CHAPTER I

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THE SOCIAL CONTRACT & DISCOURSES

by

JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU

London & Toronto

Published by J. M. Dent & Sons

In New York by E. P. Dutton & Co

Everyman's Library

Edited by Ernest Rhys

Philosophy and Theology

ROUSSEAU'S SOCIAL CONTRACT, ETC.

Translated with Introduction by G.D.H. Cole,

Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford

INTRODUCTION

For the study of the great writers and thinkers of the past, historical

imagination is the first necessity. Without mentally referring to the

environment in which they lived, we cannot hope to penetrate below the

inessential and temporary to the absolute and permanent value of their

thought. Theory, no less than action, is subject to these necessities;

the form in which men cast their speculations, no less than the ways

in which they behave, are the result of the habits of thought and

action which they find around them. Great men make, indeed, individual

contributions to the knowledge of their times; but they can never

transcend the age in which they live. The questions they try to answer

will always be those their contemporaries are asking; their statement

of fundamental problems will always be relative to the traditional

statements that have been handed down to them. When they are stating

what is most startlingly new, they will be most likely to put it in an

old-fashioned form, and to use the inadequate ideas and formulae of

tradition to express the deeper truths towards which they are feeling

their way. They will be most the children of their age, when they are

rising most above it.

Rousseau has suffered as much as any one from critics without a sense

of history. He has been cried up and cried down by democrats and

oppressors with an equal lack of understanding and imagination. His

name, a hundred and fifty years after the publication of the _Social

Contract_, is still a controversial watchword and a party cry. He is

accepted as one of the greatest writers France has produced; but even

now men are inclined, as political bias prompts them, to accept or

reject his political doctrines as a whole, without sifting them or

attempting to understand and discriminate. He is still revered or hated

as the author who, above all others, inspired the French Revolution.

At the present day, his works possess a double significance. They are

important historically, alike as giving us an insight into the mind

of the eighteenth century, and for the actual influence they have had

on the course of events in Europe. Certainly no other writer of the

time has exercised such an influence as his. He may fairly be called

the parent of the romantic movement in art, letters and life; he

affected profoundly the German romantics and Goethe himself; he set the

fashion of a new introspection which has permeated nineteenth century

literature; he began modern educational theory; and, above all, in

political thought he represents the passage from a traditional theory

rooted in the Middle Ages to the modern philosophy of the State. His

influence on Kant's moral philosophy and on Hegel's philosophy of Right

are two sides of the same fundamental contribution to modern thought.

He is, in fact, the great forerunner of German and English Idealism.

It would not be possible, in the course of a short introduction, to

deal both with the positive content of Rousseau's thought and with

the actual influence he has had on practical affairs. The statesmen

of the French Revolution, from Robespierre downwards, were throughout

profoundly affected by the study of his works. Though they seem often

to have misunderstood him, they had on the whole studied him with

the attention he demands. In the nineteenth century, men continued

to appeal to Rousseau, without, as a rule, knowing him well or

penetrating deeply into his meaning. "The _Social Contract_," says

M. Dreyfus-Brisac, "is the book of all books that is most talked of

and least read." But with the great revival of interest in political

philosophy there has come a desire for the better understanding of

Rousseau's work. He is again being studied more as a thinker and less

as an ally or an opponent; there is more eagerness to sift the true

from the false, and to seek in the _Social Contract_ the "principles of

political right," rather than the great revolutionary's _ipse dixit_

in favour of some view about circumstances which he could never have

contemplated.

The _Social Contract_, then, may be regarded either as a document

of the French Revolution, or as one of the greatest books dealing

with political philosophy. It is in the second capacity, as a work

of permanent value containing truth, that it finds a place among the

world's great books. It is in that capacity also that it will be

treated in this introduction. Taking it in this aspect, we have no less

need of historical insight than if we came to it as historians pure and

simple. To understand its value we must grasp its limitations; when

the questions it answers seem unnaturally put, we must not conclude

that they are meaningless; we must see if the answer still holds when

the question is put in a more up-to-date form.

First, then, we must always remember that Rousseau is writing in the

eighteenth century, and for the most part in France. Neither the French

monarchy nor the Genevese aristocracy loved outspoken criticism,

and Rousseau had always to be very careful what he said. This may

seem a curious statement to make about a man who suffered continual

persecution on account of his subversive doctrines; but, although

Rousseau was one of the most daring writers of his time, he was forced

continually to moderate his language and, as a rule, to confine himself

to generalisation instead of attacking particular abuses. Rousseau's

theory has often been decried as too abstract and metaphysical. This is

in many ways its great strength; but where it is excessively so, the

accident of time is to blame. In the eighteenth century it was, broadly

speaking, safe to generalise and unsafe to particularise. Scepticism

and discontent were the prevailing temper of the intellectual classes,

and a short-sighted despotism held that, as long as they were confined

to these, they would do little harm. Subversive doctrines were only

regarded as dangerous when they were so put as to appeal to the

masses; philosophy was regarded as impotent. The intellectuals of the

eighteenth century therefore generalised to their hearts' content, and

as a rule suffered little for their _lèse-majesté_: Voltaire is the

typical example of such generalisation. The spirit of the age favoured

such methods, and it was therefore natural for Rousseau to pursue

them. But his general remarks had such a way of bearing very obvious

particular applications, and were so obviously inspired by a particular

attitude towards the government of his day, that even philosophy became

in his hands unsafe, and he was attacked for what men read between

the lines of his works. It is owing to this faculty of giving his

generalisations content and actuality that Rousseau has become the

father of modern political philosophy. He uses the method of his time

only to transcend it; out of the abstract and general he creates the

concrete and universal.

Secondly, we must not forget that Rousseau's theories are to be studied

in a wider historical environment. If he is the first of modern

political theorists, he is also the last of a long line of Renaissance

theorists, who in turn inherit and transform the concepts of mediæval

thought. So many critics have spent so much wasted time in proving

that Rousseau was not original only because they began by identifying

originality with isolation: they studied first the _Social Contract_ by

itself, out of relation to earlier works, and then, having discovered

that these earlier works resembled it, decided that everything it had

to say was borrowed. Had they begun their study in a truly historical

spirit, they would have seen that Rousseau's importance lies just in

the new use he makes of old ideas, in the transition he makes from old

to new in the general conception of politics. No mere innovator could

have exercised such an influence or hit on so much truth. Theory makes

no great leaps; it proceeds to new concepts by the adjustment and

renovation of old ones. Just as theological writers on politics, from

Hooker to Bossuet, make use of Biblical terminology and ideas; just as

more modern writers, from Hegel to Herbert Spencer, make use of the

concept of evolution, Rousseau uses the ideas and terms of the Social

Contract theory. We should feel, throughout his work, his struggle to

free himself from what is lifeless and outworn in that theory, while

he develops out of it fruitful conceptions that go beyond its scope. A

too rigid literalism in the interpretation of Rousseau's thought may

easily reduce it to the possession of a merely "historical interest":

if we approach it in a truly historical spirit, we shall be able to

appreciate at once its temporary and its lasting value, to see how it

served his contemporaries, and at the same time to disentangle from it

what may be serviceable to us and for all time.

Rousseau's _Emile_, the greatest of all works on education, has already

been issued in this series. In this volume are contained the most

important of his political works. Of these the _Social Contract_, by

far the most significant, is the latest in date. It represents the

maturity of his thought, while the other works only illustrate his

development. Born in 1712, he issued no work of importance till 1750;

but he tells us, in the _Confessions,_ that in 1743, when he was

attached to the Embassy at Venice, he had already conceived the idea of

a great work on _Political Institutions_, "which was to put the seal on

his reputation." He seems, however, to have made little progress with

this work, until in 1749 he happened to light on the announcement of a

prize offered by the Academy of Dijon for an answer to the question,

"Has the progress of the arts and sciences tended to the purification

or to the corruption of morality?" His old ideas came thronging back,

and sick at heart of the life he had been leading among the Paris

_lumières_, he composed a violent and rhetorical diatribe against

civilisation generally. In the following year, this work, having been

awarded the prize by the Academy, was published by its author. His

success was instantaneous; he became at once a famous man, the "lion"

of Parisian literary circles. Refutations of his work were issued by

professors, scribblers, outraged theologians and even by the King of

Poland. Rousseau endeavoured to answer them all, and in the course of

argument his thought developed. From 1750 to the publication of the

_Social Contract_ and _Emile_ in 1762 he gradually evolved his views:

in those twelve years he made his unique contribution to political

thought.

The _Discourse on the Arts and Sciences_, the earliest of the works

reproduced in this volume, is not in itself of very great importance.

Rousseau has given his opinion of it in the _Confessions_. "Full of

warmth and force, it is wholly without logic or order; of all my

works it is the weakest in argument and the least harmonious. But

whatever gifts a man may be born with, he cannot learn the art of

writing in a moment." This criticism is just. The first Discourse

neither is, nor attempts to be, a reasoned or a balanced production.

It is the speech of an advocate, wholly one-sided and arbitrary, but

so obviously and naively one-sided, that it is difficult for us to

believe in its entire seriousness. At the most, it is only a rather

brilliant but flimsy rhetorical effort, a sophistical improvisation,

but not a serious contribution to thought. Yet it is certain that this

declamation made Rousseau's name, and established his position as a

great writer in Parisian circles. D'Alembert even devoted the preface

of the _Encyclopædia_ to a refutation. The plan of the first Discourse

is essentially simple: it sets out from the badness, immorality and

misery of modern nations, traces all these ills to the departure from a

"natural" state, and then credits the progress of the arts and sciences

with being the cause of that departure. In it, Rousseau is already in

possession of his idea of "nature" as an ideal; but he has at present

made no attempt to discriminate, in what is unnatural, between good

and bad. He is merely using a single idea, putting it as strongly as

he can, and neglecting all its limitations. The first Discourse is

important not for any positive doctrine it contains, but as a key to

the development of Rousseau's mind. Here we see him at the beginning

of the long journey which was to lead on at last to the theory of the

_Social Contract_.

In 1755 appeared the _Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of

Inequality among Men_, which is the second of the works given in this

volume. With this essay, Rousseau had unsuccessfully competed in 1753

for a second prize offered by the Academy of Dijon, and he now issued

it prefaced by a long Dedication to the Republic of Geneva. In this

work, which Voltaire, in thanking him for a presentation copy, termed

his "second book against the human race," his style and his ideas

have made a great advance; he is no longer content merely to push a

single idea to extremes: while preserving the broad opposition between

the state of nature and the state of society, which runs through all

his work, he is concerned to present a rational justification of

his views and to admit that a little at any rate may be said on the

other side. Moreover, the idea of "nature" has already undergone a

great development; it is no longer an empty opposition to the evils

of society; it possesses a positive content. Thus half the _Discourse

on Inequality_ is occupied by an imaginary description of the state

of nature, in which man is shown with ideas limited within the

narrowest range, with little need of his fellows, and little care

beyond provision for the necessities of the moment. Rousseau declares

explicitly that he does not suppose the "state of nature" ever to have

existed: it is a pure "idea of reason," a working concept reached by

abstraction from the "state of society." The "natural man," as opposed

to "man's man," is man stripped of all that society confers upon him, a

creature formed by a process of abstraction, and never intended for a

historical portrait. The conclusion of the Discourse favours not this

purely abstract being, but a state of savagery intermediate between the

"natural" and the "social" conditions, in which men may preserve the

simplicity and the advantages of nature and at the same time secure the

rude comforts and assurances of early society. In one of the long notes

appended to the Discourse, Rousseau further explains his position.

He does not wish, he says, that modern corrupt society should return

to a state of nature: corruption has gone too far for that; he only

desires now that men should palliate, by wiser use of the fatal arts,

the mistake of their introduction. He recognises society as inevitable

and is already feeling his way towards a justification of it. The

second Discourse represents a second stage in his political thought:

the opposition between the state of nature and the state of society is

still presented in naked contrast; but the picture of the former has

already filled out, and it only remains for Rousseau to take a nearer

view of the fundamental implications of the state of society for his

thought to reach maturity.

Rousseau is often blamed, by modern critics, for pursuing in the

Discourses a method apparently that of history, but in reality wholly

unhistorical. But it must be remembered that he himself lays no

stress on the historical aspect of his work; he gives himself out

as constructing a purely ideal picture, and not as depicting any

actual stages in human history. The use of false historical concepts

is characteristic of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and

Rousseau is more to be congratulated on having escaped from giving them

too much importance than criticised for employing them at all.

It is doubtful whether the _Discourse on Political Economy,_ first

printed in the great _Encyclopædia_ in 1755, was composed before or

after the _Discourse on Inequality_. At first sight the former seems to

be far more in the manner of the _Social Contract_ and to contain views

belonging essentially to Rousseau's constructive period. It would not,

however, be safe to conclude from this that its date is really later.

The _Discourse on Inequality_ still has about it much of the rhetorical

looseness of the prize essay; it aims not so much at close reasoning

as at effective and popular presentation of a case. But, by reading

between the lines, an attentive student can detect in it a great

deal of the positive doctrine afterwards incorporated in the _Social

Contract_. Especially in the closing section, which lays down the plan

of a general treatment of the fundamental questions of politics, we

are already to some extent in the atmosphere of the later works. It

is indeed almost certain that Rousseau never attempted to put into

either of the first two Discourses any of the positive content of his

political theory. They were intended, not as final expositions of his

point of view, but as partial and preliminary studies, in which his aim

was far more destructive than constructive. It is clear that in first

conceiving the plan of a work on _Political Institutions_, Rousseau

cannot have meant to regard all society as in essence bad. It is indeed

evident that he meant, from the first, to study human society and

institutions in their rational aspect, and that he was rather diverted

from his main purpose by the Academy of Dijon's competition than first

induced by it to think about political questions. It need, therefore,

cause no surprise that a work probably written before the _Discourse on

Inequality_ should contain the germs of the theory given in full in the

_Social Contract_. The _Discourse on Political Economy_ is important as

giving the first sketch of the theory of the "General Will." It will

readily be seen that Rousseau does not mean by "political economy"

exactly what we mean nowadays. He begins with a discussion of the

fundamental nature of the State, and the possibility of reconciling its

existence with human liberty, and goes on with an admirable short study

of the principles of taxation. He is thinking throughout of "political"

in the sense of "public" economy, of the State as the public financier,

and not of the conditions governing industry. He conceives the State

as a body aiming at the well-being of all its members and subordinates

all his views of taxation to that end. He who has only necessaries

should not be taxed at all; superfluities should be supertaxed; there

should be heavy imposts on every sort of luxury. The first part of

the article is still more interesting. Rousseau begins by demolishing

the exaggerated parallel so often drawn between the State and the

family; he shows that the State is not, and cannot be, patriarchal in

nature, and goes on to lay down his view that its real being consists

in the General Will of its members. The essential features of the

_Social Contract_ are present in this Discourse almost as if they were

commonplaces, certainly not as if they were new discoveries on which

the author had just hit by some happy inspiration. There is every

temptation, after reading the _Political Economy_, to suppose that

Rousseau's political ideas really reached maturity far earlier than has

generally been allowed.

The _Social Contract_ finally appeared, along with _Emile_, in 1762.

This year, therefore, represents in every respect the culmination of

Rousseau's career. Henceforth, he was to write only controversial

and confessional works; his theories were now developed, and,

simultaneously, he gave to the world his views on the fundamental

problems of politics and education. It is now time to ask what

Rousseau's system, in its maturity, finally amounted to. The _Social

Contract_ contains practically the whole of his constructive political

theory; it requires to be read, for full understanding, in connection

with his other works, especially _Emile_ and the _Letters on the Mount_

(1764), but in the main it is self-contained and complete. The title

sufficiently defines its scope. It is called _The Social Contract

or Principles of Political Right_, and the second title explains

the first. Rousseau's object is not to deal, in a general way, like

Montesquieu, with the actual institutions of existing States, but to

lay down the essential principles which must form the basis of every

legitimate society. Rousseau himself, in the fifth book of the _Emile_,

has stated the difference clearly. "Montesquieu," he says, "did not

intend to treat of the principles of political right; he was content

to treat of the positive right (or law) of established governments;

and no two studies could be more different than these." Rousseau then

conceives his object as being something very different from that of

the _Spirit of the Laws_, and it is a wilful error to misconstrue

his purpose. When he remarks that "the facts," the actual history of

political societies, "do not concern him," he is not contemptuous of

facts; he is merely asserting the sure principle that a fact can in

no case give rise to a right. His desire is to establish society on a

basis of pure right, so as at once to disprove his attack on society

generally and to reinforce his criticism of existing societies.

Round this point centres the whole dispute about the methods proper

to political theory. There are, broadly speaking, two schools of

political theorists, if we set aside the psychologists. One school, by

collecting facts, aims at reaching broad generalisations about what

actually happens in human societies! the other tries to penetrate to

the universal principles at the root of all human combination. For the

latter purpose facts may be useful, but in themselves they can prove

nothing. The question is not one of fact, but one of right.

Rousseau belongs essentially to this philosophical school. He is not,

as his less philosophic critics seem to suppose, a purely abstract

thinker generalising from imaginary historical instances; he is a

concrete thinker trying to get beyond they inessential and changing to

the permanent and invariable basis of human society. Like Green, he is

in search of the principle of political obligation, and beside this

quest all others fall into their place as secondary and derivative.

It is required to find a form of association able to defend and

protect with the whole common force the person and goods of every

associate, and of such a nature, that each, uniting himself with all,

may still obey only himself, and remain as free as before. This is

the fundamental problem of which the _Social Contract_ provides the

solution. The problem of political obligation is seen as including

all other political problems, which fall into place in a system based

upon it. How, Rousseau asks, can the will of the State help being for

me a merely external will, imposing itself upon my own? How can the

existence of the State be reconciled with human freedom? How can man,

who is born free, rightly come to be everywhere in chains?

No-one could help understanding the central problem of the _Social

Contract_ immediately, were it not that its doctrines often seem

to be strangely formulated. We have seen that this strangeness is

due to Rousseau's historical position, to his use of the political

concepts current in his own age, and to his natural tendency to build

on the foundations laid by his predecessors. There are a great many

people whose idea of Rousseau consists solely of the first words of

the opening chapter of the _Social Contract_, "Man is born free, and

everywhere he is in chains." But, they tell you, man is not born free,

even if he is everywhere in chains. Thus at the very outset we are

faced with the great difficulty in appreciating Rousseau. When we

should naturally say "man ought to be free," or perhaps "man is born

for freedom," he prefers to say "man is born free," by which he means

exactly the same thing. There is doubtless, in his way of putting it,

an appeal to a "golden age"; but this golden age is admittedly as

imaginary as the freedom to which men are born is bound, for most of

them, to be. Elsewhere Rousseau puts the point much as we might put

it ourselves. "Nothing is more certain than that every man born in

slavery is born for slavery.... But if there are slaves by nature, it

is because there have been slaves against nature" (_Social Contract_,

Book I, chap. ii).

