Enduring Issues in Historical Documents

The Declaration of the Rights of the Man and of the Citizen of 1789 is a document written by the National Assembly, a group, or representatives for the third estate. In it, members of the third estate describe the type of government they would like to replace the absolute monarchy. 

Excerpt from the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, August 27, 1789

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The representatives of the French people, organized as a National Assembly, believing that the ignorance, neglect, or contempt [disgust] of the rights of man are the sole cause of public calamities [disaster] and of the corruption of governments, have determined to set forth in a solemn [serious] declaration the natural, unalienable [not able to be given away], and sacred rights of man…

1. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good.

2. The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible [in law] rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.

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6. Law is the expression of the general will. Every citizen has a right to participate personally, or through his representative, in its foundation. It must be the same for all, whether it protects or punishes… 

9. As all persons are held innocent until they shall have been declared guilty...

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11. The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man. Every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom, but shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law.

Jamaica Letter (Carte de Jamaica), Simón Bolívar (1815)

In 1815, when in Jamaica and trying to raise money for the Venezuelan fight for independence from Spain, Simon Bolívar wrote this letter in which he writes about his hopes for an independent and unified South America. 

My dear Sir:

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...The chains have been broken; we have been freed, and now our enemies seek to enslave us anew. For this reason (South) America fights desperately...

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The role of the inhabitants of the American hemisphere has for centuries been purely passive. Politically they were nonexistent. We are still in a position lower than slavery, and therefore it is more difficult for us to rise to the enjoyment of freedom … a people is therefore enslaved when the government, by its nature or its vices, infringes on and usurps [takes away] the rights of the citizen or subject....Under absolutism there are no recognized limits to the exercise of governmental powers. 

[...] 

So negative was our existence that I can find nothing comparable in any other civilized society, examine as I may the entire history of time and the politics of all nations. Is it not an outrage and a violation of human rights to expect a land so splendidly endowed, so vast, rich, and populous, to remain merely passive? 

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We demand the immediate withdrawal of all Soviet troops in accordance with the provisions of the Peace Treaty. ... We demand complete freedom of opinion and expression, freedom of the Press and a free Radio, as well as a new daily newspaper of large circulation for the MEFESZ [League of Hungarian University and College Student Associations] organization.

Sixteen Political, Economic, and Ideological Points, Budapest, October 22, 1956

After World War ended in 1945, Hungary was controlled by the Soviet Union [modern day Russia]. The Soviet Union restricted political freedoms and imposed an economic system called Communism on the country. In 1956, frustrations over the state of their country, led to student protests. The students laid out their demands in Sixteen Points, an excerpt of which is below. The Hungarian government, controlled by the Soviet Union, sent the military to stop the protests. Over 2,500 Hungarians and 700 Soviet troops were killed and 200,000 Hungarians fled the country. Mass arrests and strict restrictions followed. 

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RESOLUTION ADOPTED AT PLENARY MEETING OF THE BUILDING INDUSTRY TECHNOLOGY UNIVERSITY'

Students of Budapest!The following resolution was born on 22 October 1956, at the dawn of a new period in Hungarian history, in the Hall of the Building Industry Technological University as a result of the spontaneous movement of several thousand of the Hungarian youth who love their Fatherland:

(1) We demand the immediate withdrawal of all Soviet troops in accordance with the provisions of the Peace Treaty.

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(2) We demand the election of new leaders in the Hungarian Workers' Party on the low, medium and high levels by secret ballot from the ranks upwards. These leaders should convene the Party Congress within the shortest possible time and should elect a new central body of leaders.

(5) We demand general elections in this country, with universal suffrage, secret ballot and the participation of several Parties for the purpose of electing a new National Assembly. We demand that the workers should have the right to strike.

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(7) We demand the reorganization of the entire economic life of Hungary, with the assistance of specialists. Our whole economic system based on planned economy should be re-examined with an eve to Hungarian conditions and to the vital interests of the Hungarian people.

(12) We demand complete freedom of opinion and expression, freedom of the Press and a free Radio, as well as a new daily newspaper of large circulation for the MEFESZ [League of Hungarian University and College Student Associations] organization. We demand that the existing 'screening material' should be made public and destroyed.

....Political power is that power, which every man having in the state of nature, has given up into the hands of the society, and therein to the governors, whom the society hath set over itself, with this express or tacit trust, that it shall be employed for their good, and the preservation of their property: now this power, which every man has in the state of nature, and which he parts with to the society…is to use such means, for the preserving of his own property…; and to punish the breach of the law of nature in others… this power…can have no other end or measure,…when in the hands of the magistrate, but to preserve the members of that society in their lives, liberties, and possessions; and so cannot be an absolute, arbitrary power over their lives and fortunes… but a power to make laws, and annex such penalties to them… And this power has its original only from compact, and agreement, and the mutual consent of those who make up the community…. These are the bounds…set to the legislative power: first, they are to govern by promulgated established laws…secondly, these laws also ought to be designed for no other end ultimately, but the good the people. Thirdly, They must not raise taxes on the property of the people, without the consent of the people, given by themselves, or their deputies…Fourthly, The legislative neither must nor can transfer the power of making laws to anybody else,…but where the people have… Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away, and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people… Whensover therefore the legislative shall transgress this fundamental rule of society; and …endeavor to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the people; by this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into their hands…and it devolves to the people, who have a right to resume their original liberty, and, by the establishment of a new legislative, provide for their own safety and security, which is the end for which they are in society.”

“Consider--I address you as a legislator--whether, when men contend for their freedom, and to be allowed to judge for themselves respecting their own happiness, it be not inconsistent and unjust to subjugate women, even though you firmly believe that you are acting in the manner best calculated to promote their happiness ? Who made man the exclusive judge, if woman partake with him of the gift of reason? But if women are to be excluded, without having a voice, from ù participation of the natural rights of mankind, prove first, to ward off the charge of injustice and inconsistency, that they want reason, else this flaw in your NEW CONSTITUTION will ever show that man must, in some shape, act like a tyrant, and tyranny, in whatever part of society it rears its brazen front, will ever undermine morality. The adoption of this system of inequality never was the result of deliberation, or forethought, or any social ideas, or any notion whatever of what conduced to the benefit of humanity or the good order of society. It arose simply from the fact that from the very earliest twilight of human society, every woman (owing to the value attached to her by men, combined with her inferiority in muscular strength) was found in a state of bondage to some man… Under whatever conditions, and within whatever limits, men are admitted to the suffrage, there is not a shadow of justification for not admitting women under the same. ..” 

. . . As in Mathematicks, so in natural philosophy, the investigation of difficult things by the method of analysis [scientific method], ought ever to precede the method of composition. This analysis consists in making experiments and observations, and in drawing general conclusions from them by induction [reason], and admitting of no objections against the conclusions, but such as are taken from experiments, or other certain truths. For hypotheses [theories] are not to be regarded in experimental philosophy. And although the arguing from experiments and observations by induction be no demonstration of general conclusions; yet it is the best way of arguing which the nature of things admits of, and may be looked upon as so much the stronger, by how much the induction is more general. And if no exception occur from phenomena [facts], the conclusion may be pronounced generally. But if at any time afterwards any exception shall occur from experiments, it may then begin to be pronounced with such exceptions as occur. By this way of analysis we may proceed from compounds to ingredients, and from motions to the forces producing them; and in general, from effects to their causes, and from particular causes to more general ones, till the argument end in the most general. This is the method of analysis [scientific method]: and the synthesis [combination of parts] consists in assuming the causes discovered, and established as principles, and by them explaining the phenomena proceeding from them, and proving the explanations. . . .