{"schema_version":1,"access":"public","rights":"Public-domain or compatibly licensed source editions; provenance is retained per record.","work":{"slug":"contrat","title":"The Social Contract (Du contrat social)","author":"Jean-Jacques Rousseau","tradition":"european","language":"fr","genre":"political philosophy","period":"1762","source_url":"https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Du_contrat_social/Édition_1762","original":{"text":"### Book I, Chapter 1\n\nJe veux chercher si dans l’ordre civil il peut y avoir quelque regle d’administration légitime & sûre, en prenant les hommes tels qu’ils sont, & les loix telles qu’elles peuvent être: Je tâcherai d’allier toujours dans cette recherche ce que le droit permet avec ce que l’intérêt prescrit, afin que la justice & l’utilité ne se trouvent point divisées.\n\nJ’entre en matiere sans prouver l’importance de mon sujet. On me demandera si je suis prince ou législateur pour écrire sur la Politique? Je réponds que non, & que c’est pour cela que j’écris sur la Politique. Si j’étois prince ou législateur, je ne perdrois pas mon tems à dire ce qu’il faut faire; je le ferois, ou je me tairois.\n\nNé citoyen d’un État libre, & membre du souverain, quelque foible influence que puisse avoir ma voix dans les affaires publiques, le droit d’y voter suffit pour m’imposer le devoir de m’en instruire. Heureux, toutes les fois que je médite sur les Gouvernemens, de trouver toujours dans mes recherches de nouvelles raisons d’aimer celui de mon pays!\n\n CHAPITRE I.\n\nSujet de ce premier Livre.\n\nL’homme est né libre, & par-tout il est dans les fers. Tel se croit le maître des autres, qui ne laisse pas d’être plus esclave qu’eux. Comment ce changement s’est-il fait? Je l’ignore. Qu’est-ce qui peut le rendre légitime? Je crois pouvoir résoudre cette question.\n\nSi je ne considérois que la force, & l’effet qui en dérive, je dirois; tant qu’un Peuple est contraint d’obéir & qu’il obéït, il fait bien; sitôt qu’il peut secouer le joug & qu’il le secoüe, il fait encore mieux; car, recouvrant sa liberté par le même droit qui la lui a ravie, ou il est fondé à la reprendre, ou l’on ne l’étoit point à la lui ôter. Mais l’ordre social est un droit sacré, qui sert de base à tous les autres. Cependant ce droit ne vient point de la nature; il est donc fondé sur des conventions. Il s’agit de savoir quelles sont ces conventions. Avant d’en venir-là je dois établir ce que je viens d’avancer.\n\n### Book I, Chapter 2\n\nDes premieres Sociétés.\n\nLa plus ancienne de toutes les sociétés & la seule naturelle est celle de la famille. Encore les enfans ne restent-ils liés au pere qu’aussi longtems qu’ils ont besoin de lui pour se conserver. Sitôt que ce besoin cesse, le lien naturel se dissout. Les enfans, exempts de l’obéïssance qu’ils devoient au pere, le pere exempt des soins qu’il devoit aux enfans, rentrent tous également dans l’indépendance. S’ils continuent de rester unis ce n’est plus naturellement c’est volontairement, & la famille elle-même ne se maintient que par convention.\n\nCette liberté commune est une conséquence de la nature de l’homme. Sa premiere loi est de veiller à sa propre conservation, ses premiers soins sont ceux qu’il se doit à lui-même, &, sitôt qu’il est en âge de raison, lui seul étant juge des moyens propres à le conserver devient par-là son propre maitre.\n\nLa famille est donc si l’on veut le premier modéle des sociétés politiques; le chef est l’image du pere, le peuple est l’image des enfans, & tous étant nés égaux & libres n’aliénent leur liberté que pour leur utilité. Toute la différence est que dans la famille l’amour du pere pour ses enfans le paye des soins qu’il leur rend, & que dans l’Etat le plaisir de commander supplée à cet amour que le chef n’a pas pour ses peuples.\n\nGrotius nie que tout pouvoir humain soit établi en faveur de ceux qui sont gouvernés: Il cite l’esclavage en exemple. Sa plus constante maniere de raisonner est  d’établir toujours le droit par le fait. On pourroit employer une méthode plus conséquente, mais non pas plus favorable aux Tirans.\n\nIl est donc douteux, selon Grotius, si le genre humain appartient à une centaine d’hommes, ou si cette centaine d’hommes appartient au genre humain, & il paroit dans tout son livre pancher pour le premier avis: c’est aussi le sentiment de Hobbes. Ainsi voilà l’espece humaine divisée en troupeaux de bétail, dont chacun a son chef, qui le garde pour le dévorer.\n\nComme un pâtre est d’une nature supérieure à celle de son troupeau, les pasteurs d’hommes, qui sont leurs chefs, sont aussi d’une nature supérieure à celle de leurs peuples. Ainsi raisonnoit, au raport de Philon, l’Empereur Caligula; concluant assez bien de cette analogie que les rois étoient des Dieux, ou que les peuples étoient des bêtes.\n\nLe raisonnement de ce Caligula revient à celui d’Hobbes & de Grotius. Aristote avant eux tous avoit dit aussi que les hommes ne sont point naturellement égaux, mais que les uns naissent pour l’esclavage & les autres pour la domination.\n\nAristote avoit raison, mais il prenoit l’effet pour la cause. Tout homme né dans l’esclavage nait pour l’esclavage, rien n’est plus certain. Les esclaves perdent tout dans leurs fers, jusqu’au désir d’en sortir: ils aiment leur servitude comme les compagnons d’Ulisse aimoient leur abrutissement. S’il y a donc des esclaves par nature, c’est parce qu’il y a eu des esclaves contre nature. La force a fait les premiers esclaves, leur lâcheté les a perpétués.