We have seen that the contrast between the "state of nature" and the

"state of society" runs through all Rousseau's work. The _Emile_

is a plea for "natural" education; the Discourses are a plea for a

"naturalisation" of society; the _New Héloïse_ is the romantic's

appeal for more "nature" in human relationships. What then is the

position of this contrast in Rousseau's mature political thought? It

is clear that the position is not merely that of the Discourses. In

them, he envisaged only the faults of actual societies; now, he is

concerned with the possibility of a rational society. His aim is to

justify the change from "nature" to "society," although it has left

men in chains. He is in search of the true society, which leaves men

"as free as before." Altogether, the space occupied by the idea of

nature in the _Social Contract_ is very small. It is used of necessity

in the controversial chapters, in which Rousseau is refuting false

theories of social obligation; but when once he has brushed aside

the false prophets, he lets the idea of nature go with them, and

concerns himself solely with giving society the rational sanction he

has promised. It becomes clear that, in political matters at any rate,

the "state of nature" is for him only a term of controversy. He has

in effect abandoned, in so far as he ever held it, the theory of a

human golden age; and where, as in the _Emile_, he makes use of the

idea of nature, it is broadened and deepened out of all recognition.

Despite many passages in which the old terminology cleaves to him, he

means by "nature" in this period not the original state of a thing,

nor even its reduction to the simplest terms: he is passing over to

the conception of "nature" as identical with the full development of

capacity, with the higher! idea of human freedom. This view may be seen

in germ even in the _Discourse on Inequality_, where, distinguishing

self-respect (_amour de soi_) from egoism (_amour-propre_), Rousseau

makes the former, the property of the "natural" man, consist not in

the desire for self-aggrandisement, but in the seeking of satisfaction

for reasonable desire accompanied by benevolence; whereas egoism is

the preference of our own interests to those of others, self-respect

merely puts us on an equal footing with our fellows. It is true that

in the Discourse Rousseau is pleading against the development of many

human faculties; but he is equally advocating the fullest development

of those he regards as "natural," by which he means merely "good."

The "state of society," as envisaged in the _Social Contract_, is no

longer in contradiction to the "state of nature" upheld in the _Emile_,

where indeed the social environment is of the greatest importance, and,

though the pupil is screened from it, he is none the less being trained

for it. Indeed the views given in the _Social Contract_ are summarised

in the fifth book of the _Emile_, and by this summary the essential

unity of Rousseau's system is emphasised.

Rousseau's object, then, in the first words of the _Social Contract_,

"is to inquire if, in the civil order, there can be any sure and

certain, rule of administration, taking men as they are and laws as

they might be." Montesquieu took laws as they were, and saw what sort

of men they made: Rousseau, founding his whole system on human freedom,

takes man as the basis, and regards him as giving himself what laws he

pleases. He takes his stand on the nature of human freedom: on this he

bases his whole system, making the will of the members the sole basis

of every society.

In working out his theory, Rousseau makes use throughout of three

general and, to some extent, alternative conceptions. These are the

Social Contract, Sovereignty and the General Will. We shall now have to

examine each of these in turn.

The Social Contract theory is as old as the sophists of Greece (see

Plato, _Republic_, Book II and the _Gorgias_), and as I elusive.

It has been adapted to the most opposite points of view, and used,

in different forms, on both sides of every question to which it

could conceivably be applied. It is frequent in mediæval writers,

a commonplace with the theorists of the Renaissance, and in the

eighteenth century already nearing its fall before a wider conception.

It would be a long, as well as a thankless, task to trace its history

over again: it may be followed best in D. G. Ritchie's admirable essay

on it in _Darwin and Hegel and Other Studies_. For us, it is important

only to regard it in its most general aspect, before studying the

special use made of it by Rousseau. Obviously, in one form or another,

it is a theory very easily arrived at. Wherever any form of government

apart from the merest tyranny exists, reflection on the basis of the

State cannot but lead to the notion that, in one sense or another,

it is based on the consent, tacit or expressed, past or present, of

its members. In this alone, the greater part of the Social Contract

theory is already latent. Add the desire to find actual justification

for a theory in facts, and, especially in an age possessed only of the

haziest historical sense, this doctrine of consent will inevitably

be given a historical setting. If in addition there is a tendency

to regard society as something unnatural to humanity, the tendency

will become irresistible. By writers of almost all schools, the

State will be represented as having arisen, in some remote age, out

of a compact or, in more legal phrase, contract between two or more

parties. The only class that will be able to resist the doctrine is

that which maintains the divine right of kings, and holds that all

existing governments were were imposed on the people by the direct

interposition of God. All who are not prepared to maintain that will be

partisans of some form or other of the Social Contract theory.

It is, therefore, not surprising that we find among its advocates

writers of the most opposite points of view. Barely stated, it is a

mere formula, which may be filled in with any content from absolutism

to pure republicanism. And, in the hands of some at least of its

supporters, it turns out to be a weapon that cuts both ways. We shall

be in a better position to judge of its usefulness when we have seen

its chief varieties at work.

All Social Contract theories that are at all definite fall under one

or other of two heads. They represent society as based on an original

contract either between the people and the government, or between all

the individuals composing the State. Historically, modern theory passes

from the first to the second of these forms.

The doctrine that society is founded on a contract between the people

and the government is of mediæval origin. It was often supported by

references to the Old Testament, which contains a similar view in

an unreflective form. It is found in most of the great political

writers of the sixteenth century; in Buchanan, and in the writings

of James I: it persists into the seventeenth in the works of Grotius

and Puffendorf. Grotius is sometimes held to have stated the theory

so as to admit both forms of contract; but it is clear that he is

only thinking of the first form as admitting democratic as well as

monarchical government. We find it put very clearly by the Convention

Parliament of 1688, which accuses James II of having "endeavoured

to subvert the constitution of the kingdom by breaking the original

contract between king and people." While Hobbes, on the side of the

royalists, is maintaining the contract theory in its second form, the

Parliamentarian Algernon Sidney adheres to the idea of a contract

between the people and the government.

In this form, the theory clearly admits of opposite interpretations. It

may be held that the people, having given itself up once for all to its

rulers, has nothing more to ask of them, and is bound to submit to any

usage they may choose to inflict. This, however, is not the implication

most usually drawn from it. The theory, in this form, originated with

theologians who were also lawyers. Their view of a contract implied

mutual obligations; they regarded the ruler as bound, by its terms,

to govern constitutionally. The old idea that a king must not violate

the sacred customs of the realm passes easily into the doctrine that he

must not violate the terms of the original contract between himself and

his people. Just as in the days of the Norman kings, every appeal on

the part of the people for more liberties was couched in the form of a

demand that the customs of the "good old times" of Edward the Confessor

should be respected, so in the seventeenth century every act of popular

assertion or resistance was stated as an appeal to the king not to

violate the contract. The demand was a good popular cry, and it seemed

to have the theorists behind it. Rousseau gives his refutation of this

view, which he had, in the _Discourse on Inequality_, maintained in

passing, in the sixteenth chapter of the third book of the _Social

Contract._ (See also Book I, chap, iv, init.) His attack is really

concerned also with the theory of Hobbes, which in some respects

resembles, as we shall see, this first view; but, in form at least,

it is directed against this form of contract. It will be possible to

examine it more closely, when the second view has been considered.

The second view, which may be called the Social Contract theory proper,

regards society as originating in, or based on, an agreement between

the individuals composing it. It seems to be found first, rather

vaguely, in Richard Hooker's _Ecclesiastical Polity_, from which Locke

largely borrowed: and it reappears, in varying forms, in Milton's

_Tenure of Kings and Magistrates_, in Hobbes's _Leviathan_, in Locke's

_Treatises on Civil Government_, and in Rousseau. The best-known

instance of its actual use is by the Pilgrim Fathers on the _Mayflower_

in 1620, in whose declaration occurs the phrase, "We do solemnly and

mutually, in the presence of God and of one another, covenant and

combine ourselves together into a civil body politic." The natural

implication of this view would seem to be the corollary of complete

popular Sovereignty which Rousseau draws. But before Rousseau's time

it had been used to support views as diverse as those which rested on

the first form. We saw that, in Grotius's great work, _De Jure Belli et

Pacis_, it was already possible to doubt which of the two theories was

being advocated. The first theory was, historically, a means of popular

protest against royal aggression. As soon as popular government was

taken into account, the act of contract between people and government

became in effect merely a contract between the individuals composing

the society, and readily passed over into the second form.

The second theory, in its ordinary form, expresses only the view

that the people is everywhere Sovereign, and that, in the phrase

of Milton's treatise, "the power of kings and magistrates is only

derivative." Before, however, this view had been worked up into a

philosophical theory, it had already been used by Hobbes to support

precisely opposite principles. Hobbes agrees that the original contract

is one between all the individuals composing the State, and that the

government is no party to it; but he regards the people as agreeing,

not merely to form a State, but to invest a certain person or certain

persons with the government of it. He agrees that the people is

naturally supreme, but regards it as alienating its Sovereignty by

the contract itself, and delegating its power, wholly and for ever,

to the government. As soon, therefore, as the State is set up, the

government becomes for Hobbes the Sovereign; there is no more question

of popular Sovereignty, but only of passive obedience: the people is

bound, by the contract, to obey its ruler, no matter whether he governs

well or ill. It has alienated all its rights to the Sovereign, who is,

therefore, absolute master. Hobbes, living in a time of civil wars,

regards the worst government as better than anarchy, and is, therefore,

at pains to find arguments in support of any form of absolutism. It is

easy to pick holes in this system, and to see into what difficulties

a conscientious Hobbist might be led by a revolution. For as soon as

the revolutionaries get the upper hand, he will have to sacrifice one

of his principles: he will have to side against either the actual or

the legitimate Sovereign. It is easy also to see that alienation of

liberty, even if possible for an individual, which Rousseau denies,

cannot bind his posterity. But, with all its faults, the view of Hobbes

is on the whole admirably, if ruthlessly, logical, and to it Rousseau

owes a great deal.

The special shape given to the second Social Contract theory by Hobbes

looks, at first sight, much like a combination, into a single act,

of both the contracts. This, however, is not the view he adopts. The

theory of a contract between government and people had, as we have

seen, been used mainly as a support for popular liberties, a means of

assertion against the government. Hobbes, whose whole aim is to make

his government Sovereign, can only do this by leaving the government

outside the contract: he thus avoids the necessity of submitting it to

any obligation whatsoever, and leaves it absolute and irresponsible. He

secures, in fact, not merely a State which has unbounded rights against

the individual, but a determinate authority with the right to enforce

those rights. His theory is not merely Statism (_étatisme_); it is pure

despotism.

It is clear that, if such a theory is to be upheld, it can stand only

by the view, which Hobbes shares with Grotius, that a man can alienate

not merely his own liberty, but also that of his descendants, and

that, consequently, a people as a whole can do the same. This is the

point at which both Locke and Rousseau attack it. Locke, whose aim is

largely to justify the Revolution of 1688, makes government depend,

not merely at its institution, but always, on the consent of the

governed, and regards all rulers as liable to be displaced if they

govern tyrannically. He omits, however, to provide any machinery short

of revolution for the expression of popular opinion, and, on the whole,

seems to regard the popular consent as something essentially tacit and

assumed. He regards the State as existing mainly to protect life and

property, and is, in all his assertions of popular rights, so cautious

as to reduce them almost to nothing. It is not till we come to Rousseau

that the second form of the contract theory is stated in its purest and

most logical form.

Rousseau sees clearly the necessity, if popular consent in government

is to be more than a name, of giving it some constitutional means of

expression. For Locke's theory of tacit consent, he substitutes an

active agreement periodically renewed. He looks back with admiration

to the city-states of ancient Greece and, in his own day, reserves

his admiration for the Swiss free cities, Berne and, above all,

Geneva, his native place. Seeing in the Europe of his day no case in

which representative government was working at all democratically,

he was unable to conceive that means might be found of giving effect

to this active agreement in a nation-state; he therefore held that

self-government was impossible except for a city. He wished to break up

the nation-states of Europe, and create instead federative leagues of

independent city-states.

It matters, however, comparatively little, for the appreciation of

Rousseau's political theory in general, that he failed to become the

theorist of the modern State. By taking the State, which must have,

in essentials, everywhere the same basis, at its simplest, he was

able, far better than his predecessors, to bring out the real nature

of the "social tie," an alternative name which he often uses for

the Social Contract. His doctrine I of the underlying principle of

political obligation is that of all great modern writers, from Kant to

Mr. Bosanquet. This fundamental unity has been obscured only because

critics have failed to put the Social Contract theory in its proper

place in Rousseau's system.

This theory was, we have seen, a commonplace. The amount of historical

authenticity assigned to the contract almost universally presupposed

varied enormously. Generally, the weaker a writer's rational basis,

the more he appealed to history--and invented it. It was, therefore,

almost inevitable that Rousseau should cast his theory into the

contractual form. There were, indeed, writers of his time who laughed

at the contract, but they were not writers who constructed a general

system of political philosophy. From Cromwell to Montesquieu and

Bentham, it was the practically minded man, impatient of unactual

hypotheses, who refused to accept the idea of contract. The theorists

were as unanimous in its favour as the Victorians were in favour of

the "organic" theory. But we, criticising them in the light of later

events, are in a better position for estimating the position the

Social Contract really took in their political system. We see that

Locke's doctrine of tacit consent made popular control so unreal that

he was forced, if the State was to have any hold, to make his contract

historical and actual, binding posterity for all time, and that he was

also led to admit a quasi-contract between people and government, as a

second vindication of popular liberties. Rousseau, on the other hand,

bases no vital argument on the historical nature of the contract, in

which, indeed, he clearly does not believe. "How," he asks, "did this

change [from nature to society] come about?" And he answers that he

does not know. Moreover, his aim is to find "a sure and legitimate rule

of administration, taking men as they are and laws as they might be";

that is to say, his Social Contract is something which will be found

at work in every legitimate society, but which will be in abeyance in

all forms of despotism. He clearly means by it no more and no less than

the fundamental principle of political association, the basis of the

unity which enables us, in the State, to realise political liberty by

giving up lawlessness and license. The presentation of this doctrine

in the quasi-historical form of the Social Contract theory is due to

the accident of the time and place in which Rousseau wrote. At the same

time, the importance of the conception is best to be seen in the hard

death it dies. Though no-one, for a hundred years or so, has thought

of regarding it as historical, it has been found so hard to secure

any other phrase explaining as well or better the basis of political

union that, to this day, the phraseology of the contract theory largely

persists. A conception so vital cannot have been barren.

It is indeed, in Rousseau's own thought, only one of the three

different ways in which the basis of political union is stated,

according to the preoccupation of his mind. When he is thinking

quasi-historically, he describes his doctrine as that of the Social

Contract. Modern anthropology, in its attempts to explain the complex

by means of the simple, often strays further from the straight paths

of history and reason. In a semi-legal aspect, using the terminology,

if not the standpoint, of jurisprudence, he restates the same doctrine

in the form of popular Sovereignty. This use tends continually to pass

over into the more philosophical form which comes third. "Sovereignty

is the exercise of the general will." Philosophically, Rousseau's

doctrine finds its expression in the view that the State is based

not on any original convention, not on, any determinate power, but

on the living and sustaining rational will of its members. We have

now to examine first Sovereignty and then the General Will, which is

ultimately Rousseau's guiding conception.

Sovereignty is, first and foremost, a legal term, and it has often been

held that its use in political philosophy merely leads to confusion. In

jurisprudence, we are told, it has the perfectly plain meaning given

to it in Austin's famous definition. The Sovereign is "a _determinate_

human superior, _not_ in a habit of obedience to a like superior, but

receiving _habitual_ obedience from the _bulk_ of a given society."

Where Sovereignty is placed is, on this view, a question purely of

fact, and never of right. We have only to seek out the determinate

human superior in a given society, and we shall have the Sovereign. In

answer to this theory, it is not enough, though it is a valuable point,

to show that such a determinate superior is rarely to be found. Where,

for instance, is the Sovereign of England or of the British Empire? Is

it the King, who is called the Sovereign? Or is it the Parliament,

which is the legislature (for Austin's Sovereign is regarded as the

source of law)? Or is it the electorate, or the whole mass of the

population, with or without the right of voting? Clearly all these

exercise a certain influence in the making of laws. Or finally, is it

now the Cabinet? For Austin, one of these bodies would be ruled out as

indeterminate (the mass of the population) and another as responsible

(the Cabinet). But are we to regard the House of Commons or those who

elect it as forming part of the Sovereign? The search for a determinate

Sovereign may be a valuable legal conception; but it has evidently

nothing to do with political theory.

It is, therefore, essential to distinguish between the legal Sovereign

of jurisprudence, and the political Sovereign of political science

and philosophy. Even so, it does not at once become clear what this

political Sovereign may be. Is it the body or bodies of persons in whom

political power in a State actually resides? Is it merely the complex

of actual institutions regarded as embodying the will of the society?

This would leave us still in the realm of mere fact, outside both right

and philosophy. The Sovereign, in the philosophical sense, is neither

the nominal Sovereign, nor the legal Sovereign, nor the political

Sovereign of fact and common sense: it is the consequence of the

fundamental bond of union, the restatement of the doctrine of Social

Contract, the foreshadowing of that of General Will. The Sovereign

is that body in the State in which political _power ought_ always to

reside, and in which the _right_ to such power _does_ always reside.

The idea at the back of the philosophical conception of Sovereignty

is, therefore, essentially the same as that we found to underlie the

Social Contract theory. It is the view that the people, whether it

can alienate its right or not, is the ultimate director of its own

destinies, the final power from which there is no appeal. In a sense,

this is recognised even by Hobbes, who makes the power of his absolute

Sovereign, the predecessor of Austin's "determinate human superior,"

issue first of all from the Social Contract, which is essentially a

popular act. The difference between Hobbes and Rousseau on this point

is solely that Rousseau regards as inalienable a supreme power which

Hobbes makes the people alienate in its first corporate action. That

is to say, Hobbes in fact accepts the theory of popular supremacy in

name only to destroy it in fact; Rousseau asserts the theory in its

only logical form, and is under no temptation to evade it by means of

false historical assumptions. In Locke, a distinction is already drawn

between the legal and the actual Sovereign, which Locke calls "supreme

power"; Rousseau unites the absolute Sovereignty of Hobbes and the

"popular consent" of Locke into the philosophic doctrine of popular

Sovereignty, which has since been the established form of the theory.

His final view represents a return from the perversions of Hobbes to

a doctrine already familiar to mediæval and Renaissance writers; but

it is not merely a return. In its passage the view has fallen into its

place in a complete system of political philosophy.

In a second important respect Rousseau differentiates himself from

Hobbes. For Hobbes, the Sovereign is identical with the government.

He is so hot for absolutism largely because he regards revolution,

the overthrow of the existing government, as at the same time the

dissolution of the body politic, and a return to complete anarchy or to

the "state of nature." Rousseau and, to some extent, Locke meet this

view by sharp division between the supreme power and the government.

For Rousseau, they are so clearly distinct that even a completely

democratic government is not at the same time the Sovereign; its

members are sovereign only in a different capacity and as a different

corporate body, just as two different societies may exist for different

purposes with exactly the same members. Pure democracy, however, the

government of the State by all the people in every detail, is not,

as Rousseau says, a possible human institution. All governments are

really _mixed_ in character; and what we call a democracy is only a

more or less democratic government. Government, therefore, will always

be to some extent in the hands of selected persons. Sovereignty, on

the other hand, is in his view absolute, inalienable, indivisible, and

indestructible. It cannot be limited, abandoned, shared or destroyed.

It is an essential part of all social life that the right to control

the destinies of the State belongs in the last resort to the whole

people. There clearly must in the end be somewhere in the society an

ultimate court of appeal, whether determinate or not; but, unless

Sovereignty is distinguished from government, the government, passing

under the name of Sovereign, will inevitably be regarded as absolute.

The only way to avoid the conclusions of Hobbes is, therefore, to

establish a clear separation between them.

