High Tide of Revolutionary Democracy 631
passing that the American Federalists, in the Naturalization Act of 1798, de-
nounced by the democrats because it raised the requirement for naturalization to
fourteen years, only attempted what revolutionary democrats in Europe regarded
as normal.
The Batavian, Helvetic, and first Cisalpine constitutions were more liberal than
the French in granting the vote to all male citizens, though the Dutch excluded
servants and bankrupts. The Cisalpine (like the French) provided for a literacy
requirement to take effect twelve years in the future, and the Helvetic stipulated
five years of local residence in the commune in which one voted. All the constitu-
tions provided for voting in “primary assemblies,” in which two or three hundred
voters chose delegates to electoral assemblies, which in turn chose the Legislative
Body and certain local officials. All this machinery went back to the first French
constitution of 1789–1791. Qualifications to sit in electoral assemblies or in the
legislature of the republic varied from one republic to another, but were in no case
prohibitively high. Against the older aristocratic tradition of uncompensated pub-
lic service all the new constitutions except the Helvetic specified salaries for both
Legislators and Directors. The Batavian legislator received 4,000 florins a year,
the Ligurian ten lire a day; elsewhere, as in France by the constitution of the Year
III, given the uncertainty of the currency, salaries were made dependent on the
price of wheat.
All the constitutions provided for a legislature in two houses, and for an execu-
tive board of five Directors, called “consuls” at Rome and “archons” at Naples. To
this pattern there was no exception (since the Cispadane constitution with its
three directors had never really been in effect); and even Rhigas’ constitution for a
Greek Republic reproduced these features. All the constitutions made much of the
doctrine of the separation of powers, and contained careful provisions on the judi-
ciary, armed forces, taxation, and management of the public finances. All except
the Swiss and Dutch provided for juries in criminal cases. All gave toleration, and
were essentially secular, but they varied in religious provisions; the Batavian
granted complete religious equality, while the Cisalpine and Ligurian recognized a
certain “predominance” of the Catholic Church.
All the Italian constitutions called for common schools of reading and writing,
with teachers to be paid from the funds of the several republics. In general, when
the constitutions are set in chronological order, a trend is seen toward a strength-
ening of the executive; and since the later constitutions were in general more dic-
tated by the French than the earlier, a trend in French constitutional thought has
been detected suggesting that, if Bonaparte had not taken power in November
1799, a stronger but less military kind of executive might have been created in
France.^43 On this point there can be no certainty; and in any case the political
machinery of the Sister Republics, as of France itself in these years, never worked
very well, and is not the element of major interest in these new governments.
Each constitution (except those for Bologna and Lucca) began by declaring its
republic to be “one and indivisible.” Each then immediately proceeded to the “divi-
43 This was the argument of R. Guyot, “Du Directoire au Consulat,” in Revue historique, Vol. III
(1912), 11–31.