tern for all the others, even for that of the Congress of
the United States, which was issued three weeks later, and, as is well
known, was drawn up by Jefferson, a citizen of Virginia. In the other
declarations there were many stipulations formulated somewhat
differently, and also many new particulars were added.[36]

Express declarations of rights had been formulated after Virginia's
before 1789 in the constitutions of

Pennsylvania of September 28, 1776,
Maryland of November 11, 1776,
North Carolina of December 18, 1776,
Vermont of July 8, 1777,[37]
Massachusetts of March 2, 1780,
New Hampshire of October 31, 1783, (in force June 2, 1784.)

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 _declaration 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 presence et sous les auspices de l'Etre supreme_" 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:

[Footnote 33: Connecticut in 1818, and Rhode Island first in 1842, put
new constitutions in the place of the old Colonial Charters.]

[Footnote 34: Poore, II, pp. 1908, 1909.]

[Footnote 35: On the origin of Virginia's bill of rights, _cf._
Bancroft, _History of the United States_, London, 1861, VII,