Constitution of year I

The Constitution of year I is elaborate during the French revolution by the mountain and solemnly promulgated Convention the June 24th 1793. It was never applied.

Adoption

Approved by referendum in circumstances enough particular (there was around five million abstentionnists on a quota of approximately seven million voters, because of the publicity of the vote, namely that the secret character of the vote was not proposed), this very democratic Constitution - male vote for all - and decentralizing was not applied, because of the state of war interior and external.

The text

The declaration of 1793

The deputies wish to supplement the Déclaration of the human rights and the citizen of 1789 which had not been finished. Thus the individual rights of 1789 are confirmed, but one can note certain innovations:

Proclamation of economic rights and social (association, meeting, work, assistance & instruction),

Dedication of the theory of popular sovereignty to the detriment of national sovereignty (it is the people which are sovereign, not the Nation, which is broader -- subjacent concept of majority),

the insurrection becomes a right and a duty (i.e. it is possibly in fact a right) when the government violates the rights of the people,

Prohibition of legal slavery -- appropriation in fact of an excessive right confining to the privilege by a caste or sector of the public administration so of adventure the extent of the legislative texts exceeds the popular framework of the regulation approved by the People.

The mode of assembly

There does not exist allegedly balance of power (the original version of this text stipulated: " There does not exist balance of the pouvoirs" !). The Constitution of Year I devotes a mode of assembly where the capacity is concentrated between the hands of only one assembly. She single, and is elected for one year, by the universal direct suffrage. She exerts the legislative power, with the participation of the citizens by Référendum.

The executive power for the Parliament is entrusted to a council made up of twenty-four members who are indirectly elected by the people since in fact elected by the vote for all (indirect with respect to the whole of the people) within the Parliament thus designated. It does not have any capacity of action against the assembly (no veto, no law of dissolution, no initiative of the laws).

Without it acting for all that a " simple room of enregistrement" , the executive power of the council has as a role to organize the control of the actions of the Parliament by regulating her projection.

A constitution ever applied

The October 10th 1793, the Convention devoted apparently the establishment of a mode of Terreur, informant: “The provisional government of France will be revolutionist until peace”. It had been agreed that returned peace, the constitution would be come out from its arch of cedar (really very ignored) to be applied. And no one of did not doubt as much as Maximilien Robespierre was in fact the official body of the Committee of Public Hello. The war interior, external and especially the inversion of mountain convention on Thermidor 10 year II rang the knell of its application. In spite of its non-application, the Constitution of year I kept a great prestige near the political clouts of the French democratic left under the Directoire, the Empire and the Restauration.

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