Early efforts Following the
Tennis Court Oath, the
National Assembly began the process of drafting a constitution as its primary objective. The
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, adopted on 26 August 1789 eventually became the
preamble of the constitution adopted on
3 September 1791. The Declaration offered sweeping generalizations about rights, liberty, and sovereignty. A twelve-member Constitutional Committee was convened on 14 July 1789 (coincidentally the day of the
Storming of the Bastille). Its task was to do much of the drafting of the articles of the constitution. It included originally two members from the
First Estate (Champion de Cicé,
Archbishop of Bordeaux and
Talleyrand,
Bishop of Autun); two from the
Second (the
comte de Clermont-Tonnerre and the
marquis de Lally-Tollendal); and four from the
Third (
Jean Joseph Mounier,
Abbé Sieyès,
Nicholas Bergasse, and
Isaac René Guy le Chapelier). Many proposals for redefining the French state were floated, particularly in the days after the remarkable sessions of
4–5 August 1789 and the abolition of feudalism. For instance, the
Marquis de Lafayette proposed a combination of the American and British systems, introducing a
bicameral parliament, with the king having the suspensive
veto power over the legislature, modeled to the authority then recently vested in the
President of the United States. The main controversies early on surrounded the issues of what level of power to be granted to the
king of France (i.e.:
veto, suspensive or absolute) and what form would the legislature take (i.e.:
unicameral or
bicameral). The Constitutional Committee proposed a bicameral legislature, but the motion was defeated on 10 September 1789 (849–89) in favor of a single house. The next day, they proposed an absolute veto but were again defeated (673–325) in favor of a suspensive veto, which could be overridden by three consecutive legislatures.
New Constitutional Committee A second Constitutional Committee quickly replaced it, and included Talleyrand, Abbé Sieyès, and Le Chapelier from the original group, as well as new members
Gui-Jean-Baptiste Target,
Jacques Guillaume Thouret,
Jean-Nicolas Démeunier,
François Denis Tronchet, and
Jean-Paul Rabaut Saint-Étienne, all of the
Third Estate. As
Simon Schama has pointed out, many of the members of the Constitutional Committee were themselves members of nobility, many of whom would later face execution. Their greatest controversy faced by this new committee surrounded the issue of
citizenship. Would every subject of the French Crown be given equal rights, as the Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen seemed to promise, or would there be some restrictions? The
October Days (5–6 October) intervened and rendered the question much more complicated. In the end, a distinction was held between active citizens (over the age of 25, paid direct taxes equal to three days' labor) which had political rights, and passive citizens, who had only civil rights. This conclusion was intolerable to such radical deputies as
Maximilien Robespierre, and thereafter they never could be reconciled to the Constitution of 1791.
Committee of Revisions A second body, the Committee of Revisions, was struck September 1790, and included
Antoine Barnave,
Adrien Duport, and
Charles de Lameth. Because the National Assembly was both a legislature and a constitutional convention, it was not always clear when its decrees were constitutional articles or mere statutes. It was the job of this committee to sort it out. The committee became very important in the days after the
Champs de Mars Massacre, when a wave of revulsion against popular movements swept France and resulted in a renewed effort to preserve powers for the Crown. The result is the
rise of the Feuillants, a new political faction led by Barnave, who used his position on the committee to preserve a number of powers for the Crown, such as the nomination of ambassadors, military leaders, and ministers. ==Results==