58 10 1079 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document Sire, At a time when the different orders of the state are occupied with their interests; when everyone seeks to make the most of his titles and rights; when some anxiously recall the centuries of servitude and anarchy, while others make every effort to shake off the last links that still bind them to the imperious remains of feudalism; women—continual objects of the admiration and scorn of men—could they not also make their voices heard midst this general agitation? Excluded from the national assemblies by laws so well consolidated that they allow no hope of infringement, they do not ask, Sire, for your permission to send their deputies to the Estates-General; they know too well how much favor will play a part in the election, and how easy it would be for those elected to impede the freedom of voting. We prefer, Sire, to place our cause at your feet; not wishing to obtain anything except from your heart, it is to it that we address our complaints and confide our miseries. The women of the Third Estate are almost all born without wealth; their education is very neglected or very defective: it consists in their being sent to school with a teacher who himself does not know the first word of the language [Latin] he teaches. They continue to go there until they can read the service of the Mass in French and Vespers in Latin. Having fulfilled the first duties of religion, they are taught to work; having reached the age of fifteen or sixteen, they can earn five or six sous a day. If nature has refused them beauty they get married, without a dowry, to unfortunate artisans; lead aimless, difficult lives stuck in the provinces; and give birth to children they are incapable of raising. If, on the contrary, they are born pretty, without breeding, without principles, with no idea of morals, they become the prey of the first seducer, commit a first sin, come to Paris to bury their shame, end by losing it altogether, and die victims of dissolute ways. Today, when the difficulty of subsisting forces thousands of them to put themselves up for auction [prostitution], when men find it easier to buy them for a short time than to win them over forever, those whom a fortunate penchant inclines to virtue, who are consumed by the desire to learn, who feel themselves carried along by a natural taste, who have overcome the deficiencies of their education and know a little of everything without having learned anything, those, finally, whom a lofty soul, a noble heart, and a pride of sentiment cause to be called prudes, are obliged to throw themselves into cloisters where only a modest dowry is required, or forced to become servants if they do not have enough courage, enough heroism, to share the generous devotion of the girls of Vincent de Paul.* Also, many, solely because they are born girls, are disdained by their parents, who refuse to set them up, preferring to concentrate their fortune in the hands of a son whom they designate to carry on their name in the capital; for Your Majesty should know that we too have names to keep up. Or, if old age finds them spinsters, they spend it in tears and see themselves the object of the scorn of their nearest relatives. To prevent so many ills, Sire, we ask that men not be allowed, under any pretext, to exercise trades that are the prerogative of women—whether as seamstress, embroiderer, millinery shopkeeper, etc., etc.; if we are left at least with the needle and the spindle, we promise never to handle the compass or the square. We ask, Sire, that your benevolence provide us with the means of making the most of the talents with which nature will have endowed us, notwithstanding the impediments which are forever being placed on our education. May you assign us positions, which we alone will be able to fill, which we will occupy only after having passed a strict examination, following trustworthy inquiries concerning the purity of our morals. We ask to be enlightened, to have work, not in order to usurp men's authority, but in order to be better esteemed by them, so that we might have the means of living safe from misfortune and so that poverty does not force the weakest among us, who are blinded by luxury and swept along by example, to join the crowd of unfortunate women who overpopulate the streets and whose debauched audacity disgraces our sex and the men who keep them company. We would wish this class of women might wear a mark of identification. Today, when they adopt even the modesty of our dress, when they mingle everywhere in all kinds of clothing, we often find ourselves confused with them; some men make mistakes and make us blush because of their scorn. They should never be able to take off the identification under pain of working in public workshops for the benefit of the poor (it is known that work is the greatest punishment that can be inflicted on them). . . . . [in text] However, it occurs to us that the empire of fashion would be destroyed and one would run the risk of seeing many too many women dressed in the same color. We implore you, Sire, to set up free schools where we might learn our language on the basis of principles, religion and ethics. May one and the other be offered to us in all their grandeur, entirely stripped of the petty applications which attenuate their majesty; may our hearts be formed there; may we be taught above all to practice the virtues of our sex: gentleness, modesty, patience, charity. As for the arts that please, women learn them without teachers. Sciences? . . . [in text] they serve only to inspire us with a stupid pride, lead us to pedantry, go against the wishes of nature, make of us mixed beings who are rarely faithful wives and still more rarely good mothers of families. We ask to take leave of ignorance, to give our children a sound and reasonable education so as to make of them subjects worthy of serving you. We will teach them to cherish the beautiful name of Frenchmen; we will transmit to them the love we have for Your Majesty. For we are certainly willing to leave valor and genius to men, but we will always challenge them over the dangerous and precious gift of sensibility; we defy them to love you better than we do. They run to Versailles, most of them for their interests, while we, Sire, go to see you there, and when with difficulty and with pounding hearts, we can gaze for an instance upon your August Person, tears flow from our eyes. The idea of Majesty, of the Sovereign, vanishes, and we see in you only a tender Father, for whom we would give our lives a thousand times. * St. Vincent de Paul organized communities for women who served as schoolteachers, nurses, and the like. They took simple vows, did not wear religious costumes, and worked outside in the community rather than staying in their convent. These communities often appealed to poor women but demanded hard work. Sortable Date 1789-01-01 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The materials listed below appeared originally in The French Revolution and Human Rights: A Brief Documentary History, translated, edited, and with an introduction by Lynn Hunt (Boston/New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1996), 60–63. Description An account of the resource Little is known about women’s grievances or feelings in the months leading up to the meeting of the Estates–General in November 1789. They did not have the right to meet as a group, draft grievances, or vote (except in isolated individual instances) in the preparatory elections. Nevertheless, some women did put their thoughts to paper, and though little evidence exists about the circumstances or the identities of those involved, the few documents offering their views bear witness to their concerns in this time of ferment. In this document working women addressed the King in respectful terms and carefully insisted that they did not wish to overturn men’s authority; they simply wanted the education and enlightenment that would make them better workers, better wives, and better mothers. The petitioners expressed their deep apprehensions about prostitution and the fear that they would be confused with them; like prostitutes, working women did not stay at home but necessarily entered the public sphere to make their livings. Most of all, however, the women wanted to be heard; they saw the opening created by the convocation of the Estates–General and hoped to make their own claims for inclusion in the promised reforms. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 279 Title A name given to the resource Petition of Women of the Third Estate to the King (1 January 1789) Relation A related resource https://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/279/ Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource January 1, 1789 Monarchy Popular Politics Public Opinion Text Women Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document Liberty is the property of one's self. Three kinds of it are distinguished. Natural liberty, civil liberty, and political liberty: that is to say, the liberty of the individual, the liberty of the citizen, and the liberty of a nation. Natural liberty is the right granted by nature to every man to dispose of himself at pleasure. Civil liberty is the right which is insured by society to every citizen, of doing every thing which is not contrary to the laws. Political liberty is the state of a people who have not alienated their sovereignty, and who either make their own law, or who constitute a part in the system of their legislation. The first of these liberties is, after reason, the distinguishing characteristic of man. Brutes are chained up, and kept in subjection, because they have no notion of what is just or unjust, no idea of grandeur or meanness. But in man, liberty is the principle of his vices or his virtues. None but a free man can say, I will, or I will not; and consequently none but a free man can be worthy of praise, or be liable to censure. Without liberty, or the property of one's own body, and the enjoyment of one's mind, no man can be either a husband, a father, a relation, or a friend; he hath neither country, a fellow citizen, nor a God. The slave, impelled by the wicked man, and who is the instrument of his wickedness, is inferior even to the dog, let loose by the Spaniard upon the American; for conscience, which the dog has not, still remains with the man. He who basely abdicates his liberty, gives himself up to remorse, and to the greatest misery which can be experienced by a thinking and sensible being. If there be not any power under the heavens, which can change my nature and reduce me to the state of brutes, there is none which can dispose of my liberty. God is my father, and not my master; I am his child, and not his slave. How is it possible that I should grant to political power, what I refuse to divine omnipotence? Will these eternal and immutable truths, the foundation of all morality, the basis of all rational government, be contested? They will, and the audacious argument will be dictated by barbarous and sordid avarice. Behold that proprietor of a vessel, who leaning upon his desk, and with the pen in his hand, regulates the number of enormities he may cause to be committed on the Coasts of Guinea; who considers at leisure, what number of firelocks [guns] he shall want to obtain one Negro, what fetters will be necessary to keep him chained on board his ship, what whips will be required to make him work; who calculates with coolness, every drop of blood which the slave must necessarily expend in labor for him, and how much it will produce; who considers whether a Negro woman will be of more advantage to him by her feeble labours, or by going through the dangers of child-birth. You shudder!