The later disputes as to the proper limits of the power of the British King and Parliament over the American Colonies led the colonial lawyers and politicians to a study of the theory of natural rights advanced by various political writers, English and Continental. It has been said, I think with truth, that the writings of Locke, Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, and even of Blackstone, were more widely read and studied in America than in Europe. The brilliant writings of Tom Paine also had great influence. The result was that the doctrine of natural rights came to be generally accepted by the people of the Colonies as the real foundation of their claims and the real justification for their resistance to the objectionable acts of the King and Parliament. In 1774 the first Continental Congress in its Declaration of Rights declared that the people of the Colonies had those rights by "the immutable laws of nature" as well as by their charters and the principles of the English Constitution. Two years later in the Declaration of Independence the representatives of the people made no reference to their charters nor to the principles of the English Constitution as the foundation of their claims, but based them exclusively on the theory of natural rights. They declared: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." The same influences undoubtedly contributed to bring about the French Revolution of 1789, and the theory of natural rights again found expression in the French state papers of that period. In August of that year, in the early stages of the Revolution, the following "Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen" was put forth by the National Assembly and afterwards made the first two articles of the Constitution of 1791, viz., "Art. 1. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can be based only upon public utility. Art. 2. The aim of every political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression."