Early Modern (1450 CE - 1800 CE)
Virginia’s Declaration of Rights (1776)
The Declaration of Rights drafted in 1776 by George Mason for the state constitution of Virginia influenced both Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.
John Locke, "Of Political or Civil Society"
John Locke (1632–1704) wrote his Second Treatise of Government early in the 1680s and published it in 1690.
The Bill of Rights, 1689
In response to policies that threatened to restore Catholicism in England, Parliament deposed King James II and called William of Orange from the Dutch Republic and his wife Mary, who was James’s Protestant daughter, to replace him.
Fictional Attack by "Terray" on Turgot (1781[?])
In the 1780s, following the fall of the reform–minded Turgot and Necker ministries, traditionalists felt certain that they had seen the last of the crass, pro–commerce ideas that these men and their supporters had promoted.
Linguet, "Attack on the Nobility" from Annales politiques (1789)
Simon–Henri Linguet was one of the most active and irascible old regime figures. Among his many careers, he was a lawyer (who was disbarred in 1775) and a journalist (who was forced to give up his newspaper and flee to England in 1776).
Calonne, "Programs of Reform," Address to Assembly of Notables (1787)
In 1783, Charles Alexandre de Calonne, a provincial noble, became royal finance minister. At first, he, like Vergennes, saw no need to rationalize the royal treasury or to appease the Parlements.
Vergennes, "Memorandum against Necker" (1781)
In 1781, after the failure of two successive finance ministers, Turgot and then Necker, to reform the royal bureaucracy, and after the death of his politically astute first minister Maurepas, Louis XVI turned to a more conservative politician, Count Charles Gravier de Vergennes, to shore up his s
Necker, "Account to the King" (1781)
Unlike the British, where the crown’s finance minister gave an annual report to Parliament, the French royal treasury’s accounts were a closely guarded secret.
Turgot, "Memorandum on Local Government" (1775)
In 1774, on the accession of Louis XVI, Anne–Robert–Jacques Turgot was named Controller–General of Finances. In this position, he also became responsible for administrative policies relating to taxation, the economy, and local government.
Turgot, "Letter to the King on Finance" (1774)
In 1774, the newly ascendant Louis XVI appointed as his minister of finance a pro–Enlightenment economist and administrator named Anne–Robert–Jacques Turgot, a baron from a noble family with many generations of service to the kings of France.