—If there existed any religion which tolerated, or which gave only a tacit sanction to such kind of horrors; if, absorbed in some idle or seditious questions, it did not incessantly exclaim against the authors or the instruments of this tyranny; if it should consider it as a crime in a slave to break his chains; if it should suffer to remain in it's [sic] community, the iniquitous judge who condemns the fugitive to death: if such a religion, I say, existed, ought not the minister of it to be suffocated under the ruins of their altars? . . . But, it is alleged, that in all regions, and in all ages, slavery hath been more or less established. I grant it; but what doth it signify to me, what other people in other ages have done? Are we to appeal to the customs of antient [sic] times, or to our conscience? Are we to listen to the suggestions of interest, of infatuation, and of barbarism, rather than to those of reason and of justice? If the universality of a practice were admitted as a proof of it's [sic] innocence, we should then have a complete apology for usurpations, conquests, and for every species of oppression. [The author then refutes other reasons given in support of slavery.] . . . But it is urged, that in Europe, as well as in America, the people are slaves. The only advantage we have over the Negroes is, that we can break one chain to put on another. It is but too true; most nations are enslaved. The multitude is generally sacrificed to the passions of a few privileged oppressors. There is scarce a region know'n, where a man can flatter himself that he is master of his person, that he can dispose, at pleasure, of his inheritance; and that he can quietly enjoy the fruits of his industry. Even in those countries that are least under the yoke of servitude, the citizen deprived of the produce of his labor, by the wants incessantly renewed of a rapacious or needy government, is continually restrained in the most lawful means of acquiring felicity. Liberty is stifled in all parts, by extravagant superstitions, by barbarous customs, and by obsolete laws. It will one day certainly rise again from it's [sic] ashes. In proportion as morality and policy shall be improved, man will recover his rights. But wherefore, while we are waiting for these fortunate times, and these enlightened ages of prosperity wherefore must there be an unfortunate race, to whom even the comfortable and honorable name of freeman is denied, and who, notwithstanding the instability of events, must be deprived of the hope even of obtaining it? Whatever, therefore, may be said, the condition of these unfortunate people is very different from our's [sic]. . . . I have already said too much for the honest and feeling man. I shall never be able to say enough for the inhuman trader. Let us, therefore, hasten to substitute the light of reason and the sentiments of nature to the blind ferociousness of our ancestors. Let us break the bonds of so many victims to our mercenary principles, should we even be obliged to discard a commerce which is founded only on injustice, and the object of which is luxury. . . . [The author then proposes that those currently living as slaves should continue in that status; only their children would be freed after the age of 20.] . . . While we are restoring these unhappy beings to liberty, we must be careful to subject them to our laws and manners, and to offer them our superfluities. We must give them a country, give them interests to study, productions to cultivate, and articles of consumption agreeable to their respective tastes, and our colonies will never want hands, which being eased of their chains, will become more active and robust. . . . [The author calls on the monarchs of Europe to abolish the slave trade, but he concludes with a warning of impending slave revolt.] Let the ineffectual calls of humanity be no longer pleaded with the people and their masters: perhaps, they have never been attended to in any public transactions. If then, ye nations of Europe, interest alone can exert it's [sic] influence over you, listen to me once more. Your slaves stand in no need either of your generosity or your counsels, in order to break the sacrilegious yoke of their oppression. Nature speaks a more powerful language than philosophy, or interests. Already have two colonies of fugitive Negroes been established, to whom treaties and power give a perfect security from your attempts.* These are so many indications of the impending storm, and the Negroes only want a chief, sufficiently courageous, to lead them on to vengeance and slaughter. Where is this great man, whom nature owes to her afflicted, oppressed, and tormented children? Where is he? He will undoubtedly appear, he will shew himself, he will lift up the sacred standard of liberty. This venerable signal will collect around him the companions of his misfortunes. They will rush on with more impetuosity than torrents; they will leave behind them, in all parts, indelible traces of their just resentment. Spaniards, Portugueze [sic], English, French, Dutch, all their tyrants will become the victims of fire and sword. The plains of America will suck up with transport the blood which they have so long expected, and the bones of so many wretches, heaped upon one another, during the course of so many centuries, will bound for joy. The Old World will join it's [sic] plaudits to those of the New. In all parts the name of the hero, who shall have restored the rights of the human species will be blest; in all parts trophies will be erected to his glory. Then will the black code [each country had its own code of laws regarding slaves or blacks] be no more; and the white code will be a dreadful one, if the conqueror only regards the right of reprisals. Till this revolution shall take place, the Negroes groan under the oppression of labor, the description of which cannot but interest us more and more in their destiny. *The author has in mind the fugitive slaves in Jamaica and Dutch Surinam, but almost every colony in the Americas with slaves had its runaway slave societies. The largest ones could be found in the Caribbean and in the interior of the western South American coast. Sortable Date 1770-00-00 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The materials listed below appeared originally in The French Revolution and Human Rights: A Brief Documentary History, translated, edited, and with an introduction by Lynn Hunt (Boston/New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1996), 51–55. Description An account of the resource Abbé Guillaume–Thomas Raynal (1711–96), known by his clerical title [abbé refers to ecclesiastical training], first published his multivolume history of European colonization anonymously in French in 1770. Today many sections of it seem almost quaint and hopelessly detailed, for Raynal and his collaborators (among them Diderot) gathered every imaginable fact to support their scathing indictment of European rapaciousness. As the English man of letters and diarist Horace Walpole commented, "It tells one everything in the world," from the story of the tea and coffee trades to naval battles and to the history of Greek and Roman slavery. In its time, the book startled and shocked, and its indignant denunciation of colonization set off a firestorm of controversy. The French crown immediately prohibited its sale on the grounds that it contained "propositions that are impudent, dangerous, rash, and contrary to good morals and the principles of religion." The government ordered Raynal into exile, and an assembly of the French clergy condemned him as "one of the most seditious writers among modern unbelievers." Thanks to its notoriety, the book soon became a best–seller. In all, twenty approved editions and fifty pirated ones appeared by the time of Raynal’s death in 1796. The work gained as much fame in the New World as in the Old; American colonists read it as a defense of the rights of man, and the book was soon translated into English. Slaveowners must have shuddered, however, when they read the passages below for Raynal not only condemns the slave trade and the practice of slavery but also predicts a future uprising of the slaves against their masters. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 278 Title A name given to the resource Antislavery Agitation: Abbé Raynal, Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies (1770) Relation A related resource https://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/278/ Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1770 Enlightenment Text The US and Great Britain in Revolution Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document The means of making the Jews happy and useful? Here it is: stop making them unhappy and unuseful. Accord them, or rather return to them the right of citizens, which you have denied them against all divine and human laws and against your own interests, like a man who thoughtlessly cripples himself. . . . To be sure, during times of barbarism, there was no shortage of ways of oppressing the Jews. Yet we are hard pressed even in an enlightened century, not to repair all the evils that have been done to them and to compensate them for their unjustly confiscated goods [hardly to be hoped for], but simply to cease being unjust toward them and to leave them peacefully to enjoy the rights of humanity under the protection of general laws. . . . The simplest means would be therefore to accord them throughout the kingdom the same liberty that they enjoy in [Bordeaux and Bayonne]; nevertheless, however simple this means appears, it is still susceptible to greater perfection, in order to render the Jews not only happier and more useful but even more honest in the following manner. 1. They must be accorded permission to acquire land, which will attach them to the fatherland, where they will no longer regard themselves as foreigners and will increase at the same time the value of the land. 2. They must be permitted to practice all of the liberal and mechanical arts and agriculture, which will diminish the number of merchants among them and in consequence the number of knaves and rogues. . . . 4. To make their merchants more honest, they must be accorded the freedom to exercise every sort of commerce, to keep their stores open, to carry any product, and to live among the other citizens. Then being more closely allied with the other citizens, more at their ease and with their conduct more exposed to the inspection of the police, having moreover to manage their credit, their reputation, and especially their regular customers, they will have in consequence less inclination, less necessity, and less facility in cheating and buying stolen goods. 5. To better diminish this facility in cheating, they must be forbidden, on pain of annulment of the transaction, the use of Hebrew and German [Yiddish] language and characters in their account books and commercial contracts, whether between themselves or with Christians. 6. It is necessary therefore to open the public schools to their children, to teach them French, which will produce a double advantage: it will make it easier to instruct them and to make them familiar from earliest infancy with Christians. They will establish with the Christians bonds of friendship which will be fortified by living near to each other, by the use of the same language and customs, and especially by the recognition of the freedom that they will be accorded; they will learn from these bonds that the Christians worship a Supreme Being like themselves, and as a result the fraud that the Talmud authorizes in dealings with pagans will no longer be permitted. 