights Of Citizenship" (1790) 1790
Condorcet took the question of political rights to its logical conclusions. He argued that if rights were indeed universal, as the doctrine of natural rights and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen both seemed to imply, then they must…
Rules of the Jacobins 1790
In contrast to Le Chapelier’s fears that all clubs, even the Jacobins, actually subverted the political process, the Jacobins saw themselves as ensuring the proper functioning of the constitution and allowing full participation by patriotic citizens…
Viefville des Essars, On the Emancipation of the Negroes (1790) 1790
This project to free the slaves in the French colonies was presented to the National Assembly. The defensive tone and rhetorical structure that emerge in the course of this document demonstrate the power of the interests opposed to even cautious…
Activities of the Jacobins January 7, 1790
The Englishman Arthur Young, who was in France during the early stages of the Revolution, recorded his observations. In this letter from mid–January 1790, he describes a Jacobin club meeting, which he depicts as being highly procedural in nature as…
A Female Writer’s Response to the American Champion or a Well–Known Colonist January 18, 1790
Better known for her defense of the rights of women, Olympe de Gouges defended the rights of the downtrodden in general. Here she points out the cruelty of slavery and expresses the hope that the slave trade will be abandoned.
"Petition of the Jews of Paris, Alsace and Lorraine to the National Assembly" (28 January 1790) January 28, 1790
When the Jews of Paris and the eastern provinces presented their case to the National Assembly, they leaned heavily on the precedent of granting full rights to the Protestants and on the language of human rights philosophy. They insisted that the…
An Attempt at Conciliation: The Royal Address of 4 February 1790 February 4, 1790
On 4 February 1790, the Marquis de Favras was executed for plotting to spirit the King out of France and stage a coup against the Constituent Assembly. The exposure of this plot generated such negative publicity for the crown that after the…
Society of the Friends of Blacks, "Address to the National Assembly in Favor of the Abolition of the Slave Trade" (5 February 1790) February 5, 1790
The Society of the Friends of Blacks rested their case for the abolition of the slave trade on the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen and the belief that political rights should be granted to religious minorities. Their denunciation of the…
Barnave, "Speech for the Colonial Committee of the National Assembly" (8 March 1790) March 8, 1790
Here Antoine–Pierre Barnave, a well–connected and influential lawyer from Grenoble, represented those interests that wanted to hold onto France’s rich colonial possessions. He wanted to treat the colonies separately from mainland France in order to…