Constitution of 1793

The Constitution of 1793 was drafted by the Committee for Public Safety and accepted by the National Convention on 24th June 1793.  It was accepted by a nationwide referendum employing universal (although not female) suffrage.  However on October 10th 1793 the constitution was suspended until a supposedly future peace.

The Constitution drew on the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Constitution of 1791 and further enshrined freedom of speech and the right to assembly.  It sought to promote equality and place the improvement of all men as central to all the revolution was hoping to achieve.  Tellingly it also stated that any individual who sought to usurp the sovereignty of the government would be put to death.  

Barère on the Constitution of 1793.  Taken from Memoirs of Bertrand Barère Volume 2, H. S. Nichols, London (1896) p90-91

Without doubt this constitution was too perfect, too severe, too Spartan for Frenchmen. The Athenians themselves, who were worth more than we, notwith- standing some points of resemblance, would not have borne it. But the assembly made the great mistake of not making a trial of it, and of not frankly carrying it through instead of shutting it up in a cradle which was its tomb. It added to this evident mistake the more dangerous error of substituting for it what was so improperly called the decree of the revolutionary government, as if government and revolution could ever go together. In the month of August, 1793, we had not yet reached that stage of exasperation and blindness which could lead us to forget the existence of the constitutional state in which everyone believed in good faith.

The constitution of 1793 has been so slandered that it has never been possible to discover whether it could receive the honours of political life in France, that is to say, in plain terms, whether it would work; for not a single one of its proposals was ever executed. When the committee saw all the departments in a commotion, some seeking to resist the Convention with armed force, while others federated and broke the political bond which united them to the metropolis ; it felt how important it was that the constitution should come to rally all separate opinions and conciliate all discordant interests, at the same time removing all pretext for anarchical passions. Saint-Just was charged to draw up several portions of the act of constitution. Several others were entrusted to me and to Herault de Sechelles. We worked for ten days, during which Herault de Sechelles composed the introductory speech as well. We met and made our work into a whole, and on the 15th of August I was able to submit to the Convention and the delegates of the primary assemblies the act of constitution and the declaration of rights, preceded by a report on the reasons for its acceptance by citizens of all classes.