7. To better facilitate these bonds, their rabbis and leaders must be severely forbidden from claiming the least authority over their co-religionists outside of the synagogue, from prohibiting entry and honors to those who cut their beards, who curl their hair, who dress like Christians, who go to the theater, or who fail to observe some other custom that is irrelevant to their religion and only introduced by superstition in order to distinguish the Jews from other peoples. . . . We could add that the freedom of the Jews is the best means of converting them to Christianity; for, once putting an end to their captivity, you will render useless the temporal Messiah that they expect, and then they will be obliged to recognize Jesus-Christ as a spiritual Messiah in order not to contradict the Prophets, who predicted the arrival of some kind of Messiah. . . . Are so many verbiages and citations necessary to prove that a Jew is a man, and that it is unjust to punish him from his birth onward for real or supposed vices that one reproaches in other men with whom he has nothing in common but religious belief? And what would the French say if the Academy of Stockholm had proposed, twelve years ago, the following question: "Are there means for making Catholics more useful and happier in Sweden?" Sortable Date 1789-00-00 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The materials listed below appeared originally in The French Revolution and Human Rights: A Brief Documentary History, translated, edited, and with an introduction by Lynn Hunt (Boston/New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1996), 48–50. Description An account of the resource In 1789, 40,000 Jews lived in France, most of them in the eastern provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. In some respects, they were better treated than Calvinists under the laws of the monarchy; Jews could legally practice their religion, though their other activities were severely restricted. They had no civil or political rights, except the right to be judged by their own separate courts, and they faced pervasive local prejudice. The major Jewish communities—in the city of Bordeaux in the southwest and the regions of Alsace and Lorraine in the east—essentially constituted separate "nations" within the French nation (and nations separate from each other since their status differed in many ways). In 1787 and 1788 the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences of the city of Metz in eastern France set up an essay competition on the question, "Are there means for making the Jews happier and more useful in France?" Its 2,000 Jews gave Metz the single largest Jewish population in the east. Among the three winners declared in 1788 was Zalkind–Hourwitz (1738–1812), a Polish Jew. His pamphlet rapidly earned him a reputation in reformist circles, even though by today’s standard its language seems moderate, if not excessively apologetic. The excerpt here represents what might be called the "assimilationist" position, that is, that granting rights to the Jews would make them more like the rest of the French. At times, the author’s own arguments sound anti–Semitic to our ears because in his concern to counter all the usual stereotypes about the Jews, he repeats many of them and gives them a kind of credit. As a follower of the Enlightenment, Zalkind–Hourwitz disliked the extensive powers exercised by Jewish leaders over their communities, and he even held out the possibility of encouraging conversion to Christianity. The inclusion of such a suggestion and the defensive tone of the recommendations for improvement highlight the many difficulties and prejudices faced by the Jews. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 277 Title A name given to the resource Zalkind–Hourwitz, Vindication of the Jews (1789) Relation A related resource https://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/277/ Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1789 Enlightenment Text Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document When Louis XIV solemnly prohibited in all of the lands and territories under his authority the public exercise of any religion other than the Catholic religion, the hope of bringing around his people to the desirable unity of the same worship, supported by the deceptive appearances of conversions, kept this great king from following the plan that he had formed in his councils for legally registering the births, deaths, and marriages of those of his subjects who could not be admitted to the sacraments of the church. Following the example of our august predecessors, we will always favor with all our power the means of instruction and persuasion that will tend to link all our subjects by the common profession of our kingdom's ancient faith [Catholicism], and we will proscribe, with the most severe attention, all those violent routes [of forced conversion] which are as contrary to the principles of reason and humanity as they are to the true spirit of Christianity. But, while waiting for divine Providence to bless our efforts and effect this happy revolution [the conversion of all non-Catholics], justice and the interest of our kingdom do not permit us to exclude any longer from the rights of civil status those of our subjects or resident foreigners in our empire who do not profess the Catholic religion. A rather long experience has shown that harsh ordeals are insufficient to convert them: we should therefore no longer suffer that our laws punish them unnecessarily for the misfortune of their birth by depriving them of the rights that nature constantly claims for them. We have considered that the Protestants, thus deprived of all legal existence, were faced with an impossible choice between profaning the sacraments by simulated conversions or compromising the status of their children by contracting marriages that were inherently null and void according to the legislation of our kingdom. The regulations have even assumed that there were only Catholics in our states; and this fiction, today inadmissible, has served as a motive for the silence of the law which would not have been able to legally recognize followers of another belief in France without either banishing them from the lands of our authority or providing right away for their civil status. Principles so contrary to the prosperity and tranquility of our kingdom would have multiplied the emigrations and would have excited continual troubles within families, if we had not provisionally profited from the jurisprudence of our courts to thrust aside greedy relatives who contested the children's rights to the inheritance of their fathers [relying on the laws against Calvinists]. Such a situation has for a long time demanded our intervention to put an end to these dangerous contradictions between the rights of nature and the dispositions of the law. We wanted to proceed in this matter under consideration with all the maturity required by the importance of the decision. Our resolution had already been fixed in our councils, and we proposed to meditate for some time still about the legal form it should take; but the circumstances appeared to us propitious for multiplying the advantages that we hoped to gain from our new law, and we have determined to hasten the moment of publishing it. It may not be in our power to put a stop to the different sects in our states, but we will never suffer them to be a source of discord between our subjects. We have taken the most efficacious measures to prevent the formation of harmful organizations. The Catholic religion that we have the good fortune to profess will alone enjoy in our kingdom the rights and honors of public worship, while our other, non-Catholic subjects, deprived of all influence on the established order in our state, declared in advance and forever ineligible for forming a separate body within our kingdom, and subject to the ordinary police [and not their own clergy] for the observation of religious festival days, will only get from the law what natural right does not permit us to refuse them, to register their births, their marriages and their deaths, in order to enjoy, like all our other subjects, the civil effects that result from this. Article 1. The Catholic, Apostolic and Roman religion will continue to enjoy alone, in our kingdom, the right to public worship, and the birth, marriage, and death of those of our subjects who profess it will only be registered, in all cases, according to the rites and practices of the said religion as authorized by our regulations. We will permit nonetheless to those of our subjects who profess another religion than the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion, whether they are currently resident in our state or establish themselves there afterwards, to enjoy all the goods and rights that currently can or will in the future belong to them as a property title or title of successorship, and to pursue their commerce, arts, crafts, and professions without being troubled or disturbed on the pretext of their religion. We except nevertheless from these professions all the offices of the judiciary, controlled either by the crown or the seigneurs [nobles controlling local judicial offices], municipalities having regular offices and judicial functions, and all those places that include public teaching. Article 2. As a consequence those of our subjects or foreigners resident in our kingdom who are not of the Catholic religion will be able to contract marriages in the form hereafter prescribed; we wish these marriages and their children, in the case of those who contracted them according to the said form, to have the same effects in civil society as those contracted and celebrated in the ordinary way by our Catholic subjects. Article 3. We do not intend nevertheless that those who will profess a religion other than the Catholic religion be able to consider themselves as forming in our kingdom any particular body, community or association, nor that they be able under such a designation to formulate any collective demands, make any representations, take any deliberations, make any acquisitions, or take any other such acts. We very expressly prohibit any judge, registrar, notary, lawyer, or other public official to respond, receive, or sign such demands, representations, deliberations, or other acts on pain of suspension; and we forbid any of our subjects to claim themselves authorized by the said alleged communities or associations on pain of being considered instigators and protectors of illegal assemblies and associations and as such punishable according to the rigor of the regulations. Article 4. Nor will those who consider themselves ministers or pastors of another religion than the Catholic religion be able to represent themselves as such in any act, wear in public any clothing different from that of others of the same religion, or appropriate for themselves any prerogative or distinction; we forbid them in particular from interfering in the issuance of certificates of marriage, birth or death, and we declare any such certificates to be from this moment null and void, without our judges or any others giving them consideration in any case whatsoever. [Thirty-three other articles followed, most of them concerned with regulating the celebration of non-Catholic marriages.] Sortable Date 1787-11-00 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The materials listed below appeared originally in The French Revolution and Human Rights: A Brief Documentary History, translated, edited, and with an introduction by Lynn Hunt (Boston/New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1996), 40–43. Description An account of the resource Calvinists had a long and tumultuous history in France. They first gained the right to worship according to their creed in 1598 when King Henry IV issued the Edict of Nantes to end the wars of religion between Catholics and Calvinists. Louis XIV revoked that edict in 1685 and initiated a massive campaign to forcibly convert all of the Calvinists in France. For more than a century, public worship by Calvinists remained illegal, though many worshiped in private and some became leading merchants or businessmen in their local communities. Finally in 1787, Louis XVI’s government proposed a new edict of toleration (the decision became official in January 1788). It granted Calvinists civil rights, including the right to practice their religion, but no political rights. Although the reference to non–Catholics might seem to promise a broader toleration including other groups as well, the edict applied only to Calvinists, for Jewish and Lutheran communities were not covered here. The preamble to the edict, with its evasive and tormented logic, shows the many pressures felt by the government as it tried to navigate between the demands of a powerful Catholic Church and a long–oppressed minority that had the support of many influential writers and jurists. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 276 Title A name given to the resource Edict of Toleration, November 1787 Relation A related resource https://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/276/ Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1787 Enlightenment Monarchy Text Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document Since no man has any natural authority over his fellow men, and since force is not the source of right, conventions remain as the basis of all lawful authority among men. Now, as men cannot create any new forces, but only combine and direct those that exist, they have no other means of self-preservation than to form by aggregation a sum of forces which may overcome the resistance, to put them in action by a single motive power, and to make them work in concert. This sum of forces can be produced only by the combination of many; but the strength and freedom of each man being the chief instruments of his preservation, how can he pledge them without injuring himself, and without neglecting the cares which he owes to himself? This difficulty, applied to my subject, may be expressed in these terms. "To find a form of association which may defend and protect with the whole force of the community the person and property of every associate, and by means of which each, coalescing with all, may nevertheless obey only himself, and remain as free as before." Such is the fundamental problem of which the social contract furnishes the solution. If then we set aside what is not of the essence of the social contract, we shall find that it is reducible to the following terms: "Each of us puts in common his person and his whole power under the supreme direction of the general will, and in return we receive every member as an indivisible part of the whole." But the body politic or sovereign, deriving its existence only from the contract, can never bind itself, even to others, in anything that derogates from the original act, such as alienation of some portion of itself, or submission to another sovereign. To violate the act by which it exists would be to annihilate itself, and what is nothing produces nothing. It follows from what precedes, that the general will is always right and always tends to the public advantage; but it does not follow that the resolutions of the people have always the same rectitude. Men always desire their own good, but do not always discern it; the people are never corrupted, though often deceived, and it is only then that they seem to will what is evil. The public force, then, requires a suitable agent to concentrate it and put it in action according to the directions of the general will, to serve as a means of communication between the state and the sovereign, to effect in some manner in the public person what the union of soul and body effects in a man. This is, in the state, the function of government, improperly confounded with sovereign of which it is only the minister. What, then, is the government? An intermediate body established between the subjects and the sovereign for their mutual correspondence, charged with the execution of the laws and with the maintenance of liberty both civil and political. It is not sufficient that the assembled people should have once fixed the constitution of the state by giving their sanction to a body of laws; it is not sufficient that they should have established a perpetual government, or that they should have once [and] for all provided for the election of magistrates. Besides the extraordinary assemblies which unforeseen events may require, it is necessary that there should be fixed and periodical ones which nothing can abolish or prorogue; so that, on the appointed day, the people are rightfully convoked by the law, without needing for that purpose any formal summons. So soon as the people are lawfully assembled as a sovereign body, the whole jurisdiction of the government ceases, the executive power is suspended, and the person of the meanest citizen is as sacred and inviolable as that of the first magistrate, because where the represented are, there is no longer any representative. These assemblies, which have as their object the maintenance of the social treaty, ought always to be opened with two propositions, which no one should be able to suppress, and which should pass separately by vote. The first: "Whether it pleases the sovereign to maintain the present form of government." The second: "Whether it pleases the people to leave the administration to those at present entrusted with it." I presuppose here what I believe I have proved, viz., that there is in the State no fundamental law which cannot be revoked, not even this social compact; for if all the citizens assembled in order to break the compact by a solemn agreement, no one can doubt that it could be quite legitimately broken. Sortable Date 1762-00-00 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Merrick Whitcomb, ed., Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources of European History, vol. 6 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania History Department, 1899), 14–16. Description An account of the resource Jean–Jacques Rousseau was the maverick of the Enlightenment. Born a Protestant in Geneva in 1712 (d. 1778), he had to support himself as a music copyist. Unlike Voltaire and Montesquieu, both of whom came from rich families, Rousseau faced poverty nearly all his life. He wrote on an astounding variety of topics, including a best–selling novel (Julie or the New Heloïse, 1761), a major tract on education (Émile, 1762), and the work selected here, The Social Contract (1762). Rousseau believed that life in society was essentially corrupting, but that men (it is not clear whether women figured in the social contract) could achieve true morality by joining in the social contract and living under laws that they themselves made. Rousseau’s concept of the "general will" can be, and has been, interpreted as simultaneously providing the origins of democracy and of totalitarianism. This ambiguity emerges in the fact that the general will requires no support from history, tradition, or custom (such as monarchy), but it also "is always right"; that is, there are no checks on its power. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 275 Title A name given to the resource Rousseau’s The Social Contract Relation A related resource https://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/275/ Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1762 Enlightenment Laws Middle Classes – Bourgeoisie Monarchy Popular Politics Text Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document It is natural for a republic to have only a small territory; otherwise it cannot long subsist. In an extensive republic there are men of large fortunes, and consequently of less moderation; there are trusts too considerable to be placed in any single subject; he has interests of his own; he soon begins to think that he may be happy and glorious by oppressing his fellow-citizens; and that he may raise himself to grandeur on the ruins of his country. In an extensive republic the public good is sacrificed to a thousand private views; it is subordinate to exceptions, and depends on accidents. In a small one the interest of the public is more obvious, better understood, and more within the reach of every citizen; abuses have less extent, and, of course, are less protected. A monarchical state ought to be of moderate extent. Were it small, it would form itself into a republic; were it very large, the nobility, possessed of great estates, far from the eye of the prince, with a private court of their own, and secure, moreover, from sudden executions by the laws and manners of the country—such a nobility, I say, might throw off their allegiance, having nothing to fear from too slow and too distant a government. A large empire supposes a despotic authority in the person who governs. It is necessary that the quickness of the prince's resolutions should supply the distance of the places they are sent to; that fear should prevent the remissness of the distant governor or magistrate; that the law should be derived from a single person, and should shift continually, according to the accidents which necessarily multiply in a state in proportion to its extent. A NEW PHYSICAL CAUSE OF THE SLAVERY OF ASIA, AND OF THE LIBERTY OF EUROPE In Asia they have always had great Empires; in Europe these could never subsist. Asia has larger plains; it is cut out into much more extensive divisions by mountains and seas; and as it lies more to the south, its springs are more easily dried up; the mountains are less covered with snow; and the rivers being not so large, form more contracted barriers. Power in Asia ought then to be always despotic; for if their slavery was not severe they would soon make a division inconsistent with the nature of the country. In Europe the natural division forms many nations of a moderate extent, in which the ruling by laws is not incompatible with the maintenance of the state; on the contrary, it is so favorable to it, that without this the state would fall into decay, and become a prey to its neighbors. It is this which has formed a genius for liberty that renders every part extremely difficult to be subdued and subjected to a foreign power, otherwise than by the laws and the advantage of commerce. On the contrary, there reigns in Asia a servile spirit, which they have never been able to shake off, and it is impossible to find in all the histories of that country a single passage that discovers a freedom of spirit; we shall never see anything there but the excess of slavery. Sortable Date 1748-00-00 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Merrick Whitcomb, ed., Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources of European History, vol. 6 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania History Department, 1899), 3–6. Description An account of the resource In The Spirit of the Laws published in 1748, Montesquieu took a less playful tone. Rather than lampooning French customs as he did in The Persian Letters, he offered a wide–ranging comparative analysis of governmental institutions. He argued that the type of government varied depending on circumstances. This idea might not seem very radical today, but in the eighteenth century it implied that the governments of the time need not be permanent. Like Locke, Montesquieu argued that government was not modeled on the authority of fathers in their families. Instead, the best government was the one that best accorded with the nature of the people in question. