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serving the moral and the written laws which control society, the family, and the individual.

VIII. The Republic ought to protect the citizen in his person, his family, his religion, his property, his labor, and to put within the reach of each person the education indispensable for all men; it is bound to assure by fraternal assistance the maintenance of indigent citizens, either by furnishing work to them within the limits of its resources, or, in the absence of the family, by giving assistance to those who are unable to work.

For the purpose of fulfilling all these duties and for a guarantee of all these rights, the National Assembly, faithful to the traditions of the great assemblies which inaugurated the French Revolution, decrees as follows, the Constitution of the Republic.

CONSTITUTION.

CHAPTER I. OF THE SOVEREIGNTY.

1. Sovereignty resides in the totality of the French citizens. It is inalienable and imprescriptible.

No individual nor any part of the people can claim for themselves the exercise thereof.

CHAPTER II. RIGHTS OF THE CITIZENS GUARANTEED BY THE

CONSTITUTION.

2. No one can be arrested or held in custody except according to the provisions of the law.

3. The dwelling-place of every person living on French soil is inviolable; it can be entered only according to the forms and in the cases provided by law.

4. No one shall be removed from the jurisdiction of his natural judges.

No extraordinary commissions or tribunals can be created under any title or denomination whatsoever.

5. The death penalty for political offences is abolished.

6. Slavery cannot exist upon any French soil.

7. Every person may freely profess his religion, and receive from the State, for the exercise of his worship, an equal protection.

Ministers, either of the sects now recognized by law or of those which may be recognized in the future, have the right to receive a stipend from the State.

8. Citizens have the right to form associations, to assemble peaceably and without arms, to petition, and to express their opinions by means of the press or otherwise.

The exercise of these rights has for limits only the rights and the liberty of others and the public security.

The press cannot in any case be subjected to the censorship. 9. Instruction is free.

The liberty of instruction is exercised according to the conditions of capacity and morality that are determined by law and under the oversight of the State.

This oversight extends to all establishments for education and instruction, without any exception.

10. All citizens are equally eligible to all public employments, without any other grounds for preference than their own merits, and according to the conditions that shall be fixed by the laws.

All titles of nobility, all distinctions of birth, of class or of caste are forever abolished.

II. All property is inviolable. Nevertheless, the State can demand the sacrifice of a property on the ground of a legally established public utility, and by furnishing a just and prior indemnity.

12. The confiscation of property can never be re-established. 13. The Constitution guarantees to citizens liberty of labor and of industry.

Society favors and encourages the development of labor by gratuitous primary education, professional education, equality of relations between the employer and the workingman, institutions of savings and of credit, agricultural institutions, voluntary associations, and the establishment by the State, the departments and the communes of public works suitable for the employment of unemployed hands; it furnishes assistance to abandoned children, the infirm, and the aged that are without resources and whose families cannot relieve them.

14. The public debt is guaranteed. Every form of engagement made by the State with its creditors is inviolable.

15. Every tax is imposed for the common utility.

Each person contributes thereto in proportion to his means and his fortune.

16. No tax can be imposed or collected except by virtue of the law.

17. Direct taxation is consented to only for one year. Indirect taxes can be consented to for several years.

CHAPTER III. OF THE PUBLIC POWERS.

18. All the public powers, whatever they may be, spring from the people.

They cannot be delegated hereditarily.

19. The separation of the powers is the fundamental principle of a free government.

CHAPTER IV. OF THE LEGISLATIVE POWER.

20. The French people delegate the legislative power to a single Assembly.

21. The total number of the representatives of the people shall be seven hundred and fifty, including the representatives of Algeria and the French colonies.

22. This number shall be increased to nine hundred for the assemblies which shall be called to alter the Constitution. 23. The basis for election is population.

24. The suffrage is direct and universal. The ballot is

secret.

25. All Frenchmen, twenty-one years of age and enjoying their civil and political rights, are electors, regardless of property.

26. All electors twenty-five years of age, regardless of their domicile, are eligible to election.

27. The electoral law shall determine the causes which can deprive a French citizen of the right to elect and to be elected. It shall designate the citizens who, exercising or having exercised functions in a department or a territorial jurisdiction, cannot be elected there.

28. Every remunerated public employment is incompatible with the commission of representative of the people.

No member of the National Assembly, during the continuance of the legislature, can be appointed or preferred for public salaried employments of which the incumbents are chosen at will by the executive power.

The exceptions to the provisions of the two preceding paragraphs shall be determined by the organic electoral law.

29. The provisions of the preceding articles are not applicable to the assemblies elected to alter the Constitution.

30. The election of the representatives shall be by departments and by scrutin de liste.

The electors shall vote in the head-town of the canton; nevertheless, on account of local conditions, the canton can be divided into several districts, in the form and upon the conditions that shall be determined by the electoral law.

31. The National Assembly is elected for three years, and is renewed in a body.

At least forty-five days before the end of the legislature, a law determines the time of the new elections.

If any law does not intervene within the limit fixed by the preceding article, the electors meet of perfect right upon the thirtieth day preceding the end of the legislature.

The new Assenibly is convoked of perfect right for the morrow of the day upon which the commission of the preceding Assembly expires.

32. It is permanent.

Nevertheless, it can adjourn for a period that it shall fix. During the continuance of the prorogation, a commission, composed of members of the bureau and of twenty-five members appointed by the Assembly through secret ballot and majority vote has the right to convoke it in case of urgency.

The President of the Republic also has the right to convoke the Assembly.

The National Assembly determines the place of its meetings. It determines the extent of the military forces provided for its security, and it controls them.

33. Representatives are always re-eligible.

34. Members of the National Assembly are the representatives, not of the department which selects them, but of all France.

35. They cannot receive imperative instructions.

36. The representatives of the people are inviolable. They cannot be questioned, accused nor condemned at any time for opinions that they have expressed in the National Assembly.

37. They cannot be arrested upon a criminal charge, un

less taken in the act, nor prosecuted except after the Assembly has authorised the prosecution.

In case of the arrest of one taken in the act, it shall be forthwith referred to the Assembly, which shall authorise or forbid the continuance of the prosecution. This provision applies to the case in which a citizen under arrest is elected representative.

38. Each representative of the people receives a salary which he cannot refuse.

39. The sittings of the Assembly are public. Nevertheless, the Assembly can form itself into secret committee, upon the demand of the number of representatives fixed by the rule.

Each representative has the right of parliamentary initiative; he shall exercise it according to the forms determined by the rule.

40. The presence of half plus one of the members of the Assembly is necessary for the valid enactment of laws.

41. No proposal for a law, unless in case of urgency, shall be voted definitively except after three deliberations at intervals which cannot be less than five days.

42. Every proposal whose purpose is to declare urgency is preceded by a statement of reasons.

If the Assembly agrees to give effect to the proposal of urgency it orders the reference thereof to the bureaux and fixes the time at which the report upon the urgency shall be presented.

Upon this report, if the Assembly recognizes the urgency, it declares it, and fixes the time of the discussion.

If it decides that there is no urgency, the proposal follows the course of ordinary propositions.

CHAPTER V. OF THE EXECUTIVE POWER.

43. The French people delegate the executive power to a citizen who receives the title of President of the Republic. 44. The President must be French born, at least thirty years of age, and never have lost the quality of Frenchman.

45. The President of the Republic is elected for four years and is re-eligible only after an interval of four years. Furthermore, neither the Vice-President, nor any of the kinsmen or connections of the President to the sixth degree inclusive, can be elected after him.