The Déclaration des Droits de l'Homme et du Cityoen (Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen) was a fundamental declaration of the sanctity of human liberties that emerged from the shadow of the French Revolution.

The 17 Articles that made up the Declaration were the result of impassioned discussion by the National Constituent Assembly, the de facto legislature after the Storming of the Bastille and other events of the summer of 1789 created a large amount of uncertainty over the powers that King Louis XVI still had. After nearly a week of discussion, the Assembly approved the Articles, on August 26.

The principal author of the Articles was the the Marquis de Lafayette, who consulted the American Thomas Jefferson, who was the principal author of the American Declaration of Independence. Building on the thoughts and writings of the major philosophes Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Voltaire, Lafayette and others delivered a manifesto rooted in the rule of law as envisioned the purpose of which was to protect the basic rights of people and to govern by the approval of the general will. Montesquieu had extolled the virtues of the separation of powers in The Spirit of Laws; this idea formed the basis of the American government as well, laid out in the U.S. Constitution, approved in 1787. Article 16 enunciates this for the French people, saying that a society that does not have such a divided government "has no constitution at all." As well, the idea of a government made up of elected representatives of the people echoed the ideas of Rousseau's arguments put forward in The Social Contract.

The overarching principle of the Articles was equality. The class conflict that had dominated actions and discussions in France for the past few decades had resulted in more and more calls by peasants for the elimination of privileges that the clergy and nobility had long enjoyed; rather than having a system of these sorts of things being doled out by a king and his associates and the Church and its officers, the Assembly envisioned a society in which all, regardless of their economic or social status, could aspire to the same rights, responsibilities, and privileges.

Building on the teachings of the physiocrats and also hearkening back to the writings of the English philosopher John Locke, the French authors were careful to include a legally sanctioned and recognized right to the ownership of private property. Article 17 is exclusively about this, and Article 2 includes property in a list of "the natural and imprescriptible rights of man."

The Constitution of 1791 had the Declaration as its preamble.

1. Men are born free and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can be based only on public utility.
2. The aim of every political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.
3. The sources of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation; no body, no individual can exercise authority that does not proceed from it in plain terms.
4. Liberty consists in the power to do anything that does not injure others; accordingly, the exercise of the rights of each man has no limits except those that secure the enjoyment of these same rights to the other members of society. These limits can be determined only by law.
5. The law has only the rights to forbid such actions as are injurious to society. Nothing can be forbidden that is not interdicted by the law, and no one can be constrained to do that which it does not order.
6. Law is the expression of the general will. All citizens have the right to take part personally, or by their representatives, and its formation.  It must be the same for all, whether it protects or punishes.  All citizens, being equal in its eyes, are equally eligible to all public dignities, places, and employments, according to their capacities, and without other distinction than that of their virtues and talents.
7. No man can be accused, arrested, or detained, except in the cases determined by the law and according to the forms it has prescribed.  Those who procure, expedite, execute, or cause arbitrary orders to be executed, ought to be punished: but every citizen summoned were seized in virtue of the law ought to render instant obedience; he makes himself guilty by resistance.
8. The law ought only to establish penalties that are strict and obviously necessary, and no one can be punished except in virtue of a law established and promulgated prior to the offense and legally applied.
9. Every man being presumed innocent until he has been pronounced guilty, if it is thought indispensable to arrest him, all severity that may not be necessary to secure his person ought to be strictly suppressed by law.
10. No one should be disturbed on account of his opinions, even religious, provided their manifestation does not upset the public order established by law.
11. The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man; every citizen can then freely speak, write, and print, subject to responsibility for the abuse of this freedom in the cases is determined by law.
12. The guarantee of the rights of man and citizen requires a public force; this force then is instituted for the advantage of all and not for the personal benefit of those to whom it is entrusted.
13. A general tax is indispensable for the maintenance of the public force and for the expenses of administration; it ought to be equally apportioned among all citizens according to their means.
14. All the citizens have a right to ascertain, by themselves or by their representatives, the necessity of the public tax, to consent to it freely, to follow the employment of it, and to determine the quota, the assessment, the collection, and the duration of it.
15. Society has the right to call for an account of his administration by every public agent.
16. Any society in which the guarantee of the rights is not secured, or the separation of powers not determined, has no constitution at all.
17. Property being a sacred to and inviolable right, no one can be deprived of it, unless legally established public necessity evidently demands it, under the condition of a just and prior indemnity.