Rousseau tries to do this by an adaptation of the doctrine of the

"three powers." But instead of three independent powers sharing the

supreme authority, he gives only two, and makes one of these wholly

dependent on the other. He substitutes for the co-ordination of the

legislative, the executive, and the judicial authorities, a system

in which the legislative power, or Sovereign, is always supreme, the

executive, or government, always secondary and derivative, and the

judicial power merely a function of government. This division he makes,

naturally, one of _will_ and _power_. The government is merely to carry

out the decrees, or acts of will, of the Sovereign people. Just as

the human will transfers a command to its members for execution, so

the body politic may give its decisions force by setting up authority

which, like the brain, may command its members. In delegating the power

necessary for the execution of its will, it is abandoning none of its

supreme authority. It remains Sovereign, and can at any moment recall

the grants it has made. Government, therefore, exists only at the

Sovereign's pleasure, and is always revocable by the sovereign will.

It will be seen, when we come to discuss the nature of the General

Will, that this doctrine really contains the most valuable part of

Rousseau's theory. Here, we are concerned rather with its limitations.

The distinction between legislative and executive functions is

in practice very hard to draw. In Rousseau's case, it is further

complicated by the presence of a second distinction. The legislative

power, the Sovereign, is concerned only with what is general, the

executive only with what is particular. This distinction, the full

force of which can only be seen in connection with the General Will,

means roughly that a matter is general when it concerns the whole

community equally, and makes no mention of any particular class; as

soon as it refers to any class or person, it becomes particular, and

can no longer form the subject matter of an act of Sovereignty. However

just this distinction may seem in the abstract, it is clear that its

effect is to place all the power in the hands of the executive: modern

legislation is almost always concerned with particular classes and

interests. It is not, therefore, a long step from the view of Rousseau

to the modern theory of democratic government, in which the people has

little power beyond that of removing its rulers if they displease it.

As long, however, as we confine our view to the city-state of which

Rousseau is thinking, his distinction is capable of preserving for the

people a greater actual exercise of will. A city can often generalise

where a nation must particularise.

It is in the third book of the _Social Contract_, where Rousseau is

discussing the problem of government, that it is most essential to

remember that his discussion has in view mainly the city-state and

not the nation. Broadly put, his principle of government is that

democracy is possible only in small States, aristocracy in those of

medium extent, and monarchy in great States (Book III, chap. iii).

In considering this view, we have to take into account two things.

First, he rejects representative government; will being, in his

theory, inalienable, representative Sovereignty is impossible. But, as

he regards all general acts as functions of Sovereignty, this means

that no general act can be within the competence of a representative

assembly. In judging this theory, we must take into account all the

circumstances of Rousseau's time. France, Geneva and England were the

three States he took most into account. In France, representative

government was practically non-existent; in Geneva, it was only

partially necessary; in England, it was a mockery, used to support a

corrupt oligarchy against a debased monarchy. Rousseau may well be

pardoned for not taking the ordinary modern view of it. Nor indeed is

it, even in the modern world, so satisfactory an instrument of the

popular will that we can afford wholly to discard his criticism. It is

one of the problems of the day to find some means of securing effective

popular control over a weakened Parliament and a despotic Cabinet.

The second factor is the immense development of local government.

It seemed to Rousseau that, in the nation-state, all authority must

necessarily pass, as it had in France, to the central power. Devolution

was hardly dreamed of; and Rousseau saw the only means of securing

effective popular government in a federal system, starting from

the small unit as Sovereign. The nineteenth century has proved the

falsehood of much of his theory of government; but there are still

many wise comments and fruitful suggestions to be found in the third

book of the _Social Contract_ and in the treatise on the _Government

of Poland_, as well as in his adaptation and criticism of the

_Polysynodie_ of the Abbé de Saint-Pierre, a scheme of local government

for France, born out of its due time.

The point in Rousseau's theory of Sovereignty that offers most

difficulty is his view (Book II, chap, vii) that, for every State,

a _Legislator_ is necessary. We shall understand the section only

by realising that the legislator is, in fact, in Rousseau's system,

the spirit of institutions personified; his place, in a developed

society, is taken by the whole complex of social custom, organisation

and tradition that has grown up with the State. This is made clearer

by the fact that the legislator is not to exercise legislative power;

he is merely to submit his suggestions for popular approval. Thus

Rousseau recognises that, in the case of institutions and traditions as

elsewhere, will, and not force, is the basis of the State.

This may be seen in his treatment of law as a whole (Book II, chap,

vi), which deserves very careful attention. He defines laws as "acts

of the general will," and, agreeing with Montesquieu in making law the

"condition of civil association," goes beyond him only in tracing it

more definitely to its origin in an act of will. The Social Contract

renders law necessary, and at the same time makes it quite clear that

laws can proceed only from the body of citizens who have constituted

the State. "Doubtless," says Rousseau, "there is a universal justice

emanating from reason alone; but this justice, to be admitted among us,

must be mutual. Humbly speaking, in default of natural sanctions, the

laws of justice are ineffective among men." Of the law which set up

among men this reign of mutual justice the General Will is the source.

We thus come at last to the General Will, the most disputed, and

certainly the most fundamental, of all Rousseau's political concepts.

No critic of the _Social Contract_ has found it easy to say either

what precisely its author meant by it, or what is its final value for

political philosophy. The difficulty is increased because Rousseau

himself sometimes halts in the sense which he assigns to it, and even

seems to suggest by it two different ideas. Of its broad meaning,

however, there can be no doubt. The effect of the Social Contract is

the creation of a new individual. When it has taken place, "at once,

in place of the individual personality of each contracting party, the

act of association creates a moral and collective body, composed of as

many members as the assembly contains voters, and receiving from the

act its unity, its common identity (_moi commun_), its life and its

will" (Book I, chap. vi). The same doctrine had been stated earlier,

in the _Political Economy_, without the historical setting. "The body

politic is also a moral being, possessed of a will, and this general

will, which tends always to the preservation and welfare of the whole

and of every part, and is the source of the laws, constitutes for all

the members of the State, in their relations to one another and to it,

the rule of what is just or unjust." It will be seen at once that the

second statement, which could easily be fortified by others from the

_Social Contract_, says more than the first. It is not apparent that

the common will, created by the institution of society, need "tend

always to the welfare of the whole." Is not the common will at least as

fallible as the will of a single individual? May it not equally be led

away from its true interests to the pursuit of pleasure or of something

which is really harmful to it? And, if the whole society may vote what

conduces to the momentary pleasure of all the members and at the same

time to the lasting damage of the State as a whole, is it not still

more likely that some of the members will try to secure their private

interests in opposition to those of the whole and of others? All these

questions, and others like them, have been asked by critics of the

conception of the General Will.

Two main points are involved, to one of which Rousseau gives a clear

and definite answer. "There is often," he says, "a great deal of

difference between the _will of all_ and the _general will_; the latter

takes account only of the common interest, while the former takes

private interest into account, and is no more than a sum of particular

wills." "The agreement of all interests is formed by opposition to that

of each" (Book II, chap. iii). It is indeed possible for a citizen,

when an issue is presented to him, to vote not for the good of the

State, but for his own good; but, in such a case, his vote, from the

point of view of the General Will, is merely negligible. But "does it

follow that the general will is exterminated or corrupted? Not at all:

it is always constant, unalterable, and pure; but it is subordinated

to other wills which encroach upon its sphere.... The fault [each

man] commits [in detaching his interest from the common interest] is

that of changing the state of the question, and answering something

different from what he is asked. Instead of saying by his vote 'It is

to the advantage of the State,' he says, 'It is to the advantage of

this or that man or party that this or that view should prevail.' Thus

the law of public order in assemblies is not so much to maintain in

them the general will as to secure that the question be always put

to it, and the answer always given by it" (Book IV, chap. i). These

passages, with many others that may be found in the text, make it quite

clear that by the General Will Rousseau means something quite distinct

from the Will of All, with which it should never have been confused.

The only excuse for such confusion lies in his view that when, _in a

city-state_, all particular associations are avoided, votes guided

by individual self-interest will always cancel one another, so that

majority voting will always result in the General Will. This is clearly

not the case, and in this respect we may charge him with pushing the

democratic argument too far. The point, however, can be better dealt

with at a later stage. Rousseau makes no pretence that the mere voice

of a majority is infallible; he only says, at the most, that, given his

ideal conditions, it would be so.

The second main point raised by critics of the General Will is

whether in defining it as a will directed solely to the common

interest, Rousseau means to exclude acts of public immorality and

short-sightedness. He answers the questions in different ways. First,

an act of public immorality would be merely an unanimous instance

of selfishness, different in no particular, from similar acts less

unanimous, and therefore forming no part of a General Will. Secondly,

a mere ignorance of our own and the State's good, entirely unprompted

by selfish desires, does not make our will anti-social or individual.

"The general will is always right and tends to the public advantage;

but it does not follow that the deliberations of the people are always

equally correct. Our will is always for our own good, but we do not

always see what that is: the people is never corrupted, but it is often

deceived, and on such occasions only does it seem to will what is bad"

(Book II, chap. iii). It is impossible to acquit Rousseau in some of

the passages in which he treats of the General Will, of something worse

than obscurity--positive contradiction. It is probable, indeed, that

he never quite succeeded in getting his view clear in his own mind;

there is nearly always, in his treatment of it, a certain amount of

muddle and fluctuation. These difficulties the student must be left to

worry out for himself; it is only possible to present, in outline, what

Rousseau meant to convey.

The treatment of the General Will in the _Political Economy_ is brief

and lucid, and furnishes the best guide to his meaning. The definition

of it in this work, which has already been quoted, is followed by

a short account of the nature of _general wills_ as a whole. "Every

political society is composed of other smaller societies of various

kinds, each of which has its interest and rules of conduct; but those

societies which everybody perceives, because they have an external

or authorised form, are not the only ones that actually exist in the

State: all individuals who are united by a common interest compose as

many others, either temporary or permanent, whose influence is none the

less real because it is less apparent.... The influence of all these

tacit or formal associations causes by the influence of their will as

many modifications of the public will. The will of these particular

societies has always two relations; for the members of the association,

it is a general will; for the great society, it is a particular will;

and it is often right with regard to the first object and wrong as to

the second. The most general will is always the most just, and the

voice of the people is, in fact, the voice of God."

The General Will, Rousseau continues in substance, is always for the

common good; but it is sometimes divided into smaller general wills,

which are wrong in relation to it. The supremacy of the great General

Will is "the first principle of public economy and the fundamental

rule of government." In this passage, which differs only in clearness

and simplicity from others in the _Social Contract_ itself, it is easy

to see how far Rousseau had in his mind a perfectly definite idea.

Every association of several persons creates a new common will; every

association of a permanent character has already a "personality" of

its own, and in consequence a "general" will; the State, the highest

known form of association, is a fully developed moral and collective

being with a common will which is, in the highest sense yet known to

us, general. All such wills are general only for the members of the

associations Which exercise them; for outsiders, or rather for other

associations, they are purely particular wills. This applies even to

the State; "for, in relation to what is outside it, the State becomes

a simple being, an individual" (_Social Contract_, Book I. chap. vii).

In certain passages in the _Social Contract_, in his criticism of

the Abbé de Saint-Pierre's _Project of Perpetual Peace_, and in the

second chapter of the original draft of the _Social Contract_, Rousseau

takes into account the possibility of a still higher individual, "the

federation of the world." In the _Political Economy_, thinking of the

nation-state, he affirms what in the _Social Contract_ (Book II, chap,

iii) he denies of the city, and recognises that the life of a nation

is made up of the whole complex of its institutions, and that the

existence of lesser general wills is not necessarily a menace to the

General Will of the State. In the _Social Contract_, he only treats

of these lesser wills in relation to the government, which, he shows,

has a will of its own, general for its members, but particular for

the State as a whole (Book III, chap. ii). This governmental will he

there prefers to call _corporate will_, and by this name it will be

convenient to distinguish the lesser general wills from the General

Will of the State that is over them all.

So far, there is no great difficulty; but in discussing the

infallibility of the General Will we are on more dangerous ground.

Rousseau's treatment here clearly oscillates between regarding it

as a purely ideal conception, to which human institutions can only

approximate, and holding it to be realised actually in every republican

State, _i.e._ wherever the people is the Sovereign in fact as well as

in right. Book IV, chap, ii is the most startling passage expressing

the latter view. "When in the popular assembly a law is proposed, what

the people is asked is not exactly whether it accepts or rejects the

proposal, but whether it is in conformity with the general will, which

is its will.... When, therefore, the opinion that is contrary to my own

prevails, this proves neither more nor less than that I was mistaken,

and that what I thought to be the general will was not so." On his own

principles laid down elsewhere, Rousseau would have to admit that it

proves nothing of the sort, except in so far as the other voters have

been guided by the general interest. Though he sometimes affirms the

opposite, there is no security on his principles that the will of the

majority will be the General Will. At the most it can only be said that

there is a greater chance of its being general than of the will of any

selected class of persons not being led away by corporate interests.

The justification of democracy is not that it is always right, even in

intention, but that it is more general than any other kind of supreme

power.

Fundamentally, however, the doctrine of the General Will is independent

of these contradictions. Apart from Kant's narrow and rigid logic,

it is essentially one with his doctrine of the autonomy of the will.

Kant takes Rousseau's political theory, and applies it to ethics as a

whole. The germ of mis application is already found in Rousseau's own

work; for he protests more than once against attempts to treat moral

and political philosophy apart, as distinct studies, and asserts their

absolute unity. This is brought out clearly in the _Social Contract_

(Book I, chap, viii), where he is speaking of the change brought

about by the establishment of society. "The passage from the state of

nature to the civil state produces a very remarkable change in man,

by substituting justice for instinct in his conduct, and giving his

actions the morality they had hitherto lacked.... What man loses by

the social contract is his natural liberty and an unlimited right to

everything he tries to get and succeeds in getting; what he gains is

civil liberty ... which is limited by the general will.... We might,

over and above all this, add to what man acquires in the civil state

_moral liberty, which alone makes him truly master of himself; for the

mere impulse of appetite is slavery, while obedience to a law which we

prescribe to ourselves is liberty._"

This one chapter contains the gist of the Kantian moral philosophy,

and makes it quite clear that Rousseau perceived its application to

ethics as well as to politics. The morality of our acts consists in

their being directed in accordance with universal law; acts in which

we are guided merely by our passions are not moral. Further, man can

only possess freedom when his whole being is unified in the pursuit of

a single end; and, as his whole being can be unified only in pursuit of

a rational end, which alone excludes contradiction, only moral acts,

only men directing their lives by universal law, are free. In Kantian

language, the will is autonomous (_i.e._ prescribes to itself its own

law) only when it is directed to a universal end; when it is guided

by selfish passions, or particular considerations, it is heteronomous

(_i.e._ receives its law from something external to itself), and in

bondage. Rousseau, as he says (Book I, chap, viii), was not directly

concerned with the ethical sense of the word "liberty," and Kant was,

therefore, left to develop the doctrine into a system; but the phrases

of this chapter prove false the view that the doctrine of a Real Will

arises first in connection with politics, and is only transferred

thence to moral philosophy. Rousseau bases his political doctrine

throughout on his view of human freedom; it is because man is a free

agent capable of being determined by a universal law prescribed by

himself that the State is in like manner capable of realising the

General Will, that is, of prescribing to itself and its members a

similar universal law.

The General Will, then, is the application of human freedom to

political institutions. Before the value of this conception can be

determined, there is a criticism to be met. The freedom which is

realised in the General Will, we are told, is the freedom of the State

_as a whole_; but the State exists to secure _individual_ freedom for

its members. A free State may be tyrannical; a despot may allow his

subjects every freedom. What guarantee is there that the State, in

freeing itself, will not enslave its members? This criticism has been

made with such regularity that it has to be answered in some detail.

"The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and

protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each

associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still

obey himself alone, and remain as free as before." "The clauses of the

contract ... are everywhere the same and everywhere tacitly admitted

and recognised.... These clauses, properly understood, may be reduced

to one--the total alienation of each associate, together with all his

rights, to the whole community...; for, if the individuals retained

certain rights, as there would be no common superior to decide between

them and the public, each, being on one point his own judge, would ask

to be so on all, and the state of nature would continue" (Book I, chap.

vi). Rousseau sees clearly that it is impossible to place any limits

upon the power of the State; when the people combine into a State, they

must in the end submit to be guided in all things by the will of the

effective majority. Limited Sovereignty is a contradiction in terms;

the Sovereign has a right to all that reason allows it, and as soon as

reason demands that the State shall interfere, no appeal to individual

rights can be made. What is best for the State must be suffered by the

individual. This, however, is very far from meaning that the ruling

power ought, or has the moral right, to interfere in every particular

case. Rousseau has been subjected to much foolish criticism because,

after upholding the State's absolute supremacy, he goes on (Book II,

chap, iv) to speak of "the limits of the sovereign power." There is no

contradiction whatsoever. Wherever State intervention is for the best,

the State has a right to intervene; but it has no moral right, though

it must have a legal right, to intervene where it is not for the best.

The General Will, being always in the right, will intervene only when

intervention is proper. "The Sovereign," therefore, "cannot impose upon

its subjects any fetters that are useless to the community, nor can

it even wish to do so." As, however, the infallibility of the General

Will is not enough to make the State infallible, there still remains

an objection. Since the General Will cannot always be arrived at, who

is to judge whether an act of intervention is justified? Rousseau's

answer fails to satisfy many of his critics. "Each man alienates, I

admit, by the social compact, only such part of his powers, goods and

liberty as it is important for the community to control; but it must

also be granted that the Sovereign is sole judge of what is important."

This, we are told, is mere State tyranny over again. But how is it

possible to avoid such a conclusion? Rousseau has already given his

reasons for objecting to a limited Sovereignty (Book I, chap, vi): it

follows absolutely that we must take the best machinery we can find for

the execution of the State's functions. No doubt the machinery will

be imperfect; but we can only try to get as near the General Will as

possible, without hoping to realise it fully.

The answer, therefore, to the critics who hold that, in securing civil

liberty Rousseau has sacrificed the individual may be put after this

fashion. Liberty is not a merely negative conception; it does not

consist solely in the absence of restraint. The purest individualist,

Herbert Spencer for example, would grant that a certain amount of

State interference is necessary to _secure_ liberty; but as soon as

this idea of securing liberty is admitted in the smallest degree, the

whole idea has undergone profound modification. It can no longer be

claimed that every interference on the part of the State lessens the

liberty of the individual; the "liberty-fund" theory is as untenable

as that of the "wages-fund": the members of a State may be more free

when all are restrained from doing one another mutual damage than when

any one is left "free" to enslave another or be himself enslaved. This

principle once admitted, the precise amount of State interference that

is necessary to secure freedom will be always a matter for particular

discussion; every case must be decided on its own merits, and, in

right, the Sovereign will be omnipotent, or subject only to the law of

reason.

It has often been held that Rousseau cannot really have inspired the

French Revolution because this view is totally inconsistent with the

"rights of man," which the revolutionaries so fervently proclaimed.

