THE CONSTITUENT PRINCIPLE IN THE VARIOUS FORMS OF GOVERNMENT
To set forth the general cause of the above differences, we must here
distinguish between government and its principle, as we did before
between the State and the Sovereign.
The body of the magistrate may be composed of a greater or a less
number of members. We said that the relation of the Sovereign to the
subjects was greater in proportion as the people was more numerous,
and, by a clear analogy, we may say the same of the relation of the
government to the magistrates.
But the total force of the government, being always that of the State,
is invariable; so that, the more of this force it expends on its own
members, the less it has left to employ on the whole people.
The more numerous the magistrates, therefore, the weaker the
government. This principle being fundamental, we must do our best to
make it clear.
In the person of the magistrate we can distinguish three essentially
different wills: first, the private will of the individual, tending
only to his personal advantage; secondly, the common will of the
magistrates, which is relative solely to the advantage of the prince,
and may be called corporate will, being general in relation to the
government, and particular in relation to the State, of which the
government forms part; and, in the third place, the will of the people
or the sovereign will, which is general both in relation to the State
regarded as the whole, and to the government regarded as a part of the
whole.
In a perfect act of legislation, the individual or particular will
should be at zero; the corporate will belonging to the government
should occupy a very subordinate position; and, consequently, the
general or sovereign will should always predominate and should be the
sole guide of all the rest.
According to the natural order, on the other hand, these different
wills become more active in proportion as they are concentrated. Thus,
the general will is always the weakest, the corporate will second, and
the individual will strongest of all: so that, in the government, each
member is first of all himself, then a magistrate, and then a citizen
--in an order exactly the reverse of what the social system requires.
This granted, if the whole government is in the hands of one man, the
particular and the corporate will are wholly united, and consequently
the latter is at its highest possible degree of intensity. But, as the
use to which the force is put depends on the degree reached by the
will, and as the absolute force of the government is invariable, it
follows that the most active government is that of one man.
Suppose, on the other hand, we unite the government with the
legislative authority, and make the Sovereign prince also, and all the
citizens so many magistrates: then the corporate will, being confounded
with the general will, can possess no greater activity than that will,
and must leave the particular will as strong as it can possibly be.
Thus, the government, having always the same absolute force, will be at
the lowest point of its relative force or activity.
These relations are incontestable, and there are other considerations
which still further confirm them. We can see, for instance, that
each magistrate is more active in the body to which he belongs than
each citizen in that to which he belongs, and that consequently the
particular will has much more influence on the acts of the government
than on those of the Sovereign; for each magistrate is almost always
charged with some governmental function, while each citizen, taken
singly, exercises no function of Sovereignty. Furthermore, the bigger
the State grows, the more its real force increases, though not in
direct proportion to its growth; but, the State remaining the same,
the number of magistrates may increase to any extent, without the
government gaining any greater real force; for its force is that of the
State, the dimension of which remains equal. Thus the relative force or
activity of the government decreases, while its absolute or real force
cannot increase.
Moreover, it is a certainty that promptitude in execution diminishes
as more people are put in charge of it: where prudence is made too
much of, not enough is made of fortune; opportunity is let slip, and
deliberation results in the loss of its object.
I have just proved that the government grows remiss in proportion as
the number of the magistrates increases; and I previously proved that,
the more numerous the people, the greater should be the repressive
force. From this it follows that the relation of the magistrates to the
government should vary inversely to the relation of the subjects to the
Sovereign; that is to say, the larger the State, the more should the
government be tightened, so that the number of the rulers diminish in
proportion to the increase of that of the people.
It should be added that I am here speaking of the relative strength of
the government, and not of its rectitude: for, on the other hand, the
more numerous the magistracy, the nearer the corporate will comes to
the general will; while, under a single magistrate, the corporate will
is, as I said, merely a particular will. Thus, what may be gained on
one side is lost on the other, and the art of the legislator is to know
how to fix the point at which the force and the will of the government,
which are always in inverse proportion, meet in the relation that is
most to the advantage of the State.