In spite of the general accord of these fundamental principles, when it came to carrying them out in practical legislation great differences arose in the various states, and though these differences were afterward greatly lessened they have not entirely disappeared even to-day. Thus, as mentioned above, religious liberty, in spite of its universal recognition in the constitutions, was not everywhere nor at once carried out in all of its consequences. In spite of the assertion that all men are by nature free and equal the abolition of slavery was not then accomplished. In the slave states in place of "man" stood "freeman". The rights thus formally declared belonged originally to all the "inhabitants", in the slave states to all the "whites". It was only later that the qualification of citizenship of the United States was required in most of the states for the exercise of political rights. We have thus seen by what a remarkable course of development there arose out of the English law, old and new, that was practised in the colonies, the conception of a sphere of rights of the individual, which was independent of the state, and by the latter was simply to be recognized. In reality, however, the declarations of rights did nothing else than express the existing condition of rights in definite universal formulas. That which the Americans already enjoyed they wished to proclaim as a perpetual possession for themselves and for every free people. In contrast to them the French wished to give that which they did not yet have, namely, institutions to correspond to their universal principles. Therein lies the most significant difference between the American and French declarations of rights, that in the one case the institutions preceded the recognition of rights of the individual, in the other they followed after. Therein lay also the fatal mistake of the German National Assembly at Frankfort which wished to determine first the rights of the individual and then establish the state. The German state was not yet founded, but it was already settled what this state not yet existing dare not do and what it had to concede. The Americans could calmly precede their plan of government with a bill of rights, because that government and the controlling laws had already long existed. One thing, however, has resulted from this investigation with irrefutable certainty. The principles of 1789 are in reality the principles of 1776. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 97: Kent, _Commentaries on American Law_, 10th ed., I, p. 611.] [Footnote 98: _Cf._ Kent, I, pp. 612 _et seq._; Stevens, _loc. cit._, pp. 208 _et seq._ They are universally designated to-day in America as "bills of rights". Their example undoubtedly influenced the declarations of 1776 and those after.]