I
| II | III
| IV
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.
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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 vexations 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,3 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."
5. 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.
6. 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,4 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.
7. 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 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 legitimises
civil undertakings, which, without it, would be absurd, tyrannical,
and liable to the most frightful abuses.
8. 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 is 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.
9. 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 become 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 Nunez Balboa,
standing on the sea-shore, took possession of the South Seas and the
whole of South America in the name of the crown of Castile, 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 Kings 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 the 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.5
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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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
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