Active and passive citizens
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During the French Revolution, a distinction was made for a time between active and passive citizens. In 1791, the Legislative Assembly was chosen by a process of indirect election; the Electors of the Assembly were themselves elected by "active" citizens, male citizens whose annual taxes equalled the local wages paid for three days of labor. This disfranchised about half of the male citizens of France. Even higher economic requirements for the Electors and the members of the Assembly left only about 50,000 eligible men in a country of some 25 million people.[1]
Active citizens (and their sons over the age of 18) were also, in that period, the basis for the French National Guard, the military bastion of the middle class.[citation needed]
[edit] Notes
- ^ Richard Hooker, The First Revolution 1996, updated 6 June 1999, accessed 4 July 2006.
