Download French Revolution

Question
The French Revolution marked a turning point in Europe in the Eighteenth
century. Using your knowledge of the time period and the documents provided,
describe how the French revolutionaries were influenced by the ideas of the
Enlightenment.
Document 1
The English constitution has, in fact, arrived at that point of excellence, in
consequence of which all men are restored to those natural rights, which, in
nearly all monarchies, they are deprived of. These rights are, entire liberty of
person and property; freedom of press; the right of being tried in all criminal
cases by a jury of independent men - the right of being tried only according to
the strict letter of the law; and the right of every man to profess, unmolested,
what religion he chooses, while he renounces offices, which the members of the
Anglican or established church alone can hold. These are denominated
privileges . . . .
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: The English Model
Document 2
. . . . public can only arrive at enlightenment slowly. Through revolution, the
abandonment of personal despotism maybe engendered and the end of profit seeking and domineering oppression may occur, but never a true reform of the
state of mind. Instead, new prejudices, just like the old ones, will serve as the
guiding reins of greater, unthinking mass . . . .
Immanuel Kant, What is the Enlightenment?
Document 3
. . . . Such revolutions happen not upon every little mismanagement in public
affairs. Great mistakes in the ruling part, many wrong and inconvenient laws, and
all the slips of human frailty, will be borne by the people without mutiny or
murmur. But if long train abuses, prevarications and artifices, all tending the,
same way, make the design visible to the people, and they cannot but feel what
they lie under, and see whither they are going; it is not to be wondered at, that
they should then rouse themselves, and endeavor to put the rule into such hands
which may secure to them the ends for which government was first erected . . . .
John Locke, Second Treatise on Government, 1690
Document 4
. . . . But the body politic, or sovereign power, which derives its existence from the
sacredness of the contract, can never bind itself, even towards others, in any thing that
would derogate from the original act; such as alienating any portion of itself, or
submitting to another sovereign: for by violating the contract its own existence would be
at once annihilated; and by nothing nothing can be performed. As soon as the multitude
is thus united in one body, you cannot offend one of its members without attacking the
whole; much less can you offend the whole without incurring the resentment of all
members. Thus duty and interest equally oblige the two contracting parties to lend their
mutual aid to each other; and the same men must endeavor to unite under this double
character all the advantages which attend it.
Rousseau, Of the Social Compact
Document 5
However, it is not answered because each wishes to answer it in his own way.
Subjects vaunt public tranquility; citizens, individual liberty; one prefers the safety
of property, and the other that of the person; one thinks that the best government
is the most severe, the other maintains that it is the most gentle; that one wishes
that crimes be punished, and that one that they be prevented; one finds it
delightful to be feared by his neighbors, another prefers to be unknown to them;
one is content when money circulates, another requires that the people have
bread. Even where an agreement reached upon these and similar points, would
and advance be made? Moral qualities lacking exact measurements- if an
agreement were reached as to the sign, how could it be reached as to the
estimate to be put upon them?
Rousseau, The Social Contract, 1762
Document 6
There never did, there never will, and there never can, exist a Parliament, or any
description of men, or any generation of men, in any country, possessed of the
right or the power of binding and controlling posterity to the "end of time," or of
commanding forever how the world shall be governed, or who shall govern it;
and therefore all such clauses, acts or declarations by which the makers of them
attempt to do what they have neither the right nor the power to do, nor the power
to execute, are in themselves null and void. Every age and generation must be
as free to act for itself in all cases as the age and generations which preceded it.
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man, 1791
Document 7
The dead man is ancient France, and that bier, the coffin of the ancient
monarchy. Therein let us bury, and forever, the dreams in which we once fondly
trusted; paternal royalty, the government of grace, the clemency of the monarch,
and the charity of the priest; filial confidence; implicit belief in the gods here
below. . . . . They have made justice a negative thing, which forbids, prohibits,
excludes-an obstacle to impede, and a knife to slaughter
Jules Michelet,The Influence of the Enlightenment in the French Revolution
Document 8
. . . . What is tolerance? . . . We are all full of weakness and errors; let us
mutually pardon our follies. This is the last law of nature. . . .
It is clear that every private individual who persecutes a man, his brother,
because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster. . . .
Voltaire, A Plea for Tolerance and Reason
Document 9
1. Men are born, and always continue, free, and equal in respect of their rights.
Civil distinctions, therefore, can be founded only on public utility.
2. The end of all political associations, is, the preservation of the natural and
imprescriptible rights of man; and these rights are liberty, property, security, and
resistance of oppression.
3. The nation is essentially the source of all sovereignty; nor can any
INDIVIDUAL or ANY BODY OR MEN, be entitled to authority which is not
expressly derived from it.
5. The law ought to prohibit only actions hurtful to society. What is to prohibited
by the law, should not be hindered; nor should any one be compelled to that
which the law does not require.
7. Now man should be accused, arrested, or held in confinement, except in
cases determined by the law, and according to the forms which it has prescribed.
10. No man ought to be molested on account of his opinions, not even on
account of his religious opinions
13. A common contribution being necessary for the support of the public force,
and for defraying the other expenses of government, it ought to be divided
equally among the members of the community, according to their abilities.
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of
Citizens