These Constitutions show the grandeur of the principle, and how it was explained and illustrated. The Constitution of 1791, in its first article, declares that "Men are born and continue free and _equal in their rights_." This great declaration was explained in the sixth article: "The law is the expression of the general will.... It ought to be the same for all, whether it protect or punish. All citizens, being equal in its eyes, are equally admissible to all dignities, places, and public employments, according to their capacity, and without other distinction than their virtues and talents." At the close of the Declaration of Rights there is this further explanation: "The National Assembly, wishing to establish the French Constitution on the principles which it has just acknowledged and declared, abolishes irrevocably the institutions which bounded liberty and equality of rights. There is no longer nobility, or peerage, or hereditary distinctions, or distinction of orders, or feudal rule, or patrimonial jurisdictions, or any titles, denominations, or prerogatives thence derived, or any orders of chivalry, or any corporations or decorations for which proofs of nobility were required, or which supposed distinctions of birth, or any other superiority than that of public functionaries in the exercise of their functions.... _There is no longer, for any part of the nation, or for any individual, any privilege or exception to the common right of all Frenchmen._"[19] These diffuse articles all begin and end in the equality of men. [19] Moniteur, 1791, No. 259.