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 274 Title A name given to the resource Montesquieu, "The Spirit of the Laws" Relation A related resource https://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/274/ Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1748 Enlightenment Laws Middle Classes – Bourgeoisie Monarchy Nobility Text Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document We go to China seeking clay as though we had none of our own; cloth, as though we lacked cloth; a small herb to steep in water, as though we didn't have medicinal plants in our own parts. In repayment, we should like to convert the Chinese; that's very praiseworthy zeal, but we should not question their antiquity, nor tell them they are idolaters. Really, would people like it if a capuchin friar, having been well received in a château of the Montmorencys, tried to persuade them that they were recent nobility, like the secretaries of the King, and accused them of being idolaters because he had found in the château two or three statues of High Constables, for whom they have profound respect? The celebrated Wolff, professor of mathematics at the university of Halle, one day delivered a fine oration in praise of Chinese philosophy; he praised that ancient species of men who differ from us in their beard, their eyes, their nose, their ears, and their arguments; he praised, I say, the Chinese for worshiping a supreme God and loving virtue; he did the emperors of China, the Kalao, tribunals, the men of letters, full justice. The justice he did the bonzes was of a different kind. Wolff, I must tell you, attracted to Halle a thousand students from every nation. There was in the same university a professor of theology named Lange, who attracted nobody; in despair at freezing to death alone in his lecture hall, he quite reasonably decided to ruin the professor of mathematics; following the custom of his kind, he promptly accused him of not believing in God. Some European writers who had never been to China had claimed that the government of Peking was atheistic; Wolff had praised the philosophers of Peking, hence Wolff was an atheist. Envy and hatred never constructed a better syllogism. This argument of Lange's, supported by a cabal and a protector, was considered conclusive by the king of the land, who presented the mathematician with this formal dilemma: leave Halle in twenty-four hours or be hanged. And, excellent reasoner that he was, Wolff promptly left; his departure deprived the King of two or three hundred thousand écus per year which the philosopher had brought to the kingdom through the affluence of his disciples. This example ought to impress sovereigns that they shouldn't always listen to calumny and sacrifice a great man to the insanity of a fool. But let's return to China. Why do we presume, on this side of the world, to argue bitterly, amid torrents of insults, over whether there were or were not fourteen princes before Fo-hi, emperor of China, and whether this Fo-hi lived three thousand or two thousand nine hundred years before our common era? I'd like to see two Irishmen take it into their heads to quarrel in Dublin over who, in the twelfth century, was the owner of the lands I occupy today: isn't it obvious that they must refer to me, who has the archives in his hands? In my opinion, the same thing is true of the first emperors of China: we must refer to the tribunals of the country. Argue as much as you like about the fourteen princes who ruled before Fo-hi, your fine argument will only end by proving that China was very populous at that time, and lived under the rule of law. Now I ask you whether a united nation, with laws and princes, does not suggest prodigious antiquity. Think how much time is needed before an extraordinary conjunction of circumstances leads to the discovery of iron in mines, before it is used in agriculture, before the shuttle and all the other skills are invented. Those who make children with a stroke of the pen have thought up a very odd calculation. Through a pretty computation, the Jesuit Pétau calculates that two hundred and eighty-five years after the deluge, the world had a hundred times as many inhabitants as we dare estimate it has today. The Cumberlands and the Whistons have made equally comical calculations; these gentlemen need only have consulted the registers of our colonies in America; they would have been greatly astonished: they would have learned how slowly mankind multiplies, and that it often diminishes instead of increasing. Let us then, men merely of yesterday, descendants of the Celts who have barely cleared the forests of our savage lands—let us leave the Chinese and Indians to enjoy their lovely climate and their antiquity in peace. Above all let us stop calling the emperor of China and the soubab of Decan idolaters. We should not be fanatical about the merits of the Chinese: the constitution of their empire is in fact the best in the world, the only one founded entirely on paternal power (which doesn't prevent the mandarins from caning their children); the only one in which the governor of a province is punished when he fails to win the acclamation of the people upon leaving office; the only one that has instituted prizes for virtue, while everywhere else the laws are restricted to punishing crime; the only one that has made its conquerors adopt its laws, while we are still subject to the customs of the Burgundians, the Franks, and the Goths, who subjugated us. But I must admit that the common people, governed by bonzes, are as rascally as ours; that they sell everything to foreigners very expensively, just as we do; that in the sciences the Chinese are still at the point we were at two hundred years ago; that they have a thousand ridiculous prejudices, as we do; that they believe in talismans and in judicial astrology, as we used to believe for a long time. Let me admit also that they were amazed at our thermometer, at our manner of freezing liquids with saltpeter, and at all the experiments of Torricelli and Otto von Guericke, just as we were when we saw these scientific amusements for the first time; let me add that their doctors cure mortal illnesses no better than ours do, and that nature cures minor ailments by herself in China, as it does here. Still, four thousand years ago, when we couldn't even read, the Chinese knew all the absolutely useful things we boast about today. Once again, the religion of the men of letters of China is admirable. No superstitions, no absurd legends, none of those dogmas which insult reason and nature and to which the bonzes give a thousand different meanings, because they don't have any. The simplest cult has seemed to them the best for more than forty centuries. They are what we think Seth, Enoch, and Noah were; they are content to worship a God with all the sages of the world, while in Europe we are divided between Thomas and Bonaventure, between Calvin and Luther, between Jansenius and Molina. "Dogmas" On the 18th of February of the year 1763 of the common era, with the sun entering the sign of Pisces, I was conveyed to heaven, as all my friends know. Borac, Mahomet's mare, was not my mount; Elijah's fiery chariot was not my car; I was carried neither on the elephant of Sammonocodom the Siamese, nor on the horse of St. George, patron saint of England, nor on St. Anthony's pig: I confess without guile that I took my trip I don't know how. You can imagine how dazzled I was; but what you won't believe is that I saw the judging of all the dead. And who were the judges? They were, if you please, all those who had done well by mankind. Confucius, Solon, Socrates, Titus, the Antoinines, Epictetus, all the great men who, having taught and practiced the virtues God demands, alone seemed to have the right to pronounce his judgments. I won't say what thrones they were sitting on, nor how many million celestial beings were prostrated before the creator of all globes, nor what a crowd of inhabitants from these innumerable globes appeared before the judges. Here I shall only give an account of a few small, quite interesting details that struck me. I observed that every dead man who pleaded his case and paraded his fine sentiments was instantly surrounded by all the witnesses of his true actions. For example, when the cardinal of Lorraine boasted that he had got the Council of Trent to adopt some of his views, and demanded eternal life as a reward for his orthodoxy, immediately courtesans (or ladies of the court) appeared, each bearing on her forehead the number of her rendezvous with the cardinal. I saw those who had laid the foundations of the League with him; all the accomplices of his perverse plans surrounded him. Opposite the cardinal of Lorraine was C . . . , who boasted in his crude dialect that he had kicked the papal idol with his feet after others had thrown it down. "I wrote against painting and sculpture," he said; "I made it clear that good works count for nothing at all, and I proved that it is diabolical to dance the minuet: drive the cardinal of Lorraine away quickly, and put me at the side of St. Paul." As he was speaking, I saw a burning stake near him; a frightful specter, wearing a half-burned Spanish frill around his neck, rose from the flames with dreadful cries. "Monster," he shouted, "execrable monster, tremble! recognize S . . . , whom you put to death by the cruelest of tortures, because he had argued with you about the manner in which three persons can make a single substance." Then all the judges ordered the cardinal of Lorraine thrown into the abyss, but C . . . , to be punished even more severely. I saw an immense crowd of dead who said: "I believed, I believed"; but on their foreheads it was written, "I acted" and they were condemned. The Jesuit Le Tellier proudly appeared, the bull Unigenitus in his hand. But at his side a pile of two thousand lettres de cachet suddenly heaped itself up. A Jansenist set fire to them: Le Tellier was burned to a cinder; and the Jansenist, who had plotted no less than the Jesuit, received his share of the burning too. I saw troops of fakirs arriving right and left, Buddhist priests, white, black, and gray monks, who all imagined that in order to pay their court to the Supreme Being, they must either chant or scourge themselves, or walk stark naked. I heard a terrible voice ask them: "What good did you do mankind?" This question was succeeded by a gloomy silence; no one dared to answer; presently they were all led off to the madhouse of the universe: that's one of the biggest buildings you can imagine. One shouted: "We must believe in the metamorphoses of Xaca"; another: "In those of Sammonocodom."