If every right is alienated in the Social Contract, what sense can

there be in talking of "natural rights" afterwards? This, however, is

to misrepresent Rousseau's position. The rights of man as they are

preached by the modern individualist, are not the rights of which

Rousseau and the revolutionaries were thinking. We have seen that the

theory of the _Social Contract_ is founded on human freedom: this

freedom carries with it, in Rousseau's view, the guarantee of its own

permanence; it is inalienable and indestructible. When, therefore,

government becomes despotic, it has no more right over its subjects

than the master has over his slave (Book I, chap, iv); the question is

then purely one of might. In such cases, appeal may be made either to

the terms of the Social Contract, or, putting the same idea another

way, to the "natural right" of human freedom. This natural right is

in no sense inconsistent with the complete alienation supposed in the

Contract; for the Contract itself reposes on it and guarantees its

maintenance. The Sovereign must, therefore, treat all its members

alike; but, so long as it does this, it remains omnipotent. If it

leaves the general for the particular, and treats one man better than

another, it ceases to be Sovereign; but equality is already presupposed

in the terms of the Contract.

It is more profitable to attack Rousseau for his facile identification

of the interests of each of the citizens with those of all; but here,

too, most of the critics have abused their opportunity. He does not

maintain that there can be no opposition between a man's particular

interests and the General Will as present in him; on the contrary, he

explicitly and consistently affirms the presence of such opposition

(Book I, chap. vii). What he asserts is, first, that the Sovereign, as

such, cannot have any interest contrary to the interest of the citizens

as a whole--that is obvious; and, secondly, that it cannot have an

interest contrary to that of any individual. The second point Rousseau

proves by showing that the omnipotence of the Sovereign is essential

to the preservation of society, which in turn is necessary for the

individual. His argument, however, really rests on the fundamental

character of the General Will. He would admit that, in any actual

State, the apparent interest of the many might often conflict with that

of the few; but he would contend that the _real_ interest of State and

individual alike, being subject to universal law could not be such as

to conflict with any other _real_ interest. The interest of the State,

in so far as it is directed by the General Will, must be the interest

of every individual, in so far as he is guided by his _real_ will, that

is, in so far as he is acting universally, rationally and autonomously.

Thus the justification of Rousseau's theory of liberty returns to the

point from which it set out--the omnipotence of the _real will_ in

State and individual. It is in this sense that he speaks of man in the

State as "forced to be free" by the General Will, much as Kant might

speak of a man's lower nature as forced to be free by the universal

mandate of his higher, more real and more rational will. It is in this

recognition of the State as a moral being, with powers of determination

similar to the powers of the individual mind, that the significance

of the General Will ultimately lies. Even, however, among those who

have recognised its meaning, there are some who deny its value as a

conception of political philosophy. If, they say, the General Will is

not the Will of All, if it cannot be arrived at by a majority vote

or by any system of voting whatsoever, then it is nothing; it is a

mere abstraction, neither general, nor a I will. This is, of course,

precisely the criticism to which Kant's "real will" is often subjected.

Clearly, it must be granted at once that the General Will does not

form the whole actual content of the will of every citizen. Regarded

as actual, it must always be qualified by "in so far as" or its

equivalent. This, however, is so far from destroying the value of the

conception that therein lies its whole value. In seeking the universal

basis of society, we are not seeking anything that is wholly actualised

in any State, though we must be seeking something which exists, more or

less perfectly, in every State.

The point of the Social Contract theory, as Rousseau states it, is that

legitimate society exists by the consent of the people, and acts by

popular will. Active will, and not force or even mere consent, is the

basis of the "republican" State, which can only possess this character

because individual wills are not really self-sufficient and separate,

but complementary and inter-dependent. The answer to the question "Why

ought I to obey the General Will?" is that the General Will exists in

me and not outside me. I am "obeying only myself," as Rousseau says.

The State is not a mere accident of human history, a mere device for

the protection of life and property; it responds to a fundamental need

of human nature, and is rooted in the character of the individuals

who compose it. The whole complex of human institutions is not a mere

artificial structure; it is the expression of the mutual dependence

and fellowship of men. If it means anything, the theory of the General

Will means that the State is natural, and the "state of nature" an

abstraction. Without this basis of will and natural need, no society

could for a moment subsist; the State exists and claims our obedience

because it is a natural extension of our personality.

The problem, however, still remains of making the General Will, in

any particular State, active and conscious. It is clear that there

are States in which visible and recognised institutions hardly answer

in any respect to its requirements. Even in such States, however,

there is a limit to tyranny; deep down, in immemorial customs with

which the despot dare not interfere, the General Will is still active

and important. It does not reside merely in the outward and visible

organisation of social institutions, in that complex of formal

associations which we may call the State; its roots go deeper and its

branches spread further. It is realised, in greater or less degree, in

the whole life of the community, in the entire complex of private and

public relations which, in the widest sense, may be called Society. We

may recognise it not only in a Parliament, a Church, a University or a

Trade Union, but also in the most intimate human relationships, and the

most trivial, as well as the most vital, social customs.

But, if all these things go to the making of the General Will in every

community, the General Will has, for politics, primarily a narrower

sense. The problem here is to secure its supremacy in the official

institutions and public councils of the nation. This is the question to

which Rousseau chiefly addressed himself. Here, too, we shall find the

General Will the best possible conception for the guidance of political

endeavour For the General Will is realised not when that is done

which is best for the community, but when, in addition, the community

as a whole has willed the doing of it. The General Will demands not

only good government, but also self-government--not only rational

conduct, but good-will. This is what some of Rousseau's admirers are

apt to forget when they use his argument, as he himself was sometimes

inclined to use it, in support of pure aristocracy. Rousseau said that

aristocracy was the best of all governments, but he said also that it

was the worst of all usurpers of Sovereignty. Nor must it be forgotten

that he expressly specified elective aristocracy. _There is no General

Will unless the people wills the good_. General Will may be embodied in

one man willing universally; but it can only be embodied in the State

when the mass of the citizens so wills. The will must be "general" in

two senses: in the sense in which Rousseau used the word, it must be

general in its object, _i.e._ universal; but it must also be generally

held, _i.e._ common to all or to the majority.[1]

The General Will is, then, above all a universal and, in the Kantian

sense, a "rational" will. It would be possible to find in Rousseau

many more anticipations of the views of Kant; but it is better here

to confine comment to an important difference between them. It is

surprising to find in Kant, the originator of modern "intellectualism,"

and in Rousseau, the great apostle of "sentiment," an essentially

similar view on the nature and function of the will. Their views,

however, present a difference; for, whereas the moving force of Kant's

moral imperative is purely "rational," Rousseau finds the sanction of

his General Will in human feeling itself. As we can see from a passage

in the original draft of the _Social Contract,_ the General Will

remains purely rational. "No-one will dispute that the General Will is

in each individual a pure act of the understanding, which reasons while

the passions are silent on what a man may demand of his neighbour and

on what his neighbour has a right to demand of him." The will remains

purely rational, but Rousseau feels that it needs an external motive

power. "If natural law," he writes, "were written only on the tablets

of human reason it would be incapable of guiding the greater part of

our actions; but it is also graven on the heart of man in characters

that cannot be effaced, and it is there it speaks to him more strongly

than all the precepts of the philosophers" (from an unfinished essay on

_The State of War_). The nature of this guiding sentiment is explained

in the _Discourse on Inequality_ (p. 197, note 2), where egoism

(_amour-propre_) is contrasted with self-respect (_amour de soi_).

Naturally, Rousseau holds, man does not want everything for himself,

and nothing for others. "Egoism" and "altruism" are both one-sided

qualities arising out of the perversion of man's, "natural goodness."

"Man is born good," that is, man's nature really makes him desire only

to be treated as one among others, to share equally. This natural love

of equality (_amour de soi_) includes love of others as well as love

of self, and egoism, loving one's self at the expense of others, is

an unnatural and perverted condition. The "rational" precepts of the

General Will, therefore, find an echo in the heart of the "natural"

man, and, if we can only secure the human being against perversion by

existing societies, the General Will can be made actual.

This is the meeting-point of Rousseau's educational with his political

theory. His view as a whole can be studied only by taking together the

_Social Contract_ and the _Emile_ as explained by the _Letters on the

Mount_ and other works. The fundamental dogma of the natural goodness

of man finds no place directly in the _Social Contract_; but it lurks

behind the whole of his political theory, and is indeed, throughout,

his master-conception. His educational, his religious, his political

and his ethical ideas are all inspired by a single consistent attitude.

Here we have been attending only to his political theory; in the volume

which is to follow, containing the _Letters on the Mount_ and other

works, some attempt will be made to draw the various threads together

and estimate his work as a whole. The political works, however, can be

read separately, and the _Social Contract_ itself is still by far the

best of all text-books of political philosophy. Rousseau's political

influence, so far from being dead, is every day increasing; and as new

generations and new classes of men come to the study of his work, his

conceptions, often hazy and undeveloped, but nearly always of lasting

value, will assuredly form the basis of a new political philosophy, in

which they will be taken up and transformed. This new philosophy is

the work of the future; but, rooted upon the conception of Rousseau,

it will stretch far back into the past. Of our time, it will be for

all time; its solutions will be at once relatively permanent and

ceaselessly progressive.

G. D. H. COLE.

[1] The term "general" will means, in Rousseau, not so much "will held

by several persons," as will having a general (universal) object. This

is often misunderstood; but the mistake matters the less, because the

General Will must, in fact, be both.

A NOTE ON BOOKS

There are few good books in English on Rousseau's politics. By far the

best treatment is to be found in Mr. Bernard Bosanquet's _Philosophical

Theory of the State_. Viscount Morley's _Rousseau_ is a good life,

but is not of much use as a criticism of views; Mr. W. Boyd's _The

Educational Theory of Rousseau_ contains some fairly good chapters

on the political views. D. G. Ritchie's _Darwin and Hegel_ includes

an admirable essay on _The Social Contract Theory_ and another on

_Sovereignty._ The English translation of Professor Gran's _Rousseau_

is an interesting biography.

In French, there is a good cheap edition of Rousseau's complete works

published by Hachette in thirteen volumes. M. Dreyfus-Brisac's great

edition of the _Contrat Social_ is indispensable, and there is a good

small edition with notes by M. Georges Beaulavon. M. Faguet's study

of Rousseau in his _Dix-huitième siècle--études littéraires_ and his

_Politique comparée de Montesquieu, Voltaire et Rousseau_ are useful,

though I am seldom in agreement with them. M. Henri Rodet's _Le Contrat

Social et les idées politiques de J. J. Rousseau_ is useful, if not

inspired, and there are interesting works by MM. Chuquet, Fabre and

Lemaître. The French translation of Professor Höffding's little volume

on _Rousseau: sa vie et sa philosophie_ is admirable.

Miss Foxley's translation of the _Emile_, especially of Book V, should

be studied in connection with the _Social Contract_. A companion

volume, containing the _Letters on the Mount_ and other works, will be

issued shortly.

G.D.H.C.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PRINCIPAL WORKS: Article in the _Mercure_ in answer to one entitled

Si le monde que nous habitons est une sphère ou une sphéroïde, 1738;

Le Verger de Mme. de Warens, 1739; Sur la musique moderne, 1743; Si

le rétablissement des Sciences et des Arts a contribué à épurer les

Mœurs, prize essay, 1750, translated by R. Wynne, 1752, by anonymous

author, 1760, by H. Smithers, 1818; Devin du Village (opera), 1753,

translated by C. Burney, 1766; Narcisse, ou Amant de lui-même, 1753;

Lettre sur la musique Francaise, 1753; Sur l'origine de l'inégalité

parmi les hommes, 1755; Discours sur deux principes avancés par Rameau,

1755; Sur l'économie politique, 1758; Letter to d'Alembert on his

article Genève in the Encyclopédie, 1758, translated 17595 Lettres à

Voltaire, 1759; Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse, first published under

the title of Lettres de deux amants, habitants d'une petite ville

au pied des Alpes, etc, 1761; Contrat Social, or Principes du droit

politique, 1762; Emile, ou De l'Education, 1762; Lettre à Christophe

de Beaumont, Archevêque de Paris, 1763; Allée de Silvie (poem), 1763;

Lettres écrites de la Montagne, 1764; De l'imitation théâtrale, 1764;

Dictionnaire de musique, 1767, translated by W. Waring, 1779; Lettres

sur son exil du Canton de Berne, 1770.

POSTHUMOUS WORKS: Emile et Sophie, 1780; Les consolations des misères

de ma vie, 1781; Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne, 1782;

Les Confessions, and Rêveries du Promeneur Solitaire, 4 vols., 1782-9;

Nouveau Dédale, 1801; La Botanique de J. J. Rousseau, 1805; translated,

with additional letters, by T. Martyn, 1785, 7th edition, 1807;

Testament de J. J. Rousseau, 1820.

TRANSLATIONS: Héloïse (Eloisa), 1761, with a sequel found after the

author's death, 1784, 1795, 1810; Emile, by Nugent, 1763; anonymous

translator the same year; abridged and annotated by W. H. Payne, 1893;

Emile et Sophie, by Nugent, 1765 (?), by the translator of Eloisa,

1767; Contrat Social, 1764, 1791, in vol. iii. of Political Classics,

1795; 1840 (?), by R. M. Harrington, with Introduction by E. L.

Walter, 1893; by H. J. Tozer 1895, 1902, 1905; Confessions, 2 vols.,

1783; 1796-90, 1861, 1891 (Masterpieces of Foreign Authors), abridged

from 1896 edition, with preface by G. J. Holyoake, 1857; complete

translation (privately printed), 2 vols., 1896; with Introduction

by Hesketh Milis (Sisley Books), 1907; the second part, with a new

collection of letters, 3 vols., 1791.

WORKS: 1764 (6 vols.); 1769 (11 vols.); 1774 (London, 9 vols.); 1782,

etc. (17 vols.); 1790 (33 vols.); 1790 (30 vols., or 35); 1788-93 (39

vols.); 1793-1800 (Didot, 18 vols.), and later editions from this same

firm; Musset-Pathay, 1823-6.

MISCELLANEOUS WORKS: 5 vols., 1767.

POSTHUMOUS WORKS: 1782, 1783; Œuvres inédites (Musset-Pathay), 1825,

1833; Fragments inédits, etc., by A. de Bougy, 1853; Œuvres et

Correspondence inédites (Streckeisen-Moultou), 1861; Fragments inédits;

Recherches biographiques et littéraires, A. Jansen, 1882.

Works translated from the French, 10 vols., 1773-74.

LETTERS: Sur différents Sujets, 5 vols., 1740-53; Lettres nouvelles sur

le motif de sa retraite à la Campagne, adressées à M. de Malesherbes,

1780; Nouvelles lettres, 1789; Lettres au citoyen Lenieps, etc,

1793 (?); Correspondance originate et incite avec Mme. Latour de

Tranqueville et M. du Peyrou, 2 vols., 1803; Lettres inédites à Mme.

d'Epinay (see Memoirs of Mme. d'Epinay), 1818; Lettres de Voltaire et

de Rousseau à C. J. Panckoucke, 1828; Lettres inédites à M. M. Rey,

1858; Lettres à Mme. Dupin (in Le Portefeuille de Mme. Dupin), 1884;

Lettres inédites (correspondence with Mme. Roy de Latour), published

by H. de Rothschild, with preface by L. Claretie, 1892; Lettres

(between Rousseau and "Henriette"), published by H. Buffenoir, 1902;

Correspondance avec Léonard Usteri, 1910.

TRANSLATIONS: Original letters to M. de Malesherbes, d'Alembert,

Mme. la M. de Luxembourg, etc., 1799, 1820; Eighteen letters to Mme.

d'Houdetot, October 1757-March 1758, 1905.

LIFE, etc.: J. H. Fuessli, Remarks on the Writings and Conduct of Jean

Jacques Rousseau, 1767; Staël-Holstein (Baroness de Rocco), Letters

on the Work and Character of Jean Jacques Rousseau (translation),

1789, 1814; J. Morley, Rousseau, 1873, 1886; H. G. Graham, Rousseau

(Foreign Classics for English Readers), 1882; T. Davidson, Rousseau and

Education according to Nature (Great Educators), vol. ix., 1898; J.

Texte, Jean Jacques Rousseau and the Cosmopolitan Spirit in Literature,

etc. (translation), 1899; H. H. Hudson, Rousseau and Naturalism in Life

and Thought (World's Epoch Makers), 1903; F. Macdonald, Jean Jacques

Rousseau, a new criticism, 1906; J. C. Collins, Voltaire, Montesquieu,

and Rousseau in England, 1908.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

THE SOCIAL CONTRACT

BOOK I

FOREWORD

_In which it is inquired why man passes from the state

of nature to the state of society and what are the essential

conditions of the compact._

I The Subject of the first Book

II The first Societies

III The Right of the Strongest

IV Slavery

V That we must always go back to a first Convention

VI The Social Compact

VII The Sovereign

VIII The Civil State

IX Real Property

BOOK II

_Which treats of legislation._

I That Sovereignty is inalienable

II That Sovereignty is indivisible

III Whether the general Will is fallible

IV The Limits of the Sovereign Power

V The Right of Life and Death

VI Law

VII The Legislator

VIII The People

IX The People (_continued_)

X The People (_continued_)

XI The various Systems of Legislation

XII The Division of the Laws

BOOK III

_Which treats of political laws, that is to say, of the form of

government._

I Government in General

II The constituent Principle in the various Forms of Government

III The Division of Governments

IV Democracy

V Aristocracy

VI Monarchy

VII Mixed Governments

VIII That all Forms of Government do not suit all Countries

IX The Marks of a good Government

X The Abuse of Government and its Tendency to Degenerate

XI The Death of the Body Politic

XII How the Sovereign Authority maintains itself

XIII How the Sovereign Authority maintains itself _(continued_)

XIV How the Sovereign Authority maintains itself _(continued_)

XV Deputies or Representatives

XVI That the Institution of Government is not a Contract

XVII The Institution of Government

XVIII How to check the Usurpations of Government

BOOK IV

_Which treats further of political laws and sets forth the

means of strengthening the Constitution of the State_.

I That the general Will is indestructible

II Voting

III Elections

IV The Roman Comitia

V The Tribunate

VI The Dictatorship

VII The Censorship

VIII Civil Religion

IX Conclusion

A DISCOURSE ON THE ARTS AND SCIENCES

A DISCOURSE ON THE ORIGIN OF INEQUALITY -- Appendix

A DISCOURSE ON POLITICAL ECONOMY

THE SOCIAL CONTRACT

OR

PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL

RIGHT

Fœderis æquas

Dicamus leges. (Vergil, _Æneid_ XI.)

FOREWORD

This little treatise is part of a longer work which I began years ago

without realising my limitations, and long since abandoned. Of the

various fragments that might have been extracted from what I wrote,

this is the most considerable, and, I think, the least unworthy of

being offered to the public. The rest no longer exists.

BOOK I

I mean to inquire if, in the civil order, there can be any sure and

legitimate rule of administration, men being taken as they are and laws

as they might be. In this inquiry I shall endeavour always to unite

what right sanctions with what is prescribed by interest, in order that

justice and utility may in no case be divided.

I enter upon my task without proving the importance of the subject. I

shall be asked if I am a prince or a legislator, to write on politics.

I answer that I am neither, and that is why I do so. If I were a prince

or a legislator, I should not waste time in saying what wants doing; I

should do it, or hold my peace.

As I was born a citizen of a free State, and a member of the Sovereign,

I feel that, however feeble the influence my voice can have on public

affairs, the right of voting on them makes it my duty to study them:

and I am happy, when I reflect upon governments, to find my inquiries

always furnish me with new reasons for loving that of my own country.

CHAPTER I

SUBJECT OF THE FIRST BOOK

Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself

the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they. How

did this change come about? I do not know. What can make it legitimate?

