Constitution de la République Française Précédée des Rapports et Décrets qui y Sont Relatifs.

Item Details

Paris, Imprimerie Nationale, 1848, paper covered boards.

First edition, fair to good condition.

From Pied Oxen Printers' collection of objects related to print and book history.

Signed first edition of the French Constitution of 1848, which abolished nobility and slavery, and declared France an indivisible Republic—the Second French Republic—based on the sovereignty of its citizens.

First edition. Original gold stamped blue paper over boards. 

127 pp. 9 x 13 3/8 inches.

Condition: Collated complete. Internally clean with some foxing throughout, mostly in margins. Contemporary ink marks on title page spread. Spine lacking. Loss of some cover surface apparently due to removal of tape. Corners and edges bumped with some losses—see images. 19th c. bookseller’s ticket on front board. An excellent candidate for restoration or preservation as is.
 
The last page of text is signed by the following Representatives of the National Assembly: Président Armand Marrast; Les Secrétaires, Léon Robert, Landrin, Bérard, Émile Péan, F. Degeorge, and Peupin; and Vice Président, Corbon. This copy appears to have been the working copy of one of the Secrétaires, Émile Péan. 

The cover reads: “Émile Péan, Représentant du Peuple (Loiret), Secrétaire de la L’Assemblée Nationale.”

The French constitution of 1848 was drawn up by the national constituent assembly elected following the revolution of February 1848, which created the Second French Republic. The constituent assembly was chosen on April 23 by universal manhood suffrage, and the republican and democratic principles of the February revolution were embodied in the constitution that the assembly adopted later in the year after exhaustive debate. The constitutional committee consisted in the main of moderate republicans and former liberal monarchists, among them Alexis de Tocqueville; it included one socialist , Victor Considerant, and one worker, Anthyme Corbon (whose signature appears in this copy). A draft presented on June 19 guaranteed not only the freedoms of speech, press, assembly and religion, but also the controversial "right to work" proclaimed in February. The draft constitution also affirmed the hallowed revolutionary ideals of "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity," but after the workers' insurrection in late June the assembly added "Family, Work, Property, Public Order" as basic principles while replacing "right to work" with a limited obligation of the state to provide aid to the unemployed. But in general the democratic features of the early draft were preserved in the constitution as adopted on November 4. Both nobility and slavery were abolished, and France was declared an indivisible republic, this "definitive" form of government resting on the sovereignty of its citizens. Both a legislative assembly and the executive, a president, were to be elected by universal suffrage of all males at least 21 years of age. In the single chamber, the constitution revived the representative principle first adopted in 1789, but in creating the presidency it rejected the collegial executives of the first republic of 1792 in favor of the American model, which was also reflected in the term of four years. Only slight changes were introduced in the judicial system.