Difficulty: Intermediate to Advanced | Prerequisites: Study notes on the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the Decree Against Profiteers, and the Law of Suspects.
The Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789), the Decree Against Profiteers (1793), and the Law of Suspects (1793) represent three stages of the French Revolution's arc: idealism, crisis management, and repression. Studied together, they reveal how a movement built on liberty, equality, and fraternity found itself using emergency powers that contradicted its own founding principles. The central exam question across all three is whether the Committee of Public Safety's decrees protected the Revolution or undermined it.
Revolutionary governance
The system of emergency rule established during the radical phase of the French Revolution, in which the Committee of Public Safety exercised near-dictatorial power over military, economic, and judicial affairs under the authority of the National Convention.
In simple terms, the wartime government that ran France when the normal institutions could not cope with the crisis.
Thermidorian Reaction (Réaction thermidorienne)
The political counter-movement that overthrew Robespierre and ended the Reign of Terror on 9 Thermidor Year II (27 July 1794). It marked a shift away from radical revolutionary policies toward a more conservative republican government.
Think of it as the moment the Revolution turned on its own leaders and said: "This has gone too far."
Emergency powers
Extraordinary authority granted to a government during a crisis, typically involving the suspension of normal legal protections. The Decree Against Profiteers and the Law of Suspects are both examples of emergency legislation.
In simple terms, the legal tools a government reaches for when it believes ordinary law is not enough to keep the state alive.
Document | Date | Issued by | Purpose | Reliability |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Declaration of the Rights of Man | 1789 | National Constituent Assembly | Establish universal rights, limit monarchy | High (official declaration) |
Decree Against Profiteers | 1793 | Committee of Public Safety | Control prices, prevent hoarding | Moderate (reflects Committee's priorities) |
Law of Suspects | 1793 | Committee of Public Safety / National Convention | Identify and detain counter-revolutionaries | Moderate (reflects Committee's priorities) |
Sovereignty and authority. Each document addresses who holds power and how it may be exercised. The Declaration places sovereignty in the nation; the Decree and the Law concentrate it in the Committee.
Rights versus security. The Declaration defines rights. The Decree and the Law restrict them. The tension between these positions is the single most important analytical thread running through the worksheet.
Escalation. Read in sequence, the three documents trace an escalation from idealism (1789) to economic intervention (1793) to political repression (1793). Each step was justified as necessary to protect the Revolution.
The worksheet includes a paper outline with the following thesis:
"The decrees of the Committee of Public Safety, including the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the Decree Against Profiteers, and the Law of Suspects, were controversial measures implemented during the French Revolution. This paper will analyse each primary source to assess the effectiveness of these decrees in protecting the Revolution and achieving their intended goals."
Note: the thesis groups the Declaration with the Committee's decrees, but strictly speaking the Declaration was issued by the National Constituent Assembly, not the Committee of Public Safety. A stronger thesis would acknowledge this distinction and frame the Declaration as the benchmark against which the Committee's later decrees should be measured.
Suggested outline structure:
Introduction: brief overview of the Revolution, the Committee of Public Safety, and the thesis question
Body paragraph 1: Declaration of the Rights of Man (content, significance, effectiveness in safeguarding revolutionary principles)
Body paragraph 2: Decree Against Profiteers (context, provisions, impact on economic stability)
Body paragraph 3: Law of Suspects (rationale, scope, effectiveness in identifying enemies, cost to civil liberties)
Body paragraph 4: Comparative analysis (common themes, contradictions, overall assessment)
Conclusion: whether the decrees protected or undermined the Revolution, and their broader legacy
The strongest essays on this topic will grapple with the paradox at the heart of revolutionary governance: the Committee used extraordinary measures to defend a revolution built on ordinary rights. Whether that trade-off was justified, and whether it was ultimately self-defeating, is the question the paper outline is driving toward.
Students sometimes treat all three documents as products of the same body. The Declaration was issued by the National Constituent Assembly (1789); the Decree and the Law came from the Committee of Public Safety (1793). The political context had changed dramatically between those dates.
It is a mistake to assume the Committee of Public Safety acted without popular support. The sans-culottes actively demanded price controls and action against suspected counter-revolutionaries. The Committee was responding to pressure from below as well as threats from above.
Students often frame the Reign of Terror as irrational violence. It was, in fact, a calculated system of governance. Whether it was justified is debatable, but it was not random.
⚠️ The most common essay prompt asks whether the Committee's decrees were an effective way to protect the Revolution. Prepare arguments on both sides.
⚠️ Be ready to compare all three documents in a single response. The table in the Core Content section is a useful revision tool for this.
⚠️ Sourcing and contextualisation questions will test whether you can place each document in its specific moment (1789 vs. 1793) and explain what changed.
⚠️ The strongest answers will note that the Declaration set the standard the later decrees violated, and will use that tension as the analytical thread.
Q: Compare the Declaration of the Rights of Man with the Law of Suspects. How do they reflect the changing priorities of the Revolution between 1789 and 1793?
A: In 1789, the priority was establishing a new political order based on universal rights, individual liberty, and the rule of law. By 1793, the priority had shifted to survival: the Republic faced war, rebellion, and economic collapse. The Law of Suspects sacrificed the due-process protections the Declaration had enshrined, in the name of defending the Republic those protections were meant to serve. The shift reflects how crisis transformed the Revolution from a constitutional project into an emergency regime.
Q: Were the decrees of the Committee of Public Safety an effective way to protect the Revolution? Construct arguments on both sides.
A: In favour of effectiveness: the Decree Against Profiteers addressed real economic grievances and helped stabilise food prices in the short term; the Law of Suspects suppressed organised opposition and bought the Republic time to fight its external wars. Against: both decrees relied on fear rather than consent, alienated potential supporters, and concentrated power in ways that made the Committee vulnerable to the same accusation it levelled at the monarchy, namely tyranny. The Thermidorian Reaction of July 1794 suggests that the Committee's methods were ultimately self-defeating.
Q: The worksheet's thesis groups the Declaration of the Rights of Man with the Committee of Public Safety's decrees. Is this analytically sound? Why or why not?
A: It is useful to study them together because they illustrate the Revolution's trajectory, but the grouping is misleading if it suggests the Declaration was a product of the Committee. The Declaration was issued by the National Constituent Assembly four years earlier, in a fundamentally different political context. A stronger analysis would treat the Declaration as the standard and the later decrees as departures from it.
Q: What is the broader legacy of these three documents for constitutional history?
A: Together they raise questions that remain central to constitutional law: can a government suspend individual rights during a crisis, and if so, under what constraints? The Declaration's influence is visible in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in modern constitutions worldwide. The Decree and the Law of Suspects serve as cautionary examples of what happens when emergency powers are exercised without adequate checks.
This material connects to broader themes in constitutional history: the social contract (Rousseau), separation of powers (Montesquieu), and the challenge of balancing liberty with security. It also connects to the US Constitution, since the American and French revolutions drew on shared Enlightenment sources but arrived at different solutions to the problem of executive power during emergencies.
For students at ASU studying Constitutional History to 1865, the French Revolution's experience with emergency powers provides a useful counterpoint to debates about executive authority in the early American republic.
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