—"Bacchus stopped the sun and the moon," said that one. "Here is the bull In Coena Domini," said a newcomer; and the judges' usher shouted: "To the madhouse, to the madhouse!" When all these cases were completed, I heard this judgment promulgated: "By order of the eternal Creator, Conserver, Rewarder, Avenger, Forgiver, etc., etc., be it known to all the inhabitants of the hundred thousand millions of billions of worlds it has pleased us to create, that we will never judge any of the said inhabitants on their chimerical ideas, but solely on their actions; for such is our justice." I confess that this was the first time I heard such an edict: all the ones I have read on the little grain of sand where I was born end with these words: For such is our pleasure. "Fanaticism" Fanaticism is to superstition what delirium is to fever and rage to anger. The man visited by ecstasies and visions, who takes dreams for realities and his fancies for prophecies, is an enthusiast; the man who supports his madness with murder is a fanatic. Jean Diaz, in retreat at Nuremberg, was firmly convinced that the pope was the Antichrist of the Apocalypse, and that he bore the sign of the beast; he was merely an enthusiast; his brother, Bartholomew Diaz, who came from Rome to assassinate his brother out of piety, and who did in fact kill him for the love of God, was one of the most abominable fanatics ever raised up by superstition. Polyeucte, who goes to the temple on a solemn holiday to knock over and smash the statues and ornaments, is a less dreadful but no less ridiculous fanatic than Diaz. The assassins of the duke François de Guise, of William, prince of Orange, of King Henri III, of King Henri IV, and of so many others, were fanatics sick with the same mania as Diaz. The most detestable example of fanaticism was that of the burghers of Paris who on St. Bartholomew's Night went about assassinating and butchering all their fellow citizens who did not go to mass, throwing them out of windows, cutting them in pieces. There are cold-blooded fanatics: such as judges who condemn to death those who have committed no other crime than failing to think like them; and these judges are all the more guilty, all the more deserving of the execration of mankind, since, unlike Clément, Châtel, Ravaillac, Damiens, they were not suffering from an attack of insanity; surely they should have been able to listen to reason. Once fanaticism has corrupted a mind, the malady is almost incurable. I have seen convulsionaries who, speaking of the miracles of St. Pâris, gradually grew impassioned despite themselves: their eyes got inflamed, their limbs trembled, madness disfigured their faces, and they would have killed anyone who contradicted them. The only remedy for this epidemic malady is the philosophical spirit which, spread gradually, at last tames men's habits and prevents the disease from starting; for, once the disease has made any progress, one must flee and wait for the air to clear itself. Laws and religion are not strong enough against the spiritual pest; religion, far from being healthy food for infected brains, turns to poison in them. These miserable men have forever in their minds the example of Ehud, who assassinated king Eglon; of Judith, who cut off Holofernes' head while she was sleeping with him; of Samuel, who chopped king Agag in pieces. They cannot see that these examples which were respectable in antiquity are abominable in the present; they borrow their frenzies from the very religion that condemns them. Even the law is impotent against these attacks of rage; it is like reading a court decree to a raving maniac. These fellows are certain that the holy spirit with which they are filled is above the law, that their enthusiasm is the only law they must obey. What can we say to a man who tells you that he would rather obey God than men, and that therefore he is sure to go to heaven for butchering you? Ordinarily fanatics are guided by rascals, who put the dagger into their hands; these latter resemble that Old Man of the Mountain who is supposed to have made imbeciles taste the joys of paradise and who promised them an eternity of the pleasures of which he had given them a foretaste, on condition that they assassinated all those he would name to them. There is only one religion in the world that has never been sullied by fanaticism, that of the Chinese men of letters. The schools of philosophers were not only free from this pest, they were its remedy; for the effect of philosophy is to make the soul tranquil, and fanaticism is incompatible with tranquility. If our holy religion has so often been corrupted by this infernal delirium, it is the madness of men which is at fault. "Toleration" What is toleration? It is the endowment of humanity. We are all steeped in weaknesses and errors; let us forgive each other our follies; that is the first law of nature. In the stock exchanges of Amsterdam, London, Surat, or Basra, the Gheber, the Banian, the Jew, the Mahometan, the Chinese Deist, the Brahmin, the Greek Christian, the Roman Christian, the Protestant Christian, the Quaker Christian, trade with one another: they don't raise their dagger against each other to gain souls for their religion. Why then have we butchered one another almost without interruption since the first Council of Nicaea? Constantine began by issuing an edict which tolerated all religions; but he ended up by persecuting. Before him, people denounced the Christians only because they had started to build a party in the state. The Romans permitted all cults, even that of the Jews, even that of the Egyptians, although they had so much contempt for both. Why did Rome tolerate these cults? Because neither the Egyptians nor even the Jews tried to exterminate the ancient religion of the empire; they didn't cross land and sea to make proselytes, but thought only of making money. It is undeniable, however, that the Christians wanted their religion to be the dominant one. The Jews didn't want the statue of Jupiter in Jerusalem; but the Christians didn't want it in the capitol. St. Thomas was candid enough to confess that if the Christians hadn't dethroned the emperors, it was because they couldn't. It was their view that the whole world should be Christian. They were therefore necessarily the enemies of the whole world, until it was converted. Among themselves, they battled each other over every controversial point. First of all, was it necessary to regard Jesus Christ as God? Those who denied it were anathematized under the name of Ebionites, who in turn anathematized the worshipers of Jesus. When some of them wanted all goods to be held in common, as they supposedly were in the age of the apostles, their adversaries called them Nicolaites and accused them of the most infamous crimes. When others laid claim to mystical devotion, they were called Gnostics, and people attacked them furiously. When Marcion disputed over the Trinity, he was called an idolater. Tertullian, Praxcas, Origen, Novatus, Novatian, Sabellius, Donatus, were all persecuted by their brethren before Constantine; and hardly had Constantine made the Christian religion prevail than the Athanasians and the Eusebians tore each other to pieces; and from that time on down to our day the Christian Church has been inundated in blood. I admit the Jewish people was a pretty barbarous people. It butchered without pity all the inhabitants of an unfortunate little country to which it had no more right than it had to Paris and London. Still, when Naaman was cured of his leprosy by plunging seven times into the Jordan; when, to show his gratitude to Elisha, who had taught him this secret, he told him that he would worship the God of the Jews out of gratitude, he reserved to himself the liberty to worship the God of his king at the same time; he asked Elisha's permission to do so, and the prophet didn't hesitate to give it to him. The Jews worshiped their God; but they were never astonished that each nation should have its own. They thought it right that Chemosh gave a certain district to the Moabites, provided their God gave them one too. Jacob didn't hesitate to marry the daughters of an idolater. Laban had his God as Jacob had his. These are examples of toleration among the most intolerant and cruel nation of all antiquity: we have imitated it in its irrational frenzies and not in its leniency. It is clear that every individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of his opinion, is a monster. There is no problem about that. But the government, the magistrates, the princes, how shall they deal with those who have a religion different from theirs? If they are powerful foreigners, it is certain that a prince will make an alliance with them. Francis I, Most Christian, allies himself with the Muslims against Charles the Fifth, Most Catholic. Francis I gives money to the Lutherans of Germany to support their rebellion against the emperor; but he begins by having the Lutherans in his own country burned, as is the practice. He pays them in Saxony for political reasons; he burns them in Paris for political reasons. But what will happen? The persecutions make proselytes; soon France is full of new Protestants. At first they allow themselves to be hanged, and afterward they do some hanging in their own turn. There are civil wars, then comes Saint Bartholomew, and this corner of the world is worse than anything the ancients and the moderns ever said about Hell. Maniacs, who have never been able to offer pure worship to the God who made you! Wretches, who could never learn from the example of the Noachides, the Chinese literati, the Parsis, and all the sages! Monsters, who need superstitions as the gizzard of a raven needs carrion! We have already told you, and there is nothing more to say: if there are two religions in your country, they will cut one another's throats; if there are thirty of them, they will live in peace. Look at the Grand Turk: he governs Ghebers, Banians, and Greek, Nestorian, Roman Christians. The first man who stirs up a tumult is impaled, and all is peaceful. "Toleration"—Second Section Of all religions, the Christian should of course inspire the most toleration, but till now the Christians have been the most intolerant of all men. Because Jesus stooped to be born in poverty and humble estate, like his brothers, he never deigned to practice the art of writing. The Jews had a law written in the greatest detail, but we don't have a single line from the hand of Jesus. The apostles disagreed on a number of points. St. Peter and St. Barnabas ate forbidden meat with foreigners recently turned Christian and then abstained with Jewish Christians. St. Paul reproached them for this conduct, and this very St. Paul—Pharisee, disciple of the Pharisee Gamaliel, the very St. Paul who had persecuted the Christians with fury, and who turned Christian himself after he broke with Gamaliel—nevertheless went afterward to sacrifice in the temple of Jerusalem, in the temple of his apostolate. For a week he publicly observed all the ceremonies of the Judaic law, which he had renounced; he even performed supererogatory devotions and purifications; he Judaized completely. For a week the greatest apostle of the Christians did the very things for which men are condemned to the stake in most Christian nations. Theodas and Judas had called themselves Messiahs before Jesus. Dositheus, Simon, Menander, called themselves Messiahs after Jesus. From the first century of the Church onward, and even before the name of Christian was known, there was a score of sects in Judea. The contemplative Gnostics, the Dositheans, the Corinthians, existed before the disciples of Jesus took the name of Christians. Soon there were thirty gospels, each of which belonged to a different society; and from the end of the first century we can count thirty sects of Christians in Asia Minor, Syria, Alexandria, and even Rome. All these sects, despised by the Roman government and concealed in their obscurity, nevertheless persecuted each other in the tunnels in which they crept; that is, they insulted each other, for that was all they were able to do in their abjectness—they were almost wholly made up of the scum of the people. When at last some Christians adopted the doctrines of Plato and mixed a little philosophy with their religion, they separated from the Jewish cult and gradually won some eminence. But they remained divided into sects; there was never a time when the Christian Church was United. It was born amid the divisions of the Jews—Samaritans, Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Judaites, disciples of John, Therapeutes. It was divided in its cradle; it was even divided during the occasional persecutions it endured under the first emperors. Often the martyr was regarded as an apostate by his brethren, and the Carpocratian Christian expired under