That question I think I can answer.

If I took into account only force, and the effects derived from it, I

should say: "As long as a people is compelled to obey, and obeys, it

does well; as soon as it can shake off the yoke, and shakes it off,

it does still better; for, regaining its liberty by the same right

as took it away, either it is justified in resuming it, or there was

no justification for those who took it away." But the social order is

a sacred right which is the basis of all other rights. Nevertheless,

this right does not come from nature, and must therefore be founded on

conventions. Before coming to that, I have to prove what I have just

asserted.

CHAPTER II

THE FIRST SOCIETIES

The most ancient of all societies, and the only one that is natural

is the family: and even so the children remain attached to the father

only so long as they need him for their preservation. As soon as this

need ceases, the natural bond is dissolved. The children, released from

the obedience they owed to the father, and the father, released from

the care he owed his children, return equally to independence. If they

remain united, they continue so no longer naturally, but voluntarily;

and the family itself is then maintained only by convention.

This common liberty results from the nature of man. His first law is

to provide for his own preservation, his first cares are those which

he owes to himself; and, as soon as he reaches years of discretion,

he is the sole judge of the proper means of preserving himself, and

consequently becomes his own master.

The family then may be called the first model of political societies:

the ruler corresponds to the father, and the people to the children;

and all, being born free and equal, alienate their liberty only for

their own advantage. The whole difference is that, in the family, the

love of the father for his children repays him for the care he takes of

them, while, in the State, the pleasure of commanding takes the place

of the love which the chief cannot have for the peoples under him.

Grotius denies that all human power is established in favour of the

governed, and quotes slavery as an example. His usual method of

reasoning is constantly to establish right by fact.[1] It would be

possible to employ a more logical method, but none could be more

favourable to tyrants.

It is then, according to Grotius, doubtful whether the human race

belongs to a hundred men, or that hundred men to the human race: and,

throughout his book, he seems to incline to the former alternative,

which is also the view of Hobbes. On this showing, the human species is

divided into so many herds of cattle, each with its ruler, who keeps

guard over them for the purpose of devouring them.

As a shepherd is of a nature superior to that of his flock, the

shepherds of men, _i.e._ their rulers, are of a nature superior to

that of the peoples under them. Thus, Philo tells us, the Emperor

Caligula reasoned, concluding equally well either that kings were gods,

or that men were beasts.

The reasoning of Caligula agrees with that of Hobbes and Grotius.

Aristotle, before any of them, had said that men are by no means equal

naturally, but that some are born for slavery, and others for dominion.

Aristotle was right; but he took the effect for the cause. Nothing

can be more certain than that every man born in slavery is born for

slavery. Slaves lose everything in their chains, even the desire of

escaping from them: they love their servitude, as the comrades of

Ulysses loved their brutish condition.[2] If then there are slaves by

nature, it is because there have been slaves against nature. Force made

the first slaves, and their cowardice perpetuated the condition.

I have said nothing of King Adam, or Emperor Noah, father of the three

great monarchs who shared out the universe, like the children of

Saturn, whom some scholars have recognised in them. I trust to getting

due thanks for my moderation; for, being a direct descendant of one

of these princes, perhaps of the eldest branch, how do I know that a

verification of titles might not leave me the legitimate king of the

human race? In any case, there can be no doubt that Adam was sovereign

of the world, as Robinson Crusoe was of his island, as long as he

was its only inhabitant; and this empire had the advantage that the

monarch, safe on his throne, had no rebellions, wars, or conspirators

to fear.

[1] "Learned inquiries into public right are often only the history of

past abuses; and troubling to study them too deeply is a profitless

infatuation" (_Essay on the Interests of France in Relation to its

Neighbours_, by the Marquis d'Argenson). This is exactly what Grotius

has done.

[2] See a short treatise of Plutarch's entitled "That Animals Reason."

CHAPTER III

THE RIGHT OF THE STRONGEST

The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless

he transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty. Hence the

right of the strongest, which, though to all seeming meant ironically,

is really laid down as a fundamental principle. But are we never to

have an explanation of this phrase? Force is a physical power, and I

fail to see what moral effect it can have. To yield to force is an act

of necessity, not of will--at the most, an act of prudence. In what

sense can it be a duty?

Suppose for a moment that this so-called "right" exists. I maintain

that the sole result is a mass of inexplicable nonsense. For, if force

creates right, the effect changes with the cause: every force that

is greater than the first succeeds to its right. As soon as it is

possible to disobey with impunity, disobedience is legitimate; and, the

strongest being always in the right, the only thing that matters is

to act so as to become the strongest. But what kind of right is that

which perishes when force fails? If we must obey perforce, there is no

need to obey because we ought; and if we are not forced to obey, we are

under no obligation to do so. Clearly, the word "right" adds nothing to

force: in this connection, it means absolutely nothing.

Obey the powers that be. If this means yield to force, it is a good

precept, but superfluous: I can answer for its never being violated.

All power comes from God, I admit; but so does all sickness: does that

mean that we are forbidden to call in the doctor? A brigand surprises

me at the edge of a wood: must I not merely surrender my purse on

compulsion; but, even if I could withhold it, am I in conscience bound

to give it up? For certainly the pistol he holds is also a power.

Let us then admit that force does not create right, and that we are

obliged to obey only legitimate powers. In that case, my original

question recurs.

CHAPTER IV

SLAVERY

Since no man has a natural authority over his fellow, and force creates

no right, we must conclude that conventions form the basis of all

legitimate authority among men.

If an individual, says Grotius, can alienate his liberty and make

himself the slave of a master, why could not a whole people do the same

and make itself subject to a king? There are in this passage plenty

of ambiguous words which would need explaining; but let us confine

ourselves to the word _alienate_. To alienate is to give or to sell.

Now, a man who becomes the slave of another does not give himself; he

sells himself, at the least for his subsistence: but for what does a

people sell itself? A king is so far from furnishing his subjects with

their subsistence that he gets his own only from them; and, according

to Rabelais, kings do not live on nothing. Do subjects then give their

persons on condition that the king takes their goods also? I fail to

see what they have left to preserve.

It will be said that the despot assures his subjects civil

tranquillity. Granted; but what do they gain, if the wars his

ambition brings down upon them, his insatiable avidity, and the

vexatious conduct of his ministers press harder on them than their

own dissensions would have done? What do they gain, if the very

tranquillity they enjoy is one of their miseries? Tranquillity is found

also in dungeons; but is that enough to make them desirable places to

live in? The Greeks imprisoned in the cave of the Cyclops lived there

very tranquilly, while they were awaiting their turn to be devoured.

To say that a man gives himself gratuitously, is to say what is absurd

and inconceivable; such an act is null and illegitimate, from the mere

fact that he who does it is out of his mind. To say the same of a whole

people is to suppose a people of madmen; and madness creates no right.

Even if each man could alienate himself, he could not alienate his

children: they are born men and free; their liberty belongs to them,

and no one but they has the right to dispose of it. Before they come to

years of discretion, the father can, in their name, lay down conditions

for their preservation and well-being, but he cannot give them,

irrevocably and without conditions: such a gift is contrary to the ends

of nature, and exceeds the rights of paternity. It would therefore be

necessary, in order to legitimise an arbitrary government, that in

every generation the people should be in a position to accept or reject

it; but, were this so, the government would be no longer arbitrary.

To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights

of humanity and even its duties. For him who renounces everything no

indemnity is possible. Such a renunciation is incompatible with man's

nature; to remove all liberty from his will is to remove all morality

from his acts. Finally, it is an empty and contradictory convention

that sets up, on the one side, absolute authority, and, on the other,

unlimited obedience. Is it not clear that we can be under no obligation

to a person from whom we have the right to exact everything? Does not

this condition alone, in the absence of equivalence or exchange, in

itself involve the nullity of the act? For what right can my slave have

against me, when all that he has belongs to me, and, his right being

mine, this right of mine against myself is a phrase devoid of meaning?

Grotius and the rest find in war another origin for the so-called right

of slavery. The victor having, as they hold, the right of killing

the vanquished, the latter can buy back his life at the price of his

liberty; and this convention is the more legitimate because it is to

the advantage of both parties.

But it is clear that this supposed right to kill the conquered is by no

means deducible from the state of war. Men, from the mere fact that,

while they are living in their primitive independence, they have no

mutual relations stable enough to constitute either the state of peace

or the state of war, cannot be naturally enemies. War is constituted by

a relation between things, and not between persons; and, as the state

of war cannot arise out of simple personal relations, but only out of

real relations, private war, or war of man with man, can exist neither

in the state of nature, where there is no constant property, nor in the

social state, where everything is under the authority of the laws.

Individual combats, duels and encounters, are acts which cannot

constitute a state; while the private wars, authorised by the

Establishments of Louis IX, King of France, and suspended by the Peace

of God, are abuses of feudalism, in itself an absurd system if ever

there was one, and contrary to the principles of natural right and to

all good polity.

War then is a relation, not between man and man, but between State and

State, and individuals are enemies only accidentally, not as men, nor

even as citizens,[1] but as soldiers; not as members of their country,

but as its defenders. Finally, each State can have for enemies only

other States, and not men; for between things disparate in nature there

can be no real relation.

Furthermore, this principle is in conformity with the established

rules of all times and the constant practice of all civilised peoples.

Declarations of war are intimations less to powers than to their

subjects. The foreigner, whether king, individual, or people, who robs,

kills or detains the subjects, without declaring war on the prince,

is not an enemy, but a brigand. Even in real war, a just prince,

while laying hands, in the enemy's country, on all that belongs to

the public, respects the lives and goods of individuals: he respects

rights on which his own are founded. The object of the war being the

destruction of the hostile State, the other side has a right to kill

its defenders, while they are bearing arms; but as soon as they lay

them down and surrender, they cease to be enemies or instruments of the

enemy, and become once more merely men, whose life no one has any right

to take. Sometimes it is possible to kill the State without killing

a single one of its members; and war gives no right which is not

necessary to the gaining of its object. These principles are not those

of Grotius: they are not based on the authority of poets, but derived

from the nature of reality and based on reason.

The right of conquest has no foundation other than the right of the

strongest. If war does not give the conqueror the right to massacre the

conquered peoples, the right to enslave them cannot be based upon a

right which does not exist No one has a right to kill an enemy except

when he cannot make him a slave, and the right to enslave him cannot

therefore be derived from the right to kill him. It is accordingly an

unfair exchange to make him buy at the price of his liberty his life,

over which the victor holds no right. Is it not clear that there is a

vicious circle in founding the right of life and death on the right of

slavery, and the right of slavery on the right of life and death?

Even if we assume this terrible right to kill everybody, I maintain

that a slave made in war, or a conquered people, is under no obligation

to a master, except to obey him as far as he is compelled to do so.

By taking an equivalent for his life, the victor has not done him

a favour; instead of killing him without profit, he has killed him

usefully. So far then is he from acquiring over him any authority in

addition to that of force, that the state of war continues to subsist

between them: their mutual relation is the effect of it, and the usage

of the right of war does not imply a treaty of peace. A convention has

indeed been made; but this convention, so far from destroying the state

of war, presupposes its continuance.

So, from whatever aspect we regard the question, the right of slavery

is null and void, not only as being illegitimate, but also because it

is absurd and meaningless. The words _slave_ and _right_ contradict

each other, and are mutually exclusive. It will always be equally

foolish for a man to say to a man or to a people: "I make with you a

convention wholly at your expense and wholly to my advantage; I shall

keep it as long as I like, and you will keep it as long as I like."

[1] The Romans, who understood and respected the right of war more

than any other nation on earth, carried their scruples on this head

so far that a citizen was not allowed to serve as a volunteer without

engaging himself expressly against the enemy, and against such and

such an enemy by name. A legion in which the younger Cato was seeing

his first service under Popilius having been reconstructed, the elder

Cato wrote to Popilius that, if he wished his son to continue serving

under him, he must administer to him a new military oath, because, the

first having been annulled, he was no longer able to bear arms against

the enemy. The same Cato wrote to his son telling him to take great

care not to go into battle before taking this new oath. I know that the

siege of Clusium and other isolated events can be quoted against me;

but I am citing laws and customs. The Romans are the people that least

often transgressed its laws; and no other people has had such good ones.

CHAPTER V

THAT WE MUST ALWAYS GO BACK TO A FIRST CONVENTION

Even if I granted all that I have been refuting, the friends of

despotism would be no better off. There will always be a great

difference between subduing a multitude and ruling a society. Even if

scattered individuals were successively enslaved by one man, however

numerous they might be, I still see no more than a master and his

slaves, and certainly not a people and its ruler; I see what may be

termed an aggregation, but not an association; there is as yet neither

public good nor body politic. The man in question, even if he has

enslaved half the world, is still only an individual; his interest,

apart from that of others, is still a purely private interest. If this

same man comes to die, his empire, after him, remains scattered and

without unity, as an oak falls and dissolves into a heap of ashes when

the fire has consumed it.

A people, says Grotius, can give itself to a king. Then, according

to Grotius, a people is a people before it gives itself. The gift

is itself a civil act, and implies public deliberation. It would be

better, before examining the act by which a people gives itself to a

king, to examine that by which it has become a people; for this act,

being necessarily prior to the other, is the true foundation of society.

Indeed, if there were no prior convention, where, unless the election

were unanimous, would be the obligation on the minority to submit

to the choice of the majority? How have a hundred men who wish for

a master the right to vote on behalf of ten who do not? The law of

majority voting is itself something established by convention, and

presupposes unanimity, on one occasion at least.

CHAPTER VI

THE SOCIAL COMPACT

I suppose men to have reached the point at which the obstacles in the

way of their preservation in the state of nature show their power of

resistance to be greater than the resources at the disposal of each

individual for his maintenance in that state. That primitive condition

can then subsist no longer; and the human race would perish unless it

changed its manner of existence.

But, as men cannot engender new forces, but only unite and direct

existing ones, they have no other means of preserving themselves than

the formation, by aggregation, of a sum of forces great enough to

overcome the resistance. These they have to bring into play by means of

a single motive power, and cause to act in concert.

This sum of forces can arise only where several persons come together:

but, as the force and liberty of each man are the chief instruments of

his self-preservation, how can he pledge them without harming his own

interests, and neglecting the care he owes to himself? This difficulty,

in its bearing on my present subject, may be stated in the following

terms--

"The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and

protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each

associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may

still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before." This is

the fundamental problem of which the _Social Contract_ provides the

solution.

The clauses of this contract are so determined by the nature of the act

that the slightest modification would make them vain and ineffective;

so that, although they have perhaps never been formally set forth,

they are everywhere the same and everywhere tacitly admitted and

recognised, until, on the violation of the social compact, each regains

his original rights and resumes his natural liberty, while losing the

conventional liberty in favour of which he renounced it.

These clauses, properly understood, may be reduced to one--the total

alienation of each associate, together with all his rights, to the

whole community for, in the first place, as each gives himself

absolutely, the conditions are the same for all; and, this being so, no

one has any interest in making them burdensome to others.

Moreover, the alienation being without reserve, the union is as perfect

as it can be, and no associate has anything more to demand: for, if

the individuals retained certain rights, as there would be no common

superior to decide between them and the public, each, being on one

point his own judge, would ask to be so on all; the state of nature

would thus continue, and the association would necessarily become

inoperative or tyrannical.

Finally, each man, in giving himself to all, gives himself to nobody;

and as there is no associate over whom he does not acquire the same

right as he yields others over himself, he gains an equivalent for

everything he loses, and an increase of force for the preservation of

what he has.

If then we discard from the social compact what is not of its essence,

we shall find that it reduces itself to the following terms--

_"Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the

supreme direction of the general will, and, in our corporate capacity,

we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole._"

At once, in place of the individual personality of each contracting

party, this act of association creates a moral and collective body,

composed of as many members as the assembly contains votes, and

receiving from this act its unity, its common identity, its life and

its will. This public person, so formed by the union of all other

persons, formerly took the name of _city_,[1] and now takes that of

_Republic_ or _body politic_; it is called by its members _State_ when

passive, _Sovereign_ when active, and _Power_ when compared with others

like itself. Those who are associated in it take collectively the name

of _people_, and severally are called _citizens_, as sharing in the

sovereign power, and _subjects_, as being under the laws of the State.

But these terms are often confused and taken one for another: it is

enough to know how to distinguish them when they are being used with

precision.

[1] The real meaning of this word has been almost wholly lost in

modern times; most people mistake a town for a city, and a townsman

for a citizen. They do not know that houses make a town, but citizens

a city. The same mistake long ago cost the Carthaginians dear. I

have never read of the title of citizens being given to the subjects

of any prince, not even the ancient Macedonians or the English of

to-day, though they are nearer liberty than any one else. The French

alone everywhere familiarly adopt the name of citizens, because,

as can be seen from their dictionaries, they have no idea of its

meaning; otherwise they would be guilty in usurping it, of the crime

of _lèse-majesté_: among them, the name expresses a virtue, and not

a right. When Bodin spoke of our citizens and townsmen, he fell into

a bad blunder in taking the one class for the other. M. d'Alembert

has avoided the error, and, in his article on Geneva, has clearly

distinguished the four orders of men (or even five, counting mere

foreigners) who dwell in our town, of which two only compose the

Republic. No other French writer, to my knowledge, has understood the

real meaning of the word citizen.

CHAPTER VII

THE SOVEREIGN

This formula shows us that the act of association comprises a mutual

undertaking between the public and the individuals, and that each

individual, in making a contract, as we may say, with himself, is bound

in a double capacity; as a member of the Sovereign he is bound to the

individuals, and as a member of the State to the Sovereign. But the

maxim of civil right, that no one is bound by undertakings made to

himself, does not apply in this case; for there is a great difference

between incurring an obligation to yourself and incurring one to a

whole of which you form a part.

Attention must further be called to the fact that public deliberation,

while competent to bind all the subjects to the Sovereign, because of

the two different capacities in which each of them may be regarded,

cannot, for the opposite reason, bind the Sovereign to itself; and

that it is consequently against the nature of the body politic for the

Sovereign to impose on itself a law which it cannot infringe. Being

able to regard itself in only one capacity, it is in the position of an

individual who makes a contract with himself; and this makes it clear

that there neither is nor can be any kind of fundamental law binding

on the body of the people--not even the social contract itself. This

does not mean that the body politic cannot enter into undertakings with

others, provided the contract is not infringed by them; for in relation

to what is external to it, it becomes a simple being, an individual.

But the body politic or the Sovereign, drawing its being wholly from

the sanctity of the contract, can never bind itself, even to an

outsider, to do anything derogatory to the original act, for instance,

to alienate any part of itself, or to submit to another Sovereign.

Violation of the act by which it exists would be self-annihilation; and

that which is itself nothing can create nothing.

As soon as this multitude is so united in one body, it is impossible to

offend against one of the members without attacking the body, and still

more to offend against the body without the members resenting it. Duty

and interest therefore equally oblige the two contracting parties to

give each other help; and the same men should seek to combine, in their

double capacity, all the advantages dependent upon that capacity.

Again, the Sovereign, being formed wholly of the individuals who

compose it, neither has nor can have any interest contrary to theirs;

and consequently the sovereign power need give no guarantee to its

subjects, because it is impossible for the body to wish to hurt all

its members. We shall also see later on that It cannot hurt any in

particular. The Sovereign, merely by virtue of what it is, is is always

what it should be.

This, however, is not the case with the relation of the subjects to the

Sovereign, which, despite the common interest, would have no security

that they would fulfil their undertakings, unless it found means to

assure itself of their fidelity.

