New French Mural Announces the Fulfillment of an age-old Jewish Design
New French Mural Announces the Fulfillment of an age-old Jewish Design
After a struggle of perhaps two years, in August of 1791 the King of France, Louis XVI, was forced to accept a new constitution which ended the absolute monarchy and turned over political authority to the National Assembly. However whether complete political rights were going to be extended to particular groups, namely women and Jews, was still being argued by the Assembly as many Frenchmen continued to uphold traditional values. A month later, on September 27th, 1791, a French lawyer, Freemason, and member of the secret society of the Jacobins proposed a motion titled “Admission of Jews to Rights of Citizenship”.
In the motion, Adrien Duport made the assertion that the French had declared by their “Constitution how all peoples of the earth could become French citizens and how all French citizens could become active citizens.” This was not necessarily true, but rather the new Constitution offered active citizenship only to adult French males who were not servants and only extended passive citizenship to others, creating two permanent classes. Yet it did not stop the Jacobin lawyer from arguing that “… it be declared relative to the Jews that they will be able to become active citizens, like all the peoples of the world, by fulfilling the conditions prescribed by the Constitution. I believe that freedom of worship no longer permits any distinction to be made between the political rights of citizens on the basis of their beliefs and I believe equally that the Jews cannot be the only exceptions to the enjoyment of these rights, when pagans, Turks, Muslims, Chinese even, men of all the sects, in short, are admitted to these rights.”