The Marquis de Lafayette, with the help of Thomas Jefferson, composed a draft of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and presented it to the National Assembly on July 11, 1789. A committee of some 40 deputies was appointed to decide on the declaration’s final form. Those deputies included Jean-Joseph Mounier, Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, and Alexandre, count de Lameth. The draft was extensively revised before being adopted between August 20 and August 26, 1789.
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen Article