the sword of the Roman executioner, excommunicated by the Ebionite Christian, which Ebionite had been anathematized by the Sabellian. The terrible dissension which has endured for so many centuries is a striking lesson teaching us mutually to forgive our errors; dissension is the great evil of mankind, and toleration is its only remedy. There is nobody who doesn't agree with this truth, whether he meditates calmly in his study or amicably examines the truth with his friends. Why then do the very men who embrace kindness, beneficence, and justice in private denounce these virtues in public with so much fury? Why? Because their self-interest is their god, because they sacrifice everything to the monster they worship. I possess a dignity and power founded on ignorance and credulity; I tread on the heads of men prostrate at my feet: if they stand up and look me in the face, I am lost; therefore I must keep them bound to the ground with chains of iron. Thus argue the men whom centuries of fanaticism have made powerful. They have other powerful men below them, and these have still others, who all enrich themselves at the expense of the poor, fatten on their blood, and laugh at their foolishness. They all detest toleration, as political hackers who have enriched themselves at the public's expense are afraid to give an accounting and as tyrants dread the word freedom. Then, to top it all off, they hire fanatics to shout in a great voice: "Respect the absurdities of my master, tremble, pay, and shut up." This is how people have acted for a long time in a large part of the world; but today, when so many sects balance each other in power, how shall we choose among them? Every sect, as we know, is a certificate of error; there are no sects of geometers, algebraists, and arithmeticians because all the propositions of geometry, algebra, and arithmetic are true. In all other sciences men may make mistakes. What Thomist or Scotist theologian would dare to say seriously that he is sure of his facts? If there is one sect that recalls the times of the first Christians, it is surely the Quakers. None resembles the apostles more closely. The apostles received the spirit, and the Quakers receive the spirit. The apostles and disciples spoke three or four at a time in the assembly on the third floor; the Quakers do the same on the ground floor. According to St. Paul women were allowed to preach, and according to the same St. Paul they were forbidden to; female Quakers preach by virtue of the first permission. The apostles and disciples swore by Yes and No, the Quakers swear no differently. No rank, no difference in attire among the disciples and the apostles; the Quakers have sleeves without buttons, and all dress in the same manner. Jesus Christ did not baptize any of his apostles; the Quakers are not baptized. It would be easy to push the parallel further; it would be even easier to see how the Christian religion of today differs from the religion that Jesus practiced. Jesus was a Jew, and we are not Jews. Jesus abstained from pork because it was impure, and from rabbit because it ruminated and did not have a cloven foot; we boldly eat pork because for us it is not impure, and rabbit which has a cloven foot and doesn't ruminate. Jesus was circumcised, and we retain our foreskin. Jesus ate the paschal lamb with lettuce, he celebrated the feast of the tabernacles, and we do neither. He observed the sabbath, and we have changed it; he sacrificed, and we do not sacrifice. Jesus always concealed the mystery of his incarnation and his rank; he did not say that he was equal to God; St. Paul says expressly in his Epistle to the Hebrews that God created Jesus lower than the angels; and despite ill the words of St. Paul, Jesus was acknowledged to be God at the Council of Nicaea. Jesus gave the pope neither the borderland of Ancona, nor the duchy of Spoleto; and yet the pope has them by divine right. Jesus did not make a sacrament of marriage or of holy orders; and with us, holy orders and marriage are sacraments. If we wish to study the matter closely: the Catholic, apostolic, and Roman religion is in all its ceremonies and dogmas the opposite of the religion of Jesus. But really! Must we all Judaize because Jesus Judaized all his life? If we were allowed to argue consistently in religious matters, it is clear that we should all turn Jews, because Jesus Christ our Saviour was born a Jew, lived as a Jew, and died as a Jew, and because he said expressly that he came to realize, to fulfill, the Jewish religion. But it is even clearer that we should all mutually tolerate each other, because we are all weak, inconsistent, a prey to change and error. Should a reed bowed into the mud by the wind say to the neighboring reed, bowed in the opposite direction: "Creep in my fashion, wretch, or I'll send in a request to have you uprooted and burned"? Sortable Date 1764-00-00 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary, trans. and ed. Peter Gay, 2 vols. (New York: Basic Books, 1962), I, 166–70, 241–43, 267–69, 482–89. Description An account of the resource Voltaire was the pen name of François–Marie Arouet (1694–1778), an Enlightenment writer known for his plays and histories and his acerbic criticism of the French Catholic Church. This set of selections is from his Philosophical Dictionary of 1764. They demonstrate his range of reading, including travel literature about China, but the main target remains religious bigotry and fanaticism, Voltaire’s chief targets throughout his life. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 273 Title A name given to the resource Voltaire, Selections from the Philosophical Dictionary Relation A related resource https://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/273/ Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1764 Enlightenment Middle Classes – Bourgeoisie Monarchy Nobility Text Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document This is the country of sects. An Englishman, as a free man, goes to Heaven by whatever road he pleases. Yet, though everyone here may serve God in his own fashion, their genuine Religion, the one in which people make their fortune, is the sect of Episcopalians, called the Church of England, or preeminently The Church. No one can hold office in England or in Ireland unless he is a faithful Anglican. This argument, in itself, a convincing proof, has converted so many nonconformists that today not a twentieth of the population lives outside the lap of the established Church. The Anglican clergy has retained many of the Catholic ceremonies, particularly that of gathering in tithes with the most scrupulous attention. They also have the pious ambition of being the Masters. Moreover, they work up in their flocks as much hold zeal against nonconformists as possible. This zeal was lively enough under the government of the Tories in the last years of Queen Anne, but it went no further than sometimes breaking the windows of heretical chapels; for the fury of the sects was over, in England, with the civil wars, and under Queen Anne nothing was left but the restless noises of a sea still heaving a long time after the storm. When Whigs and Tories were rending their native land as Guelphs and Ghibellines once had done, it was of course necessary that religion should become a party issue. The Tories were for episcopacy, the Whigs wanted to abolish it—but when they were on top they were content to humble it. In the days when Harley, Earl of Oxford, and Lord Bolingbroke were having people drink the health of the Tories, the Church of England looked upon them as the defenders of its holy privileges. The lower house of convocation, which is a sort of house of commons made up of clergymen, had then some importance; at least they enjoyed the liberty of meeting, or arguing controversial points, and of now and then burning a few impious books—that is, books written against them. The ministry, which is a Whig one nowadays, does not even allow these gentlemen to hold their convocation; they are reduced, in the obscurity of their parishes, to the sad occupation of praying for a government they would not be sorry to distress. As for the bishops, who are twenty-six in all, they sit in the House of Lords in spite of the Whigs, for the old abuse of considering them the equivalent of barons still subsists; but they have no more power in the House than the ducal peers in the Parlement of Paris. There is a clause in the oath that one must take to the state that sorely tries the Christian patience of these gentlemen: this is one's promise to be of the Church as it was established by law. There is hardly a bishop, a dean, an archdeacon, who does not think he holds his position by divine right; it is therefore highly mortifying to them to have to acknowledge that they owe everything to a miserable law made by profane laymen. A monk (Father Courayer) recently wrote a book to confirm the validity and the succession of ordinations in the Church of England. This work was condemned in France, but do you think it pleased the English ministry? Not in the least. It's of very little concern to these cursed Whigs whether the succession of bishops has been interrupted in their country or not, and whether Bishop Parker was consecrated in a tavern (as it is rumored) or in church. They prefer that bishops derive their authority from Parliament rather than from the Apostles. Lord B. says that this concept of divine right can only make tyrants in miters but that citizens are made by the law. With regard to morals, the Anglican clergy are better ordered than those of France, and this is the reason: all clergymen are brought up in Oxford University, or in Cambridge far from the corruption of the capital. They are not called to high station in the Church until very late, and at an age when men have no other passion but avarice, if their ambition goes unfed. Positions of rank are here the reward of long service in the Church just as in the army; one does not see young fellows made bishops or colonels on leaving school. Besides, the priests are almost all married; the awkwardness they pick up in the university, and the fact that, socially, Englishmen have little to do with women, result in a bishop's ordinarily being forced to content himself with his own wife. Clergymen go to the tavern sometimes, for custom allows it; if they get drunk they do so in a serious-minded way and with perfect propriety. That indefinable being which is neither ecclesiastical nor secular—in a word, that which is called an Abbé is a species unknown in England. Clergymen here are all reserved, by temperament, and almost all pedantic. When they learn that in France young men, who are known for their debauchery and who have been raised to the prelacy by the plots of women, make love in public, divert themselves with the composing of sentimental songs, entertain daily with long and exquisite supper parties, and go from there to beseech the light of the Holy Spirit, and boldly to call themselves the successors of the Apostles—then the English thank God they are Protestants. But they are nasty heretics, fit to be burned to Hell and back, as Master François Rabelais says. That's why I keep out of it. These gentlemen, who also have some churches in England, have made grave airs and severe expressions all the fashion in this country. To them is owing the sanctification of Sunday in the three kingdoms. On that day it is forbidden to work and play, which is double the severity of the Catholic churches. No opera, no plays, no concerts in London on Sunday; even cards are so expressly forbidden that only the aristocracy, and those we call well-bred people, play on that day. The rest of the nation go to church, to the tavern, and to the brothel. Although