Page:The Constitutions and Other Select Documents Illustrative of the History of France, 1789-1907, Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged.pdf/101

Rh (Nothing is presumed about the effect of renunciations in the actually ruling family.)

2. The person of the king is inviolable and sacred: his only title is King of the French.

3. There is no authority in France superior to that of the law; the king reigns only by it and it is only in the name of the law that he can demand obedience.

4. The king, upon his accession to the throne or as soon as he shall have attained his majority, shall take to the nation, in the presence of the legislative body, the oath to be faithful to the nation and the law, to employ all the power which is delegated to him to maintain the constitution decreed by the National Constituent Assembly in the years 1789, 1790, and 1791, and to cause the laws to be executed.

If the legislative body is not assembled, the king shall cause a proclamation to be published, in which shall be set forth this oath and the promise to reiterate it as soon as the legislative body shall assemble.

5. If, one month after the invitation of the legislative body, the king shall not have taken this oath, or if, after having taken it, he retracts it, he shall be considered to have abdicated the throne.

6. If the King puts himself at the head of an army and directs the forces thereof against the nation, or if he does not by a formal instrument place himself in opposition to any such enterprise which may be conducted in his name, he shall be considered to have abdicated the throne.

7. If the king, having left the kingdom, should not return after the invitation which shall be made to him for that purpose by the legislative body and within the period which shall be fixed by the proclamation, which shall not be less than two months, he shall be considered to have abdicated the throne.

The period shall begin to run from the day when the proclamation of the legislative body shall have been published in the place of its sittings; and the ministers shall be required under their responsibility to perform all the acts of the executive power, whose exercise shall be suspended in the hands of the absent king.

8. After the express or legal abdication, the king shall be in the class of citizens and can be accused and tried like them for acts subsequent to his abdication.