\n\nJe n’ai rien dit du roi Adam, ni de l’empereur Noé pere de trois grands Monarques qui se partagerent l’univers, comme firent les enfans de Saturne, qu’on a cru reconnoître en eux. J’espere qu’on me saura gré de cette modération; car, descendant directement de l’un de ces Princes, & peut-être de la branche aînée, que sais-je si par la vérification des titres je ne me trouverois point le légitime roi du genre humain? Quoi qu’il en soit, on ne peut disconvenir qu’Adam n’ait été Souverain du monde comme Robinson de son isle, tant qu’il en fut le seul habitant; & ce qu’il y avoit de commode dans cet empire étoit que le monarque assuré sur son trône n’avoit à craindre ni rébellion ni guerres ni conspirateurs.\n\n### Book I, Chapter 3\n\nDu droit du plus fort.\n\nLe plus fort n’est jamais assez fort pour être toujours le maitre, s’il ne transforme sa force en droit & l’obéïssance en devoir. De-là le droit du plus fort; droit pris ironiquement en apparence, & réellement établi en principe: Mais ne nous expliquera-t-on jamais ce mot? La force est une puissance phisique; je ne vois point quelle moralité peut résulter de ses effets. Céder à la force est un acte de nécessité, non de volonté; c’est tout au plus un acte de prudence. En quel sens pourra-ce être un devoir?\n\nSupposons un moment ce prétendu droit. Je dis qu’il n’en résulte qu’un galimathias  inexplicable. Car sitôt que c’est la force qui fait le droit, l’effet change avec la cause; toute force qui surmonte la premiere succéde à son droit. Sitôt qu’on peut désobéir impunément on le peut légitimement, & puisque le plus fort a toujours raison, il ne s’agit que de faire en sorte qu’on soit le plus fort. Or qu’est-ce qu’un droit qui périt quand la force cesse? S’il faut obéir par force on n’a pas besoin d’obéir par devoir, & si l’on n’est plus forcé d’obéir on n’y est plus obligé. On voit donc que ce mot de droit n’ajoûte rien à la force; il ne signifie ici rien du tout.\n\nObeissez aux puissances. Si cela veut dire, cédez à la force, le précepte est bon mais superflu, je réponds qu’il ne sera jamais violé. Toute puissance vient de Dieu, je l’avoüe; mais toute maladie en vient aussi. Est-ce à dire qu’il soit défendu d’appeller le  médecin? Qu’un brigand me surprenne au coin d’un bois: non seulement il faut par force donner la bourse, mais quand je pourrois la soustraire suis-je en conscience obligé de la donner? car enfin le pistolet qu’il tient est aussi une puissance.\n\nConvenons donc que force ne fait pas droit, & qu’on n’est obligé d’obéir qu’aux puissances légitimes. Ainsi ma question primitive revient toujours.\n\n### Book I, Chapter 4\n\nDe l’esclavage.\n\nPuis qu’aucun homme n’a une autorité naturelle sur son semblable, & puisque la force ne produit aucun droit, restent donc les conventions pour base de toute autorité légitime parmi les hommes.\n\nSi un particulier, dit Grotius, peut aliéner sa liberté & se rendre esclave d’un maitre, pourquoi tout un peuple ne pourroit-il pas aliéner la sienne & se rendre sujet d’un roi? Il y a là bien des mots équivoques qui auroient besoin d’explication, mais tenons-nous en à celui d’aliéner. Aliéner c’est donner ou vendre. Or un homme qui se fait esclave d’un autre ne se donne pas, il se vend, tout au moins pour sa subsistance: mais un peuple pour quoi se vend-il? Bien loin qu’un roi fournisse à ses sujets leur subsistance il ne tire la sienne que d’eux, & selon Rabelais un roi ne vit pas de peu. Les sujets donnent donc leur personne à condition qu’on prendra aussi leur bien? Je ne vois pas ce qu’il leur reste à conserver.\n\nOn dira que le despote assure à ses sujets la tranquillité civile. Soit; mais qu’y gagnent-ils, si les guerres que son ambition leur attire, si son insatiable avidité, si les vexations de son ministere les désolent plus que ne feroient leurs dissentions? Qu’y gagnent-ils, si cette tranquillité-même est une de leurs miseres? On vit tranquille aussi dans les cachots; en est-ce assez pour s’y trouver bien? Les Grecs enfermés dans l’antre du Cyclope y vivoient tranquilles, en attendant que leur tour vint d’être dévorés.\n\nDire qu’un homme se donne gratuitement, c’est dire une chose absurde & inconcevable; un tel acte est illégitime & nul, par cela seul que celui qui le fait n’est pas dans son bon sens. Dire la même chose de tout un peuple, c’est supposer un peuple de foux: la folie ne fait pas droit.\n\nQuand chacun pourroit s’aliéner lui-même il ne peut aliéner ses enfans; ils naissent hommes & libres; leur liberté leur appartient, nul n’a droit d’en disposer qu’eux. Avant qu’ils soient en âge de raison, le pere peut en leur nom stipuler des conditions pour leur conservation, pour leur bien être; mais non les donner irrévocablement & sans condition; car un tel don est contraire aux fins de la nature, & passe les droits de la paternité. Il faudroit donc, pour qu’un gouvernement arbitraire fut légitime, qu’à chaque génération le peuple fut le maitre de l’admettre ou de le rejetter: mais alors ce gouvernement ne seroit plus arbitraire.\n\nRenoncer à sa liberté c’est renoncer à sa qualité d’homme, aux droits de l’humanité, même à ses devoirs. Il n’y a nul dédommagement possible pour quiconque renonce à tout. Une telle renonciation est incompatible avec la nature de l’homme, & c’est ôter toute moralité à ses actions que d’ôter toute liