In the oldest constitutions of New Jersey, South Carolina, New York and Georgia special bills of rights are wanting, although they contain many provisions which belong in that category.[38] The French translation of the American Constitutions of 1778 includes a déclaration expositive des droits by Delaware that is lacking in Poore's collection.[39]
In the following section the separate articles of the French Declaration are placed in comparison with the corresponding articles from the American declarations. Among the latter, however, I have sought out only those that most nearly approach the form of expression in the French text. But it must be once more strongly emphasized that the fundamental ideas of the American declarations generally duplicate each other, so that the same stipulation reappears in different form in the greater number of the bills of rights.
We shall leave out the introduction with which the Constituent Assembly prefaced its declaration, and begin at once with the enumeration of the rights themselves. But even the introduction, in which the National Assembly "en présence et sous les auspices de l'Être supréme" solemnly proclaims the recognition and declaration of the rights of man and of citizens, and also sets forth the significance of the same, is inspired by the declaration of Congress and by those of many of the individual states with which the Americans sought to justify their separation from the mother country.
FOOTNOTES:
[33] Connecticut in 1818, and Rhode Island first in 1842, put new constitutions in the place of the old Colonial Charters.
[34] Poore, II, pp. 1908, 1909.
[35] On the origin of Virginia's bill of rights, cf. Bancroft, History of the United States, London, 1861, VII, chap. 64.
[36] Virginia's declaration has 16, that of Massachusetts 30, and Maryland's 42 articles. Virginia's declaration does not include the right of emigration, which was first enacted in Article XV of Pennsylvania's; the rights of assembling and petition are also lacking, which were first found in the Pennsylvania bill of rights (Article XVI).
[37] Vermont's statehood was contested until 1790, and it was first recognized February 18, 1791, as an independent member of the United States.
[38] Religious liberty is recognized by New York in an especially emphatic manner, Constitution of April 20, 1777, Art. XXXVIII. Poore, II, p. 1338.