THE FRENCH REVOLUTION: LIBERTY, EQUALITY, AND FRATERNITY
The French Revolution was basically to end political injustice from within, while the American Revolution focused on obtaining freedom from the original mother country, England, across the ocean. While it might seem logical to some that the American Declaration of Independence could serve as a positive model for the French, ôThe American experience showed that it was rational and possible to create a society of citizens whose rights were protected by their own laws, but only French radicals believed the American model could work in Franceö (Reilly 2000 174).
Nevertheless, the French National Assembly set forth a declaration which contained the key elements to liberty, equality, and fraternity. Equality was anchored in the statement that ôMen are born and remain free and equal in rights; social distinctions may be based only on general usefulnessö (Reilly 175). This is a somewhat presumptuous and yet daring approach by a people who had been governed for centuries by a line of kings, some benevolent, but most determined to maintain the gulf between the royals and the commoners. Like the American Declaration, the French proposed that man has ônatural and inalienable rightsà.these rights are liberty, property, security and resistance to oppressionö (175). It is interesting to note that the idea of ôpropertyö appears in the French declaration, something that most of the French ôcommon peopleö desired, since most of them seemed to be agricultural workers- farmers who worked on land owned by dukes, princes, and other royals or noble families. The time had come for liberty from landowner oppression, it seems.
The notion of ôlibertyö is really the need for respect for one another- a means of everyone being able to have ôthe enjoyment of those same rightsàö (175). Liberty, however, does not mean the right to do what one pleases. It means a government...