he Declaration of Independence
there are asserted only the principles of the sovereignty of the people
and the right to change the form of government. Other rights are
included solely by implication from the enumeration of the violations of
right, which justified the separation from the mother country.

The constitutions of the separate states, however, were preceded by
declarations of rights, which were binding upon the people's
representatives. _The first state to set forth a declaration of rights
properly so called was Virginia._[26]

The declarations of Virginia and of the other individual American states
were the sources of Lafayette's proposition. They influenced not only
Lafayette, but all who sought to bring about a declaration of rights.
Even the above-mentioned _cahiers_ were affected by them.

The new constitutions of the separate American states were well known at
that time in France. As early as 1778 a French translation of them,
dedicated to Franklin, had appeared in Switzerland.[27] Another was
published in 1783 at Benjamin Franklin's own instigation.[28] Their
influence upon the constitutional legislation of the French Revolution
is by no means sufficiently recognized. In Europe until quite recently
only the Federal constitution was known, not the constitutions of the
individual states, which are assuming a very prominent place in modern
constitutional history. This must be evident from the fact, which is
even yet unrecognized by some distinguished historians and teachers of
public law, that the individual American states had the first written
constitutions. In England and France the importance of the American
state constitutions has begun to be appreciated,[29] but in Germany they
have remained as yet almost unnoticed. For a long time, to be sure, the
text of the older constitutions in their entirety were only with
difficulty accessible in Europe. But through the edition, prepared by
order of the United States Senate,[30] containing all the American
constitutions since the very earliest period, one is now in a position
to become acquainted with these exceptionally important documents.

The French Declaration of Rights is for the most part copied from the
American declarations or "bills of rights".[31] All drafts of the French
Declaration, from those of the _cahiers_ to the twenty-one proposals
before the National Assembly, vary more or less from the original,
either in conciseness or in breadth, in c