“[The French Revolutionaries] wanted freedom of thought, expression, religion, association, and of enterprise of all kinds. . . . They recognized their own program in the great Declaration of Rights of 1789. New rights, for more people, have been demanded ever since.”

—Robert R. Palmer, history professor and author of The World of the French Revolution

Prior to 1789, the year the French Revolution began, the only nations with any true understanding of the modern conception of human rights were Great Britain and its former colony, the United States. To those two nations, the most important rights were political and civil rights—the right to participate in government, freedom of expression, and equality before the law. Human rights also encompass economic and social freedoms—the right to move out of the class into which one was born, for example, and to no longer be dependent on another&rsquo...