Page:The Constitutions and Other Select Documents Illustrative of the History of France, 1789-1907, Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged.pdf/94

64 3d. By a judgment of contempt of court, as long as the judgment is not annulled;

4th. By affiliation with any foreign order of knighthood, or with any foreign organization which would imply proofs of nobility or distinctions of birth, or which would demand religious vows.

7. The law considers marriage as only a civil contract.

The legislative power shall establish for all inhabitants, without distinction, the manner in which births, marriages, and deaths shall be recorded, and it shall designate the public officers who shall receive and preserve the records therof.

8. French citizens, considered in their local relations arising from their union into cities and into certain districts of rural territory, form communes.

The legislative power shall fix the extent of the district of each commune.

9. The citizens who compose each commune have the right to elect at stated times and according to the forms fixed by law those among themselves, who, under the title of municipal officers, are charged with carrying on the particular affairs of the commune.

Some functions related to the interests of the state may be delegated to the municipal officers.

10. The regulations which the municipal officers shall be required to follow in the exercise of their municipal functions, as well as those which have been delegated to them for the general interest, shall be fixed by the laws.

Title III. Of the Public Powers.

1. Sovereignty is one, indivisible, inalienable, and imprescriptible: it belongs to the nation: no section of the people nor any individual can attribute to himself the exercise thereof.

2. The nation, from which alone emanates all the powers, can exercise them only by delegation. The French constitution is representative; the representa- tives are the legislative body and the king.

3. The legislative power is delegated to one National Assembly, composed of temporary representatives freely elected by the people, in order to be exercised by it with the sanction