In fitful mood, another Declaration of Rights was brought forward by Condorcet. February 15, 1793. Here are fresh inculcations of Equality. Article First places Equality among the natural, civil, and political rights of man. Article Seventh declares: "Equality consists in this, that each individual can enjoy the same rights." Article Eighth: "_The law ought to be equal for all_, whether it recompense or punish, whether it protect or repress." Article Ninth: "All citizens are admissible to all public places, employments, and functions. Free people know no other motives of preference in their choice than talents and virtues." Article Twenty-third: "Instruction is the need of all, and society owes it equally to all its members." Article Thirty-second: "There is oppression, when a law violates the natural, civil, and political rights which it ought to guaranty. There is oppression, when the law is violated by the public functionaries in its application to individual cases."[20] Here again is the same constant testimony, reinforced by the accompanying report explaining the Constitution, where it is said: "All hereditary political power is at the same time an evident violation of natural equality and an absurd institution, since it supposes the inheritance of qualities proper for the discharge of a public function. Every exception to the common law made in favor of an individual is a blow struck at the rights of all." And in another part of the same report, "the sovereignty of the people, _equality among men_, the unity of the Republic," are declared to have been "the guiding principles always present in the formation of the Constitution."[21] [20] Moniteur, 1793, No. 49. [21] Exposition des Principes et des Motifs du Plan de Constitution: Condorcet, OEuvres, Tom. XII. pp. 336, 413. Next came the Constitution of June, 1793, announcing, in its second article, that the natural and imprescriptible rights of men are "_Equality_, liberty, security, property." In the next article we learn precisely what is meant by Equality, when it says, "All men are equal by nature _and before the law_."[22] So just and captivating was this definition, which we encounter here for the first time, that it held its place through all the political vicissitudes of France, under the Directory, the Consulate, the Empire, the Restoration, and the Constitutional Government of Louis Philippe. It was a conquest which, when achieved, was never abandoned. Every Charter and Constitution certified to it. The Charter of Louis Philippe testifies as follows: "Frenchmen are _equal before the law_, whatever may be their titles and ranks."[23] Nor was its use confined to France. It passed into other constitutions, and Napoleon, who so often trampled on the rights of Equality, dictated to the Poles the declaration, that _all persons are equal before the law_. Thus the phrase is not only French, but Continental, although never English.