DEPUTIES OR REPRESENTATIVES
As soon as public service ceases to be the chief business of the
citizens, and they would rather serve with their money than with their
persons, the State is not far from its fall. When it is necessary
to march out to war, they pay troops and stay at home: when it is
necessary to meet in council, they name deputies and stay at home. By
reason of idleness and money, they end by having soldiers to enslave
their country and representatives to sell it.
It is through the hustle of commerce and the arts, through the greedy
self-interest of profit, and through softness and love of amenities
that personal services are replaced by money payments. Men surrender
a part of their profits in order to have time to increase them at
leisure. Make gifts of money, and you will not be long without chains.
The word _finance_ is a slavish word, unknown in the city-state. In a
country that is truly free, the citizens do everything with their own
arms and nothing by means of money; so far from paying to be exempted
from their duties, they would even pay for the privilege of fulfilling
them themselves. I am far from taking the common view: I hold enforced
labour to be less opposed to liberty than taxes.
The better the constitution of a State is, the more do public affairs
encroach on private in the minds of the citizens. Private affairs are
even of much less importance, because the aggregate of the common
happiness furnishes a greater proportion of that of each individual,
so that there is less for him to seek in particular cares. In a
well-ordered city every man flies to the assemblies: under a bad
government no one cares to stir a step to get to them, because no one
is interested in what happens there, because it is foreseen that the
general will will not prevail, and lastly because domestic cares are
all-absorbing. Good laws lead to the making of better ones; bad ones
bring about worse. As soon as any man says of the affairs of the State
_What does it matter to me?_ the State may be given up for lost.
The lukewarmness of patriotism, the activity of private interest, the
vastness of States, conquest and the abuse of government suggested
the method of having deputies or representatives of the people in
the national assemblies. These are what, in some countries, men have
presumed to call the Third Estate. Thus the individual interest of two
orders is put first and second; the public interest occupies only the
third place.
Sovereignty, for the same reason as makes it inalienable, cannot be
represented; it lies essentially in the general will, and will does not
admit of representation: it is either the same, or other; there is no
intermediate possibility. The deputies of the people, therefore, are
not and cannot be its representatives: they are merely its stewards,
and can carry through no definitive acts. Every law the people has not
ratified in person is null and void--is, in fact, not a law. The people
of England regards itself as free; but it is grossly mistaken; it is
free only during the election of members of parliament. As soon as they
are elected, slavery overtakes it, and it is nothing. The use it makes
of the short moments of liberty it enjoys shows indeed that it deserves
to lose them.
The idea of representation is modern; it comes to us from feudal
government, from that iniquitous and absurd system which degrades
humanity and dishonours the name of man. In ancient republics and even
in monarchies, the people never had representatives; the word itself
was unknown. It is very singular that in Rome, where the tribunes
were so sacrosanct, it was never even imagined that they could usurp
the functions of the people, and that in the midst of so great a
multitude they never attempted to pass on their own authority a single
plebiscitum. We can, however, form an idea of the difficulties caused
sometimes by the people being so numerous, from what happened in the
time of the Gracchi, when some of the citizens had to cast their votes
from the roofs of buildings.
Where right and liberty are everything, disadvantages count for
nothing. Among this wise people everything was given its just value,
its lictors were allowed to do what its tribunes would never have dared
to attempt; for it had no fear that its lictors would try to represent
it.
To explain, however, in what way the tribunes did sometimes represent
it, it is enough to conceive how the government represents the
Sovereign. Law being purely the declaration of the general will, it is
clear that, in the exercise of the legislative power, the people cannot
be represented; but in that of the executive power, which is only the
force that is applied to give the law effect, it both can and should be
represented. We thus see that if we looked closely into the matter we
should find that very few nations have any laws. However that may be,
it is certain that the tribunes, possessing no executive power, could
never represent the Roman people by right of the powers entrusted to
them, but only by usurping those of the senate.
In Greece, all that the people had to do, it did for itself; it was
constantly assembled in the public square. The Greeks lived in a mild
climate; they had no natural greed; slaves did their work for them;
their great concern was with liberty. Lacking the same advantages, how
can you preserve the same rights? Your severer climates add to your
needs;[1] for half the year your public squares are uninhabitable; the
flatness of your languages unfits them for being heard in the open air;
you sacrifice more for profit than for liberty, and fear slavery less
than poverty.
What then? Is liberty maintained only by the help of slavery? It may be
so. Extremes meet. Everything that is not in the course of nature has
its disadvantages, civil society most of all. There are some unhappy
circumstances in which we can only keep our liberty at others' expense,
and where the citizen can be perfectly free only when the slave is most
a slave. Such was the case with Sparta. As for you, modern peoples,
you have no slaves, but you are slaves yourselves; you pay for their
liberty with your own. It is in vain that you boast of this preference;
I find in it more cowardice than humanity.
I do not mean by all this that it is necessary to have slaves, or that
the right of slavery is legitimate: I am merely giving the reasons why
modern peoples, believing themselves to be free, have representatives,
while ancient peoples had none. In any case, the moment a people allows
itself to be represented, it is no longer free: it no longer exists.
All things considered, I do not see that it is possible henceforth for
the Sovereign to preserve among us the exercise of its rights, unless
the city is very small. But if it is very small, it will be conquered?
No. I will show later on how the external strength of a great people[2]
may be combined with the convenient polity and good order of a small
State.
[1] To adopt in cold countries the luxury and effeminacy of the East is
to desire to submit to its chains; it is indeed to bow to them far more
inevitably in our case than in theirs.
[2] I had intended to do this in the sequel to this work, when
in dealing with external relations I came to the subject of
confederations. The subject is quite new, and its principles have still
to be laid down.