In fact, each individual, as a man, may have a particular will

contrary or dissimilar to the general will which he has as a citizen.

His particular interest may speak to him quite differently from the

common interest: his absolute and naturally independent existence may

make him look upon what he owes to the common cause as a gratuitous

contribution, the loss of which will do less harm to others than the

payment of it is burdensome to himself; and, regarding the moral person

which constitutes the State as a persona ficta, because not a man, he

may wish to enjoy the rights of citizenship without being ready to

fulfil the duties of a subject. The continuance of such an injustice

could not but prove the undoing of the body politic.

In order then that the social compact may not be an empty formula, it

tacitly includes the undertaking, which alone can give force to the

rest, that whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled

to do so by the whole body. This means nothing less than that he will

be forced to be free; for this is the condition which, by giving each

citizen to his country, secures him against all personal dependence. In

this lies the key to the working of the political machine; this alone

legitimizes civil undertakings, which, without it, would be absurd,

tyrannical, and liable to the most frightful abuses.

CHAPTER VIII

THE CIVIL STATE

The passage from the state of nature to the civil state produces a very

remarkable change in man, by substituting justice, for instinct in his

conduct, and giving his actions the morality they had formerly lacked.

Then only, when the voice of duty takes the place of physical impulses

and right of appetite, does _man_, who so far had considered only

himself, find that he is forced to act on different principles, and

to consult his reason before listening to his inclinations. Although,

in this state, he deprives himself of some advantages which he got

from nature, he gains in return others so great, his faculties are

so stimulated and developed, his ideas so extended, his feelings so

ennobled, and his whole soul so uplifted, that, did not the abuses of

this new condition often degrade him below that which he left, he would

be bound to bless continually the happy moment which took him from it

for ever, and, instead of a stupid and unimaginative animal, made him

an intelligent being and a man.

Let us draw up the whole account in terms easily commensurable.

What man loses by the social contract in his natural liberty and

an unlimited right to everything he tries to get and succeeds in

getting; what he gains is civil liberty and the proprietorship of all

he possesses. If we are to avoid mistake in weighing one against the

other, we must clearly distinguish natural liberty, which is bounded

only by the strength of the individual, from civil liberty, which is

limited by the general will; and possession, which is merely the effect

of force or the right of the first occupier, from property, which can

be founded only on a positive title.

We might, over and above all this, add, to what man acquires in the

civil state, moral liberty, which alone makes him truly master of

himself; for the mere impulse of appetite is slavery, while obedience

to a law which we prescribe to ourselves is liberty. But I have already

said too much on this head, and the philosophical meaning of the word

liberty does not now concern us.

CHAPTER IX

REAL PROPERTY

Each member of the community gives himself to it, at the moment of

its foundation, just as he is, with all the resources at his command,

including the goods he possesses. This act does not make possession, in

changing hands, change its nature, and becomes property in the hands

of the Sovereign; but, as the forces of the city are incomparably

greater than those of an individual, public possession is also, in

fact, stronger and more irrevocable, without being any more legitimate,

at any rate from the point of view of foreigners. For the State, in

relation to its members, is master of all their goods by the social

contract, which, within the State, is the basis of all rights; but,

in relation to other powers, it is so only by the right of the first

occupier, which it holds from its members.

The right of the first occupier, though more real than the right of the

strongest, becomes a real right only when the right of property has

already been established. Every man has naturally a right to everything

he needs; but the positive act which makes him proprietor of one thing

excludes him from everything else. Having his share, he ought to keep

to it, and can have no further right against the community. This is why

the right of the first occupier, which in the state of nature is so

weak, claims the respect of every man in civil society. In this right

we are respecting not so much what belongs to another as what does not

belong to ourselves.

In general, to establish the right of the first occupier over a plot of

ground, the following conditions are necessary: first, the land must

not yet be inhabited; secondly, a man must occupy only the amount he

needs for his subsistence; and, in the third place, possession must be

taken, not by an empty ceremony, but by labour and cultivation, the

only sign of proprietorship that should be respected by others, in

default of a legal title.

In granting the right of first occupancy to necessity and labour,

are we not really stretching it as far as it can go? Is it possible

to leave such a right unlimited? Is it to be enough to set foot on a

plot of common ground, in order to be able to call yourself at once

the master of it? Is it to be enough that a man has the strength to

expel others for a moment, in order to establish his right to prevent

them from ever returning? How can a man or a people seize an immense

territory and keep it from the rest of the world except by a punishable

usurpation, since all others are being robbed, by such an act, of

the place of habitation and the means of subsistence which nature

gave them in common? When Nuñez Balbao, standing on the sea-shore,

took possession of the South Seas and the whole of South America in

the name of the crown of Castille, was that enough to dispossess all

their actual inhabitants, and to shut out from them all the princes of

the world? On such a showing, these ceremonies are idly multiplied,

and the Catholic King need only take possession all at once, from

his apartment, of the whole universe, merely making a subsequent

reservation about what was already in the possession of other princes.

We can imagine how the lands of individuals, where they were contiguous

and came to be united, became the public territory, and how the right

of Sovereignty, extending from the subjects over the lands they held,

became at once real and personal. The possessors were thus made more

dependent, and the forces at their command used to guarantee their

fidelity. The advantage of this does not seem to have been felt

by ancient monarchs, who called themselves King of the Persians,

Scythians, or Macedonians, and seemed to regard themselves more as

rulers of men than as masters of a country. Those of the present

day more cleverly call themselves Kings of France, Spain, England,

etc.: thus holding the land, they are quite confident of holding the

inhabitants.

The peculiar fact about this alienation is that, in taking over the

goods of individuals, the community, so far from despoiling them, only

assures them legitimate possession, and changes usurpation into a true

right and enjoyment into proprietorship. Thus the possessors, being

regarded as depositaries of the public good, and having their rights,

respected by all the members of the State and maintained against

foreign aggression by all its forces, have, by a cession which benefits

both the public and still more themselves, acquired, so to speak,

all that they gave up. This paradox may easily be explained by the

distinction between the rights which the Sovereign and the proprietor

have over the same estate, as we shall see later on. It may also happen

that men begin to unite one with another before they possess anything,

and that, subsequently occupying a tract of country which is enough for

all, they enjoy it in common, or share it out among themselves, either

equally or according to a scale fixed by they Sovereign. However the

acquisition be made, the right which each individual has to his own

estate is always subordinate to the right which the community has over

all: without this, there would be neither stability in the social tie,

nor real force in the exercise of Sovereignty.

I shall end this chapter and this book by remarking on a fact on

which the whole social system should rest: _i.e._ that, instead of

destroying natural inequality, the fundamental compact substitutes,

for such physical inequality as nature may have set up between men, an

equality that is moral and legitimate, and that men, who may be unequal

in strength or intelligence, become every one equal by convention and

legal right.[1]

BOOK II

CHAPTER I

THAT SOVEREIGNTY IS INALIENABLE

The first and most important deduction from the principles we have

so far laid down is that the general will alone can direct the State

according to the object for which it was instituted, _i.e._ the

common good: for if the clashing of particular interests made the

establishment of societies necessary, the agreement of these very

interests made it possible. The common element in these different

interests is what forms the social tie; and, were there no point of

agreement between them all, no society could exist. It is solely on the

basis of this common interest that every society should be governed.

I hold then that Sovereignty, being nothing less than the exercise of

the general will, can never be alienated, and that the Sovereign, who

is no less than a collective being, cannot be represented except by

himself: the power indeed may be transmitted, but not the will.

In reality, if it is not impossible for a particular will to agree on

some point with the general will, it is at least impossible for the

agreement to be lasting and constant; for the particular will tends,

by its very nature, to partiality, while the general will tends to

equality. It is even more impossible to have any guarantee of this

agreement; for even if it should always exist, it would be the effect

not of art, but of chance. The Sovereign may indeed say: "I now will

actually what this man wills, or at least what he says he wills"; but

it cannot say: "What he wills tomorrow, I too shall will" because it is

absurd for the will to bind itself for the future, nor is it incumbent

on any will to consent to anything that is not for the good of the

being who wills. If then the people promises simply to obey, by that

very act it dissolves itself and loses what makes it a people; the

moment a master exists, there is no longer a Sovereign, and from that

moment the body politic has ceased to exist.

This does not mean that the commands of the rulers cannot pass for

general wills, so long as the Sovereign, being free to oppose them,

offers no opposition. In such a case, universal silence is taken to

imply the consent of the people. This will be explained later on.

[1] Under bad governments, this equality is only apparent and illusory:

it serves only to keep the pauper in his poverty and the rich man in

the position he has usurped. In fact, laws are always of use to those

who possess and harmful to those who have nothing: from which it

follows that the social state is advantageous to men only when all have

something and none too much.

CHAPTER II

THAT SOVEREIGNTY IS INDIVISIBLE

Sovereignty, for the same reason as makes it inalienable, is

indivisible; for will either is, or is not, general;[1] it is the

will either of the body of the people, or only of a part of it. In

the first case, the will, when declared, is an act of Sovereignty and

constitutes law: in the second, it is merely a particular will, or act

of magistracy--at the most a decree.

But our political theorists, unable to divide Sovereignty in

principle, divide it according to its object: into force and will;

into legislative power and executive power; into rights of taxation,

justice and war; into internal administration and power of foreign

treaty. Sometimes they confuse all these sections, and sometimes they

distinguish them; they turn the Sovereign into a fantastic being

composed of several connected pieces: it is as if they were making man

of several bodies, one with eyes, one with arms, another with feet,

and each with nothing besides. We are told that the jugglers of Japan

dismember a child before the eyes of the spectators; then they throw

all the members into the air one after another, and the child falls

down alive and whole. The conjuring tricks of our political theorists

are very like that; they first dismember the body politic by an

illusion worthy of a fair, and then join it together again we know not

how.

This error is due to a lack of exact notions concerning the Sovereign

authority, and to taking for parts of it what are only emanations from

it. Thus, for example, the acts of declaring war and making peace have

been regarded as acts of Sovereignty; but this is not the case, as

these acts do not constitute law, but merely the application of a law,

a particular act which decides how the law applies, as we shall see

clearly when the idea attached to the word _law_ has been defined.

If we examined the other divisions in the same manner, we should find

that, whenever Sovereignty seems to be divided, there is an illusion:

the rights which are taken as being part of Sovereignty are really all

subordinate, and always imply supreme wills of which they only sanction

the execution.

It would be impossible to estimate the obscurity this lack of exactness

has thrown over the decisions of writers who have dealt with political

right, when they have used the principles laid down by them to pass

judgment on the respective rights of kings and peoples. Every one can

see, in Chapters III and IV of the First Book of Grotius, how the

learned man and his translator, Barbeyrac, entangle and tie themselves

up in their own sophistries, for fear of saying too little or too

much of what they think, and so offending the interests they have to

conciliate. Grotius, a refugee in France, ill-content with his own

country, and desirous of paying his court to Louis XIII, to whom his

book is dedicated, spares no pains to rob the peoples of all their

rights and invest kings with them by every conceivable artifice. This

would also have been much to the taste of Barbeyrac, who dedicated his

translation to George I of England. But unfortunately the expulsion

of James II, which he called his "abdication," compelled him to use

all reserve, to shuffle and to tergiversate, in order to avoid making

William out a usurper. If these two writers had adopted the true

principles, all difficulties would have been removed, and they would

have been always consistent; but it would have been a sad truth for

them to tell, and would have paid court for them to no-one save the

people. Moreover, truth is no road to fortune, and the people dispenses

neither ambassadorships, nor professorships, nor pensions.

[1] To be general, a will need not always be unanimous; but every

vote--must be counted: any exclusion is a breach of generality.

CHAPTER III

WHETHER THE GENERAL WILL IS FALLIBLE

It follows from what has gone before that the general will is always

right and tends to the public advantage; but it does not follow that

the deliberations of the people are always equally correct. Our will

is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is;

the people is never corrupted, but it is often deceived, and on such

occasions only does it seem to will what is bad.

There is often a great deal of difference between the will of all and

the general will; the latter considers only the common interest, while

the former takes private interest into account, and is no more than a

sum of particular wills: but take away from these same wills the pluses

and minuses that cancel one another,[1] and the general will remains as

the sum of the differences.

If, when the people, being furnished with adequate information, held

its deliberations, the citizens had no communication one with another,

the grand total of the small differences would always give the general

will, and the decision would always be good. But when factions arise,

and partial associations are formed at the expense of the great

association, the will of each of these associations becomes general

in relation to its members, while it remains particular in relation

to the State: it may then be said that there are no longer as many

votes as there are men, but only as many as there are associations.

The differences become less numerous and give a less general result.

Lastly, when one of these associations is so great as to prevail over

all the rest, the result is no longer a sum of small differences, but a

single difference; in this case there is no longer a general will, and

the opinion which prevails is purely particular.

It is therefore essential, if the general will is to be able to express

itself, that there should be no partial society within the State,

and that each citizen should think only his own thoughts:[2] which

was indeed the sublime and unique system established by the great

Lycurgus. But if there are partial societies, it is best to have as

many as possible and to prevent them from being unequal, as was done by

Solon, Numa and Servius. These precautions are the only ones that can

guarantee that the general will shall be always enlightened, and that

the people shall in no way deceive itself.

[1] "Every interest," says the Marquis d'Argenson, "has different

principles. The agreement of two particular interests is formed by

opposition to a third." He might have added that the agreement of all

interests is formed by opposition to that of each. If there were no

different interests, the common interest would be barely felt, as it

would encounter no obstacle; all would go on of its own accord, and

politics would cease to be an art.

[2] "In fact," says Macchiavelli, "there are some divisions that are

harmful to a Republic and some that are advantageous. Those which

stir up sects and parties are harmful; those attended by neither are

advantageous. Since, then, the founder of a Republic cannot help

enmities arising, he ought at least to prevent them from growing into

sects" (_History of Florence,_ Book vii). Rousseau quotes the Italian.

CHAPTER IV

THE LIMITS OF THE SOVEREIGN POWER

If the State is a moral person whose life is in the union of its

members, and if the most important of its cares is the care for its

own preservation, it must have a universal and compelling force, in

order to move and dispose each part as may be most advantageous to the

whole. As nature gives each man absolute power over all his members,

the social compact gives the body politic absolute power over all its

members also; and it is this power which, under the direction of the

general will, bears, as I have said, the name of Sovereignty.

But, besides the public person, we have to consider the private persons

composing it, whose life and liberty are naturally independent of it.

We are bound then to distinguish clearly between the respective rights

of the citizens and the Sovereign,[1] and between the duties the former

have to fulfil as subjects, and the natural rights they should enjoy as

men.

Each man alienates, I admit, by the social compact, only such part of

his powers, goods and liberty as it is important for the community to

control; but it must also be granted that the Sovereign is sole judge

of what is important.

Every service a citizen can render the State he ought to render as soon

as the Sovereign demands it; but the Sovereign, for its part, cannot

impose upon its subjects any fetters that are useless to the community,

nor can it even wish to do so; for no more by the law of reason than by

the law of nature can anything occur without a cause.

The undertakings which bind us to the social body are obligatory only

because they are mutual; and their nature is such that in fulfilling

them we cannot work for others without working for ourselves. Why is it

that the general will is always in the right, and that all continually

will the happiness of each one, unless it is because there is not a

man who does not think of "each" as meaning him, and consider himself

in voting for all? This proves that equality of rights and the idea

of justice which such equality creates originate in the preference

each man gives to himself, and accordingly in the very nature of man.

It proves that the general will, to be really such, must be general

in its object as well as its essence; that it must both come from all

and apply to all; and that it loses its natural rectitude when it is

directed to some particular and determinate object, because in such

a case we are judging of something foreign to us, and have no true

principle of equity to guide us.

Indeed, as soon as a question of particular fact or right arises on

a point not previously regulated by a general convention, the matter

becomes contentious. It is a case in which the individuals concerned

are one party, and the public the other, but in which I can see neither

the law that ought to be followed nor the judge who ought to give the

decision. In such a case, it would be absurd to propose to refer the

question to an express decision of the general will, which can be

only the conclusion reached by one of the parties and in consequence

will be, for the other party, merely an external and particular will,

inclined on this occasion to injustice and subject to error. Thus, just

as a particular will cannot stand for the general will, the general

will, in turn, changes its nature, when its object is particular, and,

as general, cannot pronounce on a man or a fact. When, for instance,

the people of Athens nominated or displaced its rulers, decreed

honours to one, and imposed penalties on another, and, by a multitude

of particular decrees, exercised all the functions of government

indiscriminately, it had in such cases no longer a general will in the

strict sense; it was acting no longer as Sovereign, but as magistrate.

This will seem contrary to current views; but I must be given time to

expound my own.

It should be seen from the foregoing that what makes the will general

is less the number of voters than the common interest uniting them;

for under this system, each necessarily submits to the conditions he

imposes on others; and this admirable agreement between interest and

justice gives to the common deliberations an equitable character which

at once vanishes when any particular question is discussed, in the

absence of a common interest to unite and identify the ruling of the

judge with that of the party.

From whatever side we approach our principle, we reach the same

conclusion, that the social compact sets up among the citizens an

equality of such a kind, that they all bind themselves to observe the

same conditions and should therefore all enjoy the same rights. Thus,

from the very nature of the compact, every "act of Sovereignty", _i.e._

every authentic act of the general will, binds or favours all the

citizens equally; so that the Sovereign recognises only the body of the

nation, and draws no distinctions between those of whom it is made up.

What, then, strictly speaking is an act of Sovereignty? It is not a

convention between a superior and an inferior, but a convention between

the body and each of its members. It is legitimate, because based on

the social contract, and, equitable, because common to all; useful,

because it can have no other object than the general good, and stable,

because guaranteed by the public force and the supreme power. So long

as the subjects have to submit only to conventions of this sort, they

obey no-one but their own will; and to ask how far the respective

rights of the Sovereign and the citizens extend, is to ask up to what

point the latter can enter into undertakings with themselves, each with

all, and all with each.

We can see from this that the sovereign power, absolute, sacred and

inviolable as it is, does not and cannot exceed the limits of general

conventions, and that every man may dispose at will of such goods and

liberty as these conventions leave him; so that the Sovereign never has

a right to lay more charges on one subject than on another, because, in

that case, the question becomes particular, and ceases to be within its

competency.

When these distinctions have once been admitted, it is seen to be so

untrue that there is, in the social contract, any real renunciation

on the part of the individuals, that the position in which they find

themselves as a result of the contract is really preferable to that in

which they were before. Instead of a renunciation, they have made an

advantageous exchange: instead of an uncertain and precarious way of

living they have got one that is better and more secure; instead of

natural independence they have got liberty, instead of the power to

harm others security for themselves, and instead of their strength,

which others might overcome, a right which social union makes

invincible. Their very life, which they have devoted to the State,

is by it constantly protected; and when they risk it in the State's

defence, what more are they doing than giving back what they have

received from it? What are they doing that they would not do more often

and with greater danger in the state of nature, in which they would

inevitably have to fight battles at the peril of their lives in defence

of that which is the means of their preservation? All have indeed to

fight when their country needs them; but then no one has ever to fight

for himself. Do we not gain something by running, on behalf of what

gives us our security, only some of the risks we should have to run for

ourselves, as soon as we lost it?

[1] Attentive readers, do not, I pray, be in a hurry to charge me with

contradicting myself. The terminology made it unavoidable, considering

the poverty of the language; but wait and see.