the Episcopalian and the Presbyterian are the two main sects in Great Britain, all others are welcome there and live pretty comfortably together, though most of their preachers detest one another almost as cordially as a Jansenist damns a Jesuit. Go into the Exchange in London, that place more venerable than many a court, and you will see representatives of all the nations assembled there for the profit of mankind. There the Jew, the Mahometan, and the Christian deal with one another as if they were of the same religion and reserve the name of infidel for those who go bankrupt. There the Presbyterian trusts the Anabaptist, and the Church of England man accepts the promise of the Quaker. On leaving these peaceable and free assemblies, some go to the synagogue, others in search of a drink; this man is on the way to be baptized in a great tub in the name of the Father, by the Son, to the Holy Ghost; that man is having the foreskin of his son cut off, and a Hebraic formula mumbled over the child that he himself can make nothing of; these others are going to their church to await the inspiration of God with their hats on; and all are satisfied. If there were only one religion in England, there would be danger of tyranny; if there were two, they would cut each other's throats; but there are thirty, and they live happily together in peace. Sortable Date 1733-00-00 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Dilworth, Ernest, PHILOSOPHICAL LETTERS: Voltaire, copyright 1961. Electronically reproduced by permission of Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, 22–26. Description An account of the resource Voltaire was the pen name of François–Marie Arouet (1694–1778), an Enlightenment writer known for his plays and histories and his acerbic criticism of the French Catholic Church. Although Voltaire eventually became a kind of cultural icon celebrated even by kings and ministers, he often faced harassment and persecution for his views in his early days. In Letters on England of 1733, Voltaire holds up English toleration of dissident Protestant sects as a model for the French (even though the English did not extend the same toleration to Catholics) that was republished in his Philosophical Dictionary of 1764. Despite his more positive inclinations, Voltaire’s hostility to religion inclined him to critical digs as well. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 272 Title A name given to the resource Voltaire, "On the Church of England" Relation A related resource https://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/272/ Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1733 Enlightenment Middle Classes – Bourgeoisie Monarchy Religion Text The US and Great Britain in Revolution Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document The king of France is an old man. We have no instance in our history of a monarch that has reigned so long. They say he possesses to an extraordinary degree the talent of making himself obeyed. He governs with the same ability his family, his court, his state. He has often been heard to say that of all the governments of the world, that of the Turks or that of our own August sultan pleased him most, so greatly he affected the oriental style of politics. I have made a study of his character, and I find contradictions which I am unable to reconcile: for example, he has a minister who is only eighteen years old, and a mistress who is eighty; he is devoted to religion, and he cannot endure those who say it must be rigorously observed; although he flees the tumult of the city and has intercourse with few, yet he is occupied from morning until night in making himself talked about; he loves trophies and victories, but he is afraid of seeing a good general at the head of his troops, lest he should have cause to fear the chief of a hostile army. He is the only one, I believe, to whom it has ever happened that he was at the same time overwhelmed with more riches than a prince might hope to possess and burdened with a poverty that a private person would be unable to bear. He loves to gratify those that serve him; but he rewards the efforts, or rather the indolence, of his courtiers more liberally than the arduous campaigns of his captains. Often he prefers a man whose duty it is to disrobe him or hand him his napkin when he seats himself at dinner, to another who takes cities or wins him battles. He believes that the sovereign grandeur ought not to be limited in the distribution of favors; and without investigating as to whether the one upon whom he heaps benefits is a man of merit, he believes that his choice renders him such; so that he has been seen to give a small pension to a man who had run two leagues, and a fine government to another who had run four. He is magnificent, especially in his buildings. There are more statues in the gardens of his palace than there are citizens in a great city. His guard is as strong as that of the prince before whom all thrones are overturned; his armies are as numerous, his resources are as great, and his finances as inexhaustible. Paris, the 7th of the moon of Moharram, 1713. Sortable Date 1721-00-00 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Merrick Whitcomb, ed., Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources of European History, vol. 6, French Philosophers of the Eighteenth Century (University of Pennsylvania, 1899), 2–3. Description An account of the resource Charles–Louis de Sécondat, Baron de la Brède et de Montesquieu (1689–1755), was born into a family of noble judges near Bordeaux. He published The Persian Letters anonymously because he feared that his criticisms of the recently deceased Louis XIV might get him into trouble with government officials. The novel made him an overnight sensation. He sold his position as a judge and devoted himself to travel and writing. In The Persian Letters, he uses a fictional correspondence between two Persians to reflect on the meaning of government and social customs. He paid great attention to the treatment of women and the place of wives in society. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 271 Title A name given to the resource Montesquieu’s The Persian Letters (1721) Relation A related resource https://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/271/ Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1721 Enlightenment Monarchy Nobility Provinces Text Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document A Declaration of Rights made by the representatives of the good people of Virginia, assembled in full and free Convention; which rights do pertain to them, and their posterity, as the basis and foundation of government. I. That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety. II. That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from the people; that Magistrates are their trustees and servants, and at all times amenable to them. III. That government is or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation, or community; of all the various modes and forms of government, that is best, which is capable of producing the greatest degree of happiness and safety, and is most effectually secured against the danger of mal-administration; and that when any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community hath an indubitable, unalienable, and indefeasible right, to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal. IV. That no man, or set of men, are entitled to exclusive or separate emoluments or privileges from the community, but in consideration of public services; which not being descendible, neither ought the offices of Magistrate, Legislator, or Judge to be hereditary. V. That the Legislative and Executive powers of the State should be separate and distinct from the Judiciary; and that the members of the two first may be restrained from oppression, by feeling and participating the burthens of the people, they should, at fixed periods, be reduced to a private station, return into that body from which they were originally taken, and the vacancies by supplied by frequent, certain, and regular elections, in which all, or any part of the former members, to be again eligible, or ineligible, as the laws shall direct. VI. That elections of members to serve as representatives of the people, in Assembly, ought to be free; and that all men having sufficient evidence of permanent common interest with and attachment to, the community, have the right of suffrage, and cannot be taxed or deprived of their property for public uses without their own consent, or that of their representatives so elected, nor bound by any law to which they have not, in like manner, assented for the public good. VII. That all power of suspending laws, or the execution of laws, by any authority without consent of the representatives of the people, is injurious to their rights and ought not to be exercised. VIII. That in all capital or criminal prosecutions a man hath a right to demand the cause and nature of his accusation, to be confronted with the accusers and witnesses, to call for evidence in his favor, and to a speedy trial by an impartial jury of his vicinage, without whose unanimous consent he cannot be found guilty, nor can he be compelled to give evidence against himself; that no man be deprived of his liberty except by the law of the land, or the judgment of his peers. IX. That excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. X. That general warrants, whereby an officer or messenger may be commanded to search suspected places without evidence of a fact committed, or to seize any person or persons not names, or whose offence is not particularly described and supported by evidence, are grievous and oppressive, and ought not to be granted. XI. That in controversies respecting property, and in suits between man and man, the ancient trial by jury is preferable to any other and ought to be held sacred. XII. That the freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments. XIII. That a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defence of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided, as dangerous to liberty; and in all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power. XIV. That the people have a right to uniform government; and therefore, that no government separate from, or independent of, the government of Virginia, ought to be erected or established within the limits thereof. XV. That no free government, or the blessing of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles. XVI. That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence, and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practise Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other. Sortable Date 1776-00-00 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Kate Mason Rowland, The Life of George Mason, 1725–1792, vol. 1 (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1892), 438–41. Description An account of the resource The Declaration of Rights drafted in 1776 by George Mason for the state constitution of Virginia influenced both Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. It clearly states that rights are "the basis and foundation of government." The Virginia Declaration of Rights also influenced the drafting of the Bill of Rights added to the U.S. Constitution as the first ten amendments. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 270 Title A name given to the resource Virginia’s Declaration of Rights (1776) Relation A related resource https://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/270/ Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1776 Enlightenment Laws Middle Classes – Bourgeoisie Popular Politics Public Opinion Text The US and Great Britain in Revolution