[Footnote 43: Magna Charta, 20.] [Footnote 44: English Bill of Rights, 10.] [Footnote 45: English Bill of Rights, 10.] CHAPTER VI. THE CONTRAST BETWEEN THE AMERICAN AND ENGLISH DECLARATIONS OF RIGHTS. The comparison of the American and French declarations shows at once that the setting forth of principles abstract, and therefore ambiguous, is common to both, as is also the pathos with which they are recited. The French have not only adopted the American ideas, but even the form they received on the other side of the ocean. But in contrast to the diffuseness of the Americans the French are distinguished by a brevity characteristic of their language. Articles 4-6 of the Declaration have the most specific French additions in the superfluous and meaningless definitions of liberty[46] and law. Further, in Articles 4, 6 and 13 of the French text special stress is laid upon equality before the law, while to the Americans, because of their social conditions and democratic institutions, this seemed self-evident and so by them is only brought out incidentally. In the French articles the influence of the _Contrat Social_ will have been recognized; but yet it brought out nothing essentially new, or unknown to the American stipulations. The result that has been won is not without significance for the student of history in passing judgment upon the effects of the French Declaration. The American states have developed with their bills of rights into orderly commonwealths in which there has never been any complaint that these propositions brought consequences disintegrating to the state. The disorders which arose in France after the Declaration of the Rights of Man cannot therefore have been brought about by its formulas alone. Much rather do they show what dangers may lie in the too hasty adoption of foreign institutions. That is, the Americans in 1776 went on building upon foundations that were with them long-standing. The French, on the other hand, tore up all the foundations of their state's structure. What was in the one case a factor in the process of consolidation served in the other as a cause of further disturbance. This was even recognized at the time by sharp-sighted men, such as Lally-Tollendal[47] and, above all, Mirabeau.[48] But from the consideration of the American bills of rights there arises a new problem for the historian of law: How did Americans come to make legislative declarations of this sort? To the superficial observer the answer seems simple. The very name points to English sources. The Bill of Rights of 1689, the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679, the Petition of Right of 1628, and finally the _Magna Charta libertatum_ appear to be unquestionably the predecessors of the Virginia bill of rights.