CHAPTER V

THE RIGHT OF LIFE AND DEATH

The question is often asked how individuals, having no right to dispose

of their own lives, can transfer to the Sovereign a right which they

do not possess. The difficulty of answering this question seems to me

to lie in its being wrongly stated. Every man has a right to risk his

own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever, been said that a man

who throws himself out of the window to escape from a fire is guilty

of suicide? Has such a crime ever been laid to the charge of him who

perishes in a storm because, when he went on board, he knew of the

danger?

The social treaty has for its end the preservation of the contracting

parties. He who wills the end wills the means also, and the means must

involve some risks, and even some losses. He who wishes to preserve

his life at others expense should also, when it is necessary, be

ready to give it up for their sake. Furthermore, the citizen is no

longer the judge of the dangers to which the law desires him to expose

himself; and when the prince says to him: "It is expedient for the

State that you should die," he ought to die, because it is only on that

condition that he has been living in security up to the present, and

because his life is no longer a mere bounty of nature, but a gift made

conditionally by the State.

The death-penalty inflicted upon criminals may be looked on in much the

same light: it is in order that we may not fall victims to an assassin

that we consent to die if we ourselves turn assassins. In this treaty,

so far from disposing of our own lives, we think only of securing

them, and it is not to be assumed that any of the parties then expects

to get hanged.

Again, every malefactor, by attacking social rights, becomes on forfeit

a rebel and a traitor to his country; by violating its laws he ceases

to be a member of it; he even makes war upon it. In such a case the

preservation of the State is inconsistent with his own, and one or the

other must perish; in putting the guilty to death, we slay not so much

the citizen as an enemy. The trial and the judgment are the proofs

that he has broken the social treaty, and is in consequence no longer

a member of the State. Since, then, he has recognised himself to be

such by living there, he must be removed by exile as a violator of the

compact, or by death as a public enemy; for such an enemy is not a

moral person, but merely a man; and in such a case the right of war is

to kill the vanquished.

But, it will be said, the condemnation of a criminal is a particular

act. I admit it: but such condemnation is not a function of the

Sovereign; it is a right the Sovereign can confer without being able

itself to exert it. All my ideas are consistent, but I cannot expound

them all at once.

We may add that frequent punishments are always a sign of weakness

or remissness on the part of the government. There is not a single

ill-doer who could not be turned to some good. The State has no right

to put to death, even for the sake of making an example, any one whom

it can leave alive without danger.

The right of pardoning or exempting the guilty from a penalty imposed

by the law and pronounced by the judge belongs only to the authority

which is superior to both judge and law, _i.e._ the Sovereign;

even its right in this matter is far from clear, and the cases for

exercising it are extremely rare. In a well-governed State, there

are few punishments, not because there are many pardons, but because

criminals are rare; it is when a State is in decay that the multitude

of crimes is a guarantee of impunity. Under the Roman Republic, neither

the Senate nor the Consuls ever attempted to pardon; even the people

never did so, though it sometimes revoked its own decision. Frequent

pardons mean that crime will soon need them no longer, and no-one can

help seeing whither that leads. But I feel my heart protesting and

restraining my pen; let us leave these questions to the just man who

has never offended, and would himself stand in no need of pardon.

CHAPTER VI

LAW

By the social compact we have given the body politic existence and

life: we have now by legislation to give it movement and will. For the

original act by which the body is formed and united still in no respect

determines what it ought to do for its preservation.

What is well and in conformity with order is so by the nature of

things and independently of human conventions. All justice comes from

God, who is its sole source; but if we knew how to receive so high an

inspiration, we should need neither government nor laws. Doubtless,

there is a universal justice emanating from reason alone; but this

justice, to be admitted among us, must be mutual. Humanly speaking, in

default of natural sanctions, the laws of justice are ineffective among

men: they merely make for the good of the wicked and the undoing of

the just, when the just man observes them towards everybody and nobody

observes them towards him. Conventions and laws are therefore needed to

join rights to duties and refer justice to its object. In the state of

nature, where everything is common, I owe nothing to him whom I nave

promised nothing; I recognise as belonging to others only what is of no

use to me. In the state of society all rights are fixed by law, and the

case becomes different.

But what, after all, is a law? As long as we remain satisfied with

attaching purely metaphysical ideas to the word, we shall go on arguing

without arriving at an understanding; and when we have defined a law of

nature, we shall be no nearer the definition of a law of the State.

I have already said that there can be no general will directed to a

particular object. Such an object must be either within or outside the

State. If outside, a will which is alien to it cannot be, in relation

to it, general; if within, it is part of the State, and in that case

there arises a relation between whole and part which makes them two

separate beings, of which the part is one, and the whole minus the part

the other. But the whole minus a part cannot be the whole; and while

this relation persists, there can be no whole, but only two unequal

parts; and it follows that the will of one is no longer in any respect

general in relation to the other.

But when the whole people decrees for the whole people, it is

considering only itself; and if a relation is then formed, it is

between two aspects of the entire object, without there being any

division of the whole. In that case the matter about which the decree

is made is, like the decreeing will general. This act is what I call a

law.

When I say that the object of laws is always general, I mean that

law considers subjects _en masse_ and actions in the abstract, and

never a particular person or action. Thus the law may indeed decree

that there shall be privileges, but cannot confer them on anybody by

name. It may set up several classes of citizens, and even lay down

the qualifications for membership of these classes, but it cannot

nominate such and such persons as belonging to them; it may establish a

monarchical government and hereditary succession, but it cannot choose

a king, or nominate a royal family. In a word, no function which has a

particular object belongs to the legislative power.

On this view, we at once see that it can no longer be asked whose

business it is to make laws, since they are acts of the general will:

nor whether the prince is above the law, since he is a member of the

State; nor whether the law can be unjust, since no one is unjust to

himself; nor how we can be both free and subject to the laws since they

are but registers of our wills.

We see further that, as the law unites universality of will with

universality of object, what a man, whoever he be, commands of his

own motion cannot be a law; and even what the Sovereign commands with

regard to a particular matter is no nearer being a law, but is a

decree, an act, not of sovereignty, but of magistracy.

I therefore give the name 'Republic' to every State that is governed by

laws, no matter what the form of its administration may be: for only

in such a case does the public interest govern, and the _res publica_

rank as a _reality_. Every legitimate government is republican;[1] what

government is I will explain later on.

Laws are, properly speaking, only the conditions of civil association.

The people, being subject to the laws, ought to be their author:

the conditions of the society ought to be regulated solely by those

who come together to form it. But how are they to regulate them? Is

it to be by common agreement, by a sudden inspiration? Has the body

politic an organ to declare its will? Who can give it the foresight to

formulate and announce its acts in advance? Or how is it to announce

them in the hour of need? How can a blind multitude, which often does

not know what it wills, because it rarely knows what is good for it,

carry out for itself so great and difficult an enterprise as a system

of legislation? Of itself the people wills always the good, but of

itself it by no means always sees it. The general will is always in

the right, but the judgment which guides it is not always enlightened.

It must be got to see objects as they are, and sometimes as they ought

to appear to it; it must be shown the good road it is in search of,

secured from the seductive influences of individual wills, taught to

see times and spaces as a series, and made to weigh the attractions

of present and sensible advantages against the danger of distant and

hidden evils. The individuals see the good they reject; the public

wills the good it does not see. All stand equally in need of guidance.

The former must be compelled to bring their wills into conformity with

their reason; the latter must be taught to know what it wills. If that

is done, public enlightenment leads to the union of understanding and

will in the social body: the parts are made to work exactly together,

and the whole is raised to its highest power. This makes a legislator

necessary.

[1] I understand by this word, not merely an aristocracy or a

democracy, but generally any government directed by the general will,

which is the law. To be legitimate, the government must be, not one

with the Sovereign, but its minister. In such a case even a monarchy is

a Republic. This will be made clearer in the following book.

CHAPTER VII

THE LEGISLATOR

In order to discover the rules of society best suited to nations,

a superior intelligence beholding all the passions of men without

experiencing any of them would be needed. This intelligence would have

to be wholly unrelated to our nature, while knowing it through and

through; its happiness would have to be independent of us, and yet

ready to occupy itself with ours; and lastly, it would have, in the

march of time, to look forward to a distant glory, and, working in one

century, to be able to enjoy in the next.[1] It would take gods to give

men laws.

What Caligula argued from the facts, Plato, in the dialogue called the

_Politicus_, argued in defining the civil or kingly man, on the basis

of right. But if great princes are rare, how much more so are great

legislators? The former have only to follow the pattern which the

latter have to lay down. The legislator is the engineer who invents

the machine, the prince merely the mechanic who sets it up and makes

it go. "At the birth of societies," says Montesquieu, "the rulers of

Republics establish institutions, and afterwards the institutions mould

the rulers."[2]

He who dares to undertake the making of a people's institutions ought

to feel himself capable, so to speak, of changing human nature, of

transforming each individual, who is by himself a complete and solitary

whole, into part of a greater whole from which he in a manner receives

his life and being; of altering man's constitution for the purpose of

strengthening it; and of substituting a partial and moral existence

for the physical and independent existence nature has conferred on

us all. He must, in a word, take away from man his own resources and

give him instead new ones alien to him, and incapable of being made

use of without the help of other men. The more completely these

natural resources are annihilated, the greater and the more lasting

are those which he acquires, and the more stable and perfect the new

institutions; so that if each citizen is nothing and can do nothing

without the rest, and the resources acquired by the whole are equal

or superior to the aggregate of the resources of all the individuals,

it may be said that legislation is at the highest possible point of

perfection.

The legislator occupies in every respect an extraordinary position

in the State. If he should do so by reason of his genius, he does so

no less by reason of his office, which is neither magistracy, nor

Sovereignty. This office, which sets up the Republic, nowhere enters

into its constitution; it is an individual and superior function, which

has nothing in common with human empire; for if he who holds command

over men ought not to have command over the laws, he who has command

over the laws ought not any more to have it over men; or else his laws

would be the ministers of his passions and would often merely serve to

perpetuate his injustices: his private aims would inevitably mar the

sanctity of his work.

When Lycurgus gave laws to his country, he began by resigning

the throne. It was the custom of most Greek towns to entrust the

establishment of their laws to foreigners. The Republics of modern

Italy in many cases followed this example; Geneva did the same and

profited by it.[3] Rome, when it was most prosperous, suffered a

revival of all the crimes of tyranny, and was brought to the verge of

destruction, because it put the legislative authority and the sovereign

power into the same hands.

Nevertheless, the decemvirs themselves never claimed the right to pass

any law merely on their own authority. "Nothing we propose to you,"

they said to the people, "can pass into law without your consent.

Romans, be yourselves the authors of the laws which are to make you

happy."

He, therefore, who draws up the laws has, or should have, no right of

legislation, and the people cannot, even if it wishes, deprive itself

of this incommunicable right, because, according to the fundamental

compact, only the general will can bind the individuals, and there

can be no assurance that a particular will is in conformity with the

general will, until it has been put to the free vote of the people.

This I have said already; but it is worth while to repeat it.

Thus in the task of legislation we find together two things which

appear to be incompatible: an enterprise too difficult for human

powers, and, for its execution, an authority that is no authority.

There is a further difficulty that deserves attention. Wise men, if

they try to speak their language to the common herd instead of its

own, cannot possibly make themselves understood. There are a thousand

kinds of ideas which it is impossible to translate into popular

language. Conceptions that are too general and objects that are too

remote are equally out of its range: each individual, having no taste

for any other plan of government than that which suits his particular

interest, finds it difficult to realise the advantages he might hope

to draw from the continual privations good laws impose. For a young

people to be able to relish sound principles of political theory and

follow the fundamental rules of statecraft, the effect would have to

become the cause; the social spirit, which should be created by these

institutions, would have to preside over their very foundation; and men

would have to be before law what they should become by means of law.

The legislator therefore, being unable to appeal to either force or

reason, must have recourse to an authority of a different order capable

of constraining without violence and persuading without convincing.

This is what has, in all ages, compelled the fathers of nations to

have recourse to divine intervention and credit the gods with their

own wisdom, in order that the peoples, submitting to the laws of the

State as to those of nature, and recognising the same power in the

formation of the city as in that of man, might obey freely, and bear

with docility the yoke of the public happiness.

This sublime reason, far above the range of the common herd, is that

whose decisions the legislator puts into the mouth of the immortals,

in order to constrain by divine authority those whom human prudence

could not move.[4] But it is not anybody who can make the gods speak,

or get himself believed when he proclaims himself their interpreter.

The great soul of the legislator is the only miracle that can prove

his mission. Any man may grave tablets of stone, or buy an oracle; or

feign secret intercourse with some divinity, or train a bird to whisper

in his ear, or find other vulgar ways of imposing on the people. He

whose knowledge goes no further may perhaps gather round him a band of

fools; but he will never found an empire, and his extravagances will

quickly perish with him. Idle tricks form a passing tie; only wisdom

can make it lasting. The Judaic law, which still subsists, and that

of the child of Ishmael, which, for ten centuries, has ruled half the

world, still proclaim the great men who laid them down; and, while the

pride of philosophy or the blind spirit of faction sees in them no more

than lucky impostures, the true political theorist admires, in the

institutions they set up, the great and powerful genius which presides

over things made to endure.

We should not, with Warburton, conclude from this that politics and

religion have among us a common object, but that, in the first periods

of nations, the one is used as an instrument for the other.

[1] A people becomes famous only when its legislation begins to

decline. We do not know for how many centuries the system of Lycurgus

made the Spartans happy before the rest of Greece took any notice of it.

[2] Montesquieu, _The Greatness and Decadence of the Romans_, ch. i.

[3] Those who know Calvin only as a theologian much underestimate the

extent of his genius. The codification of our wise edicts, in which

he played a large part, does him no less honour than his _Institute_.

Whatever revolution time may bring in our religion, so long as the

spirit of patriotism and liberty still lives among us, the memory of

this great man will be for ever blessed.

[4] "In truth," says Macchiavelli, "there has never been, in any

country, an extraordinary legislator who has not had recourse to God;

for otherwise his laws would not have been accepted: there are, in

fact, many useful truths of which a wise man may have knowledge without

their having in themselves such clear reasons for their being so as

to be able to convince others" (_Discourses on Livy_, Bk. v, ch. xi).

(Rousseau quotes the Italian.)

CHAPTER VIII

THE PEOPLE

As, before putting up a large building, the architect surveys and

sounds the site to see if it will bear the weight, the wise legislator

does not begin by laying down laws good in themselves, but by

investigating the fitness of the people, for which they are destined,

to receive them. Plato refused to legislate for the Arcadians and the

Cyrenæans, because he knew that both peoples were rich and could not

put up with equality; and good laws and bad men were found together

in Crete, because Minos had inflicted discipline on a people already

burdened with vice.

A thousand nations have achieved earthly greatness, that could never

have endured good laws; even such as could have endured them could

have done so only for a very brief period of their long history. Most

peoples, like most men, are docile only in youth; as they grow old they

become incorrigible. When once customs have become established and

prejudices inveterate, it is dangerous and useless to attempt their

reformation; the people, like the foolish and cowardly patients who

rave at sight of the doctor, can no longer bear that any one should lay

hands on its faults to remedy them.

There are indeed times in the history of States when, just as some

kinds of illness turn men's heads and make them forget the past,

periods of violence and revolutions do to peoples what these crises do

to individuals: horror of the past takes the place of forgetfulness,

and the State, set on fire by civil wars, is born again, so to speak,

from its ashes, and takes on anew, fresh from the jaws of death, the

vigour of youth. Such were Sparta at the time of Lycurgus, Rome after

the Tarquins, and, in modern times, Holland and Switzerland after the

expulsion of the tyrants.

But such events are rare; they are exceptions, the cause of which

is always to be found in the particular constitution of the State

concerned. They cannot even happen twice to the same people, for it

can make itself free as long as it remains barbarous, but not when the

civic impulse has lost its vigour. Then disturbances may destroy it,

but revolutions cannot mend it: it needs a master, and not a liberator.

Free peoples, be mindful of maxim; "Liberty may be gained, but can

never be recovered."

Youth is not infancy. There is for nations, as for men, a period of

youth, or, shall we say, maturity, before which they should not be

made subject to laws; but the maturity of a people is not always

easily recognisable, and, if it is anticipated, the work is spoilt.

One people is amenable to discipline from the beginning; another, not

after ten centuries. Russia will never be really civilised, because

it was civilised too soon. Peter had a genius for imitation; but he

lacked true genius, which is creative and makes all from nothing. He

did some good things, but most of what he did was out of place. He

saw that his people was barbarous, but did not see that it was not

ripe for civilisation: he wanted to civilise it when it needed only

hardening. His first wish was to make Germans or Englishmen, when he

ought to have been making Russians; and he prevented his subjects from

ever becoming what they might have been by persuading them that they

were what they are not. In this fashion too a French teacher turns out

his pupil to be an infant prodigy, and for the rest of his life to be

nothing whatsoever. The empire of Russia will aspire to conquer Europe,

and will itself be conquered. The Tartars, its subjects or neighbours,

will become its masters and ours, by a revolution which I regard as

inevitable. Indeed, all the kings of Europe are working in concert to

hasten its coming.

CHAPTER IX

THE PEOPLE (_continued_)

As nature has set bounds to the stature of a well-made man, and,

outside those limits, makes nothing but giants or dwarfs, similarly,

for the constitution of a State to be at its best, it is possible to

fix limits that will make it neither too large for good government,

nor too small for self-maintenance. In every body politic there is

a _maximum_ strength which it cannot exceed and which it only loses

by increasing in size. Every extension of the social tie means its

relaxation; and, generally speaking, a small State is stronger in

proportion than a great one.

A thousand arguments could be advanced in favour of this principle.

First, long distances make administration more difficult, just as a

weight becomes heavier at the end of a longer lever. Administration

therefore becomes more and more burdensome as the distance grows

greater; for, in the first place, each city has its own, which is

paid for by the people: each district its own, still paid for by the

people: then comes each province, and then the great governments,

satrapies, and vice-royalties, always costing more the higher you go,

and always at the expense of the unfortunate people. Last of all comes

the supreme administration, which eclipses all the rest. All these

overcharges are a continual drain upon the subjects; so far from being

better governed by all these different orders, they are worse governed

than if there were only a single authority over them. In the meantime,

there scarce remain resources enough to meet emergencies; and, when

recourse must be had to these, the State is always on the eve of

destruction.

This is not all; not only has the government less vigour and

promptitude for securing the observance of the laws, preventing

nuisances, correcting abuses, and guarding against seditious

undertakings begun in distant places; the people has less affection for

its rulers, whom it never sees, for its country, which, to its eyes,

seems like the world, and for its fellow-citizens, most of whom are

unknown to it. The same laws cannot suit so many diverse provinces with

different customs, situated in the most various climates, and incapable

of enduring a uniform government. Different laws lead only to trouble

and confusion among peoples which, living under the same rulers and in

constant communication one with another, intermingle and intermarry,

and, coming under the sway of new customs, never know if they can call

their very patrimony their own. Talent is buried, virtue unknown and

vice unpunished, among such a multitude of men who do not know one

another, gathered together in one place at the seat of the central

administration. The leaders, overwhelmed with business, see nothing

for themselves; the State is governed by clerks. Finally, the measures

which have to be taken to, maintain the general authority, which all

these distant officials wish to escape or to impose upon, absorb all

the energy of the public, so that there is none left for the happiness

of the people. There is hardly enough to defend it when need arises,

and thus a body which is too big for its constitution gives way and

falls crushed under its own weight.

Again, the State must assure itself a safe foundation, if it is to

have stability, and to be able to resist the shocks it cannot help

experiencing, as well as the efforts it will be forced to make for

its maintenance; for all peoples have a kind of centrifugal force

that makes them continually act one against another, and tend to

aggrandise themselves at their neighbours' expense, like the vortices

of Descartes. Thus the weak run the risk of being soon swallowed up;

and it is almost impossible for any one to preserve itself except by

putting itself in a state of equilibrium with all, so that the pressure

is on all sides practically equal.

It may therefore be seen that there are reasons for expansion and

reasons for contraction; and it is no small part of the statesman's

skill to hit between them the mean that is most favourable to the

preservation of the State. It may be said that the reason for

expansion, being merely external and relative, ought to be subordinate

to the reasons for contraction, which are internal and absolute. A

strong and healthy constitution is the first thing to look for; and it

is better to count on the vigour which comes of good government than on

the resources a great territory furnishes.

It may be added that there have been known States so constituted that

the necessity of making conquests entered into their very constitution,

and that, in order to maintain themselves, they were forced to expand

ceaselessly. It may be that they congratulated themselves greatly on

this fortunate necessity, which none the less indicated to them, along

with the limits of their greatness, the inevitable moment of their fall.

CHAPTER X

THE PEOPLE (_continued_)

A body politic may be measured in two ways--either by the extent of its

territory, or by the number of its people; and there is, between these

two measurements, a right relation which makes the State really great.

The men make the State, and the territory sustains the men; the right

relation therefore is that the land should suffice for the maintenance

of the inhabitants, and that there should be as many inhabitants as

the land can maintain. In this proportion lies the _maximum_ strength

of a given number of people; for if there is too much land, it is

troublesome to guard and inadequately cultivated, produces more than is

needed, and soon gives rise to wars of defence; if there is not enough,

the State depends on its neighbours for what it needs over and above,

and this soon gives rise to wars of offence. Every people, to which

its situation gives no choice save that between commerce and war, is

weak in itself: it depends on its neighbours, and on circumstances;

its existence can never be more than short and uncertain. It either

conquers others, and changes its situation, or it is conquered and

becomes nothing. Only insignificance or greatness can keep it free.

No fixed relation can be stated between the extent of the territory

and the population that are adequate one to the other, both because

of the differences in the quality of land, in its fertility, in the

nature of its products, and in the influence of climate, and because of

the different tempers of those who inhabit it; for some in a fertile

country consume little, and others on an ungrateful soil much. The

greater or less fecundity of women, the conditions that are more or

less favourable in each country to the growth of population, and the

influence the legislator can hope to exercise by his institutions, must

also be taken into account. The legislator therefore should not go

by what he sees, but by what he foresees; he should stop not so much

at the state in which he actually finds the population, as at that

to which it ought naturally to attain. Lastly, there are countless

cases in which the particular local circumstances demand or allow

the acquisition of a greater territory than seems necessary. Thus,

expansion will be great in a mountainous country, where the natural

products, _i.e._ woods and pastures, need less labour, where we know

from experience that women are more fertile than in the plains, and

where a great expanse of slope affords only a small level tract that

can be counted on for vegetation. On the other hand, contraction is

possible on the coast, even in lands of rocks and nearly barren sands,

because there fishing makes up to a great extent for the lack of

land-produce, because the inhabitants have to congregate together more

in order to repel pirates, and further because it is easier to unburden

the country of its superfluous inhabitants by means of colonies.

To these conditions of law-giving must be added one other which,

though it cannot take the place of the rest, renders them all useless

when it is absent. This is the enjoyment of peace and plenty; for the

moment at which a State sets its house in order is, like the moment

when a battalion is forming up, that when its body is least capable of

offering resistance and easiest to destroy. A better resistance could

be made at a time of absolute disorganisation than at a moment of

fermentation, when each is occupied with his own position and not with

the danger. If war, famine, or sedition arises at this time of crisis,

the State will inevitably be overthrown.

Not that many governments have not been set up during such storms; but

in such cases these governments are themselves the State's destroyers.

Usurpers always bring about or select troublous times to get passed,

under cover of the public terror, destructive laws, which the people

would never adopt in cold blood. The moment chosen is one of the surest

means of distinguishing the work of the legislator from that of the

tyrant.

What people, then, is a fit subject for legislation? One which,

already bound by some unity of origin, interest, or convention, has

never yet felt the real yoke of law; one that has neither customs nor

superstitions deeply ingrained, one which stands in no fear of being

overwhelmed by sudden invasion; one which, without entering into its

neighbours' quarrels, can resist each of them single-handed, or get the

help of one to repel another; one in which every member may be known by

every other, and there is no need to lay on any man burdens too heavy

for a man to bear; one which can do without other peoples, and without

which all others can do;[1] one which is neither rich nor poor, but

self-sufficient; and, lastly, one which unites the consistency of an

ancient people with the docility of a new one. Legislation is made

difficult less by what it is necessary to build up than by what has to

be destroyed; and what makes success so rare is the impossibility of

finding natural simplicity together with social requirements. All these

conditions are indeed rarely found united, and therefore few States

have good constitutions.

There is still in Europe one country capable of being given

laws--Corsica. The valour and persistency with which that brave people

has regained and defended its liberty well deserves that some wise man

should teach it how to preserve what it has won. I have a feeling that

some day that little island will astonish Europe.

[1] If there were two neighbouring peoples, one of which could not

do without the other, it would be very hard on the former, and very

dangerous for the latter. Every wise nation, in such a case, would make

haste to free the other from dependence. The Republic of Thlascala,

enclosed by the Mexican Empire, preferred doing without salt to

buying from the Mexicans, or even getting it from them as a gift

The Thlascalans were wise enough to see the snare hidden under such

liberality. They kept their freedom, and that little State, shut up in

that great Empire, was finally the instrument of its ruin.

CHAPTER XI

THE VARIOUS SYSTEMS OF LEGISLATION

If we ask in what precisely consists the greatest good of all, which

should be the end of every system of legislation, we shall find it

reduce itself to two main objects, liberty and equality--liberty,

because all particular dependence means so much force taken from the

body of the State, and equality, because liberty cannot exist without

it.

I have already defined civil liberty; by equality, we should

understand, not that the degrees of power and riches are to be

absolutely identical for everybody; but that power shall never be

great enough for violence, and shall always be exercised by virtue of

rank and law; and that, in respect of riches, no citizen shall ever be

wealthy enough to buy another, and none poor enough to be forced to

sell himself:[1] which implies, on the part of the great, moderation

in goods and position, and, on the side of the common sort, moderation

in avarice and covetousness.

Such equality, we are told, is an unpractical ideal that cannot

actually exist. But if its abuse is inevitable, does it follow that we

should not at least make regulations concerning it? It is precisely

because the force of circumstances tends continually to destroy

equality that the force of legislation should always tend to its

maintenance.

But these general objects of every good legislative system need

modifying in every country in accordance with the local situation

and the temper of the inhabitants; and these circumstances should

determine, in each case, the particular system of institutions which

is best, not perhaps in itself, but for the State for which it is

destined. If, for instance, the soil is barren and unproductive, or

the land too crowded for its inhabitants, the people should turn

to industry and the crafts, and exchange what they produce for the

commodities they lack. If, on the other hand, a people dwells in rich

plains and fertile slopes, or, in a good land, lacks inhabitants, it

should give all its attention to agriculture, which causes men to

multiply, and should drive out the crafts, which would only result in

depopulation, by grouping in a few localities the few inhabitants there

are.[2] If a nation dwells on an extensive and convenient coast-line,

let it cover the sea with ships and foster commerce and navigation. It

will have a life that will be short and glorious. If, on its coasts,

the sea washes nothing but almost inaccessible rocks, let it remain

barbarous and ichthyophagous: it will have a quieter, perhaps a better,

and certainly a happier life. In a word, besides the principles that

are common to all, every nation has in itself something that gives them

a particular application, and makes its legislation peculiarly its own.

Thus, among the Jews long ago and more recently among the Arabs, the

chief object was religion, among the Athenians letters, at Carthage and

Tyre commerce, at Rhodes shipping, at Sparta war, at Rome virtue. The

author of _The Spirit of the Laws_ has shown with many examples by

what art the legislator directs the constitution towards each of these

objects.

What makes the constitution of a State really solid and lasting is

the due observance of what is proper, so that the natural relations

are always in agreement with the laws on every point, and law only

serves, so to speak, to assure, accompany and rectify them. But if

the legislator mistakes his object and adopts a principle other than

circumstances naturally direct; if his principle makes for servitude

while they make for liberty, or if it makes for riches, while they

make for populousness, or if it makes for peace, while they make

for conquest--the laws will insensibly lose their influence, the

constitution will alter, and the State will have no rest from trouble

till it is either destroyed or changed, and nature has resumed her

invincible sway.

[1] If the object is to give the State consistency, bring the two

extremes as near to each other as possible; allow neither rich men

nor beggars. These two estates, which are naturally inseparable, are

equally fatal to the common good; from the one come the friends of

tyranny, and from the other tyrants. It is always between them that

public liberty is put up to auction; the one buys, and the other sells.

[2] "Any branch of foreign commerce," says M. d'Argenson, "creates on

the whole only apparent advantage for the kingdom in general; it may

enrich some individuals, or even some towns; but the nation as a whole

gains nothing by it, and the people is no better off."

CHAPTER XII

THE DIVISION OF THE LAWS

If the whole is to be set in order, and the commonwealth put into the

best possible shape, there are various relations to be considered.

First, there is the action of the complete body upon itself, the

relation of the whole to the whole, of the Sovereign to the State; and

this relation, as we shall see, is made up of the relations of the

intermediate terms.

The laws which regulate this relation bear the name of political laws,

and are also called fundamental laws, not without reason if they are

wise. For, if there is, in each State, only one good system, the

people that is in possession of it should hold fast to this; but if

the established order is bad, why should laws that prevent men from

being good be regarded as fundamental? Besides, in any case, a people

is always in a position to change its laws, however good; for, if it

choose to do itself harm, who can have a right to stop it?

The second relation is that of the members one to another, or to the

body as a whole; and this relation should be in the first respect as

unimportant, and in the second as important, as possible. Each citizen

would then be perfectly independent of all the rest, and at the same

time very dependent on the city; which is brought about always by the

same means, as the strength of the State can alone secure the liberty

of its members. From this second relation arise civil laws.

We may consider also a third kind of relation between the individual

and the law, a relation of disobedience to its penalty. This gives

rise to the setting up of criminal laws, which, at bottom, are less a

particular class of law than the sanction behind all the rest.

Along with these three kinds of law goes a fourth, most important of

all, which is not graven on tablets of marble or brass, but on the

hearts of the citizens. This forms the real constitution of the State,

takes on every day new powers, when other laws decay or die out,

restores them or takes their place, keeps a people in the ways in which

it was meant to go, and insensibly replaces authority by the force

of habit. I am speaking of morality, of custom, above all of public

opinion; a power unknown to political thinkers, on which none the less

success in everything else depends. With this the great legislator

concerns himself in secret, though he seems to confine himself to

particular regulations; for these are only the arc of the arch, while

manners and morals, slower to arise, form in the end its immovable

keystone.

Among the different classes of laws, the political, which determine the

form of the government, are alone relevant to my subject.

BOOK III

Before speaking of the different forms of government, let us try to

fix the exact sense of the word, which has not yet been very clearly

explained.

CHAPTER I

GOVERNMENT IN GENERAL

I warn the reader that this chapter requires careful reading, and that

I am unable to make myself clear to those who refuse to be attentive.

Every free action is produced by the concurrence of two causes; one

moral, _i.e._ the will which determines the act; the other physical,

_i.e._ the power which executes it. When I walk towards an object, it

is necessary first that I should will to go there, and, in the second

place, that my feet should carry me. If a paralytic wills to run and

an active man wills not to, they will both stay where they are. The

body politic has the same motive powers; here too force and will are

distinguished, will under the name of legislative power and force under

that of executive power. Without their concurrence, nothing is, or

should be, done.

We have seen that the legislative power belongs to the people, and can

belong to it alone. It may, on the other hand, readily be seen, from

the principles laid down above, that the executive power cannot belong

to the generality as legislature or Sovereign, because it consists

wholly of particular acts which fall outside the competency of the law,

and consequently of the Sovereign, whose acts must always be laws.

The public force therefore needs an agent of its own to bind it

together and set it to work under the direction of the general will, to

serve as a means of communication between the State and the Sovereign,

and to do for the collective person more or less what the union of soul

and body does for man. Here we have what is, in the State, the basis of

government, often wrongly confused with the Sovereign, whose minister

it is.

What then is government? An intermediate body set up between the

subjects and the Sovereign, to secure their mutual correspondence,

charged with the execution of the laws and the maintenance of liberty,

both civil and political.

The members of this body are called magistrates or _kings_, that is to

say _governors_, and the whole body bears the name _prince_.[1] Thus

those who hold that the act, by which a people puts itself under a

prince, is not a contract, are certainly right. It is simply and solely

a commission, an employment, in which the rulers, mere officials of the

Sovereign, exercise in their own name the power of which it makes them

depositaries. This power it can limit, modify or recover at pleasure;

for the alienation of such a right is incompatible with the nature of

the social body, and contrary to the end of association.

I call then _government_, or supreme administration, the legitimate

exercise of the executive power, and prince or magistrate the man or

the body entrusted with that administration.

In government reside the intermediate forces whose relations make up

that of the whole to the whole, or of the Sovereign to the State. This

last relation may be represented as that between the extreme terms of a

continuous proportion, which has government as its mean proportional.

The government gets from the Sovereign the orders it gives the people,

and, for the State to be properly balanced, there must, when everything

is reckoned in, be equality between the product or power of the

government taken in itself, and the product or power of the citizens,

who are on the one hand sovereign and on the other subject.

Furthermore, none of these three terms can be altered without the

equality being instantly destroyed. If the Sovereign desires to govern,

or the magistrate to give laws, or if the subjects refuse to obey,

disorder takes the place of regularity, force and will no longer act

together, and the State is dissolved and falls into despotism or

anarchy. Lastly, as there is only one mean proportional between each

relation, there is also only one good government possible for a State.

But, as countless events may change the relations of a people, not only

may different governments be good for different peoples, but also for

the same people at different times.

In attempting to give some idea of the various relations that may hold

between these two extreme terms, I shall take as an example the number

of a people, which is the most easily expressible.

Suppose the State is composed of ten thousand citizens. The Sovereign

can only be considered collectively and as a body; but each member, as

being a subject, is regarded as an individual: thus the Sovereign is

to the subject as ten thousand to one, _i.e._ each member of the State

has as his share only a ten-thousandth part of the sovereign authority,

although he is wholly under its control. If the people numbers a

hundred thousand, the condition of the subject undergoes no change,

and each equally is under the whole authority of the laws, while his

vote, being reduced to one hundred thousandth part, has ten times less

influence in drawing them up. The subject therefore remaining always

a unit, the relation between him and the Sovereign increases with the

number of the citizens. From this it follows that, the larger the

State, the less the liberty.

When I say the relation increases, I mean that it grows more unequal.

Thus the greater it is in the geometrical sense, the less relation

there is in the ordinary sense of the word. In the former sense,

the relation, considered according to quantity, is expressed by the

quotient; in the latter, considered according to identity, it is

reckoned by similarity.

Now, the less relation the particular wills have to the general will,

that is, morals and manners to laws, the more should the repressive

force be increased. The government, then, to be good, should be

proportionately stronger as the people is more numerous.

On the other hand, as the growth of the State gives the depositaries

of the public authority more temptations and chances of abusing their

power, the greater the force with which the government ought to be

endowed for keeping the people in hand, the greater too should be the

force at the disposal of the Sovereign for keeping the government in

hand. I am speaking, not of absolute force, but of the relative force

of the different parts of the State.

It follows from this double relation that the continuous proportion

between the Sovereign, the prince and the people, is by no means an

arbitrary idea, but a necessary consequence of the nature of the body

politic. It follows further that, one of the extreme terms, viz. the

people, as subject, being fixed and represented by unity, whenever the

duplicate ratio increases or diminishes, the simple ratio does the

same, and is changed accordingly. From this we see that there is not a

single unique and absolute form of government, but as many governments

differing in nature as there are States differing in size.

If, ridiculing this system, any one were to say that, in order to find

the mean proportional and give form to the body of the government,

it is only necessary, according to me, to find the square root of

the number of the people, I should answer that I am here taking this

number only as an instance; that the relations of which I am speaking

are not measured by the number of men alone, but generally by the

amount of action, which is a combination of a multitude of causes; and

that, further, if, to save words, I borrow for a moment the terms of

geometry, I am none the less well aware that moral quantities do not

allow of geometrical accuracy.

The government is on a small scale what the body politic which includes

it is on a great one. It is a moral person endowed with certain

faculties, active like the Sovereign and passive like the State,

and capable of being resolved into other similar relations. This

accordingly gives rise to a new proportion, within which there is yet

another, according to the arrangement of the magistracies, till an

indivisible middle term is reached, _i.e._ a single ruler or supreme

magistrate, who may be represented, in the midst of this progression,

as the unity between the fractional and the ordinal series.

Without encumbering ourselves with this multiplication of terms, let us

rest content with regarding government as a new body within the State,

distinct from the people and the Sovereign, and intermediate between

them.

There is between these two bodies this essential difference, that

the State exists by itself, and the government only through the

Sovereign. Thus the dominant will of the prince is, or should be,

nothing but the general will or the law; his force is only the public

force concentrated in his hands, and, as soon as he tries to base

any absolute and independent act on his own authority, the tie that

binds the whole together begins to be loosened. If finally the prince

should come to have a particular will more active than the will of the

Sovereign, and should employ the public force in his hands in obedience

to this particular will, there would be, so to speak, two Sovereigns,

one rightful and the other actual, the social union would evaporate

instantly, and the body politic would be dissolved.

However, in order that the government may have a true existence

and a real life distinguishing it from the body of the State, and

in order that all its members may be able to act in concert and

fulfil the end for which it was set up, it must have a particular

personality, a sensibility common to its members, and a force and will

of its own making for its preservation. This particular existence

implies assemblies, councils, power of deliberation and decision,

rights, titles, and privileges belonging exclusively to the prince

and making the office of magistrate more honourable in proportion

as it is more troublesome. The difficulties lie in the manner of so

ordering this subordinate whole within the whole, that it in no way

alters the general constitution by affirmation of its own, and always

distinguishes the particular force it possesses, which is destined

to aid in its preservation, from the public force, which is destined

to the preservation of the State; and, in a word, is always ready to

sacrifice the government to the people, and never to sacrifice the

people to the government.

Furthermore, although the artificial body of the government is the work

of another artificial body, and has, we may say, only a borrowed and

subordinate life, this does not prevent it from being able to act with

more or less vigour or promptitude, or from being, so to speak, in more

or less robust health. Finally, without departing directly from the

end for which it was instituted, it may deviate more or less from it,

according to the manner of its constitution.

From all these differences arise the various relations which the

government ought to bear to the body of the State, according to the

accidental and particular relations by which the State itself is

modified, for often the government that is best in itself will become

the most pernicious, if the relations in which it stands have altered

according to the defects of the body politic to which it belongs.

[1] Thus at Venice the College, even in the absence of the Doge, is

called "Most Serene Prince."