onsent, or that of the representative body of the people.... And
whenever the public exigencies require that the property of any
individual should be appropriated to public uses, he shall receive a
reasonable compensation therefor.

VERMONT, II. That private property ought to be subservient to public
uses, when necessity requires it; nevertheless, whenever any particular
man's property is taken for the use of the public, the owner ought to
receive an equivalent in money.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 40: _Cf._ English Bill of Rights, 1.]

[Footnote 41: English Bill of Rights, 8.]

[Footnote 42: Magna Charta, 39.]

[Footnote 43: Magna Charta, 20.]

[Footnote 44: English Bill of Rights, 10.]

[Footnote 45: English Bill of Rights, 10.]

CHAPTER VI.

THE CONTRAST BETWEEN THE AMERICAN AND ENGLISH DECLARATIONS OF RIGHTS.

The comparison of the American and French declarations shows at once
that the setting forth of principles abstract, and therefore ambiguous,
is common to both, as is also the pathos with which they are recited.
The French have not only adopted the American ideas, but even the form
they received on the other side of the ocean. But in contrast to the
diffuseness of the Americans the French are distinguished by a brevity
characteristic of their language. Articles 4-6 of the Declaration have
the most specific French additions in the superfluous and meaningless
definitions of liberty[46] and law. Further, in Articles 4, 6 and 13 of
the French text special stress is laid upon equality before the law,
while to the Americans, because of their social conditions and
democratic institutions, this seemed self-evident and so by them is only
brought out incidentally. In the French articles the influence of the
_Contrat Social_ will have been recognized; but yet it brought out
nothing essentially new, or unknown to the American stipulations.

The result that has been won is not without significance for the student
of history in passing judgment upon the effects of the French
Declaration. The American states have developed with their bills of
rights into orderly commonwealths in which there has never been any
complaint that these propositions brought consequences disintegrating to
the state. The disorders which arose in France after the Declaration of
the Rights of Man cannot therefore have been brought about by its
formulas alone. Much rather do they show what dangers may lie in the too
hasty adoption of fo