[Sidenote: 7. The Constitution of 1791]
Amid all these sweeping reforms and changes, the National Constituent Assembly was making steady progress in drafting a written constitution which would clearly define the agencies of government, and their respective powers, the new limited monarchy. This constitution was completed in 1791 and signed by the king—he could do nothing else—and at once went into full effect. It was the first written constitution of any importance that any European country had had, and was preceded only slightly in point of time by that of the United States. [Footnote: The present American constitution was drafted in 1787 and went into effect in 1789, the year that the Estates-General assembled.]
The Constitution of 1791, as it was called, provided, like the American constitution, for the "separation of powers," that is, that the law- making, law-enforcing, and law-interpreting functions of government should be kept quite distinct as the legislative, executive, and judicial departments, and should each spring, in last analysis, from the will of the people. This idea had been elaborated by Montesquieu, and deeply affected the constitution-making of the eighteenth century both in France and in the United States.
[Sidenote: Legislative Provisions]
The legislative authority was vested in one chamber, styled the "Legislative Assembly," the members of which were chosen by means of a complicated system of indirect election. [Footnote: That is to say, the people would vote for electors, and the electors for the members of the Assembly.] The distrust with which the bourgeois framers of the constitution regarded the lower classes was shown not only in this check upon direct election but also in the requirements that the privilege of voting should be exercised exclusively by "active" citizens, that is, by citizens who paid taxes, and that the right to hold office should be restricted to property-holders.
[Sidenote: Weakness of the King under the Constitution]
Nominally the executive authority resided in the hereditary king. In this respect, most of the French reformers thought they were imitating the British government, but as a matter of fact they made the kingship not even ornamental. True, they accorded to the king the right to postpone for a time the execution of an act of the legislature—the so- called "suspensive veto"—but they deprived him of all control over local government, over the army and navy, and over the clergy. Even his ministers were not to sit in the Assembly. Tremendous had been the decline of royal power in France during those two years, 1789-1791.
[Sidenote: Summary of the Work of the National Assembly]
This may conclude our brief summary of the work of the National Constituent Assembly. If we review it as a whole, we are impressed by the immense destruction which it effected. No other body of legislators has ever demolished so much in the same brief period. The old form of government, the old territorial divisions, the old financial system, the old judicial and legal regulations, the old ecclesiastical arrangements, and, most significant of all, the old condition of holding land—serfdom and feudalism—all were shattered. Yet all this destruction was not a mad whim of the moment. It had been preparing slowly and painfully for many generations. It was foreshadowed by the mass of well-considered complaints in the cahiers. It was achieved not only by the decrees of the Assembly, but by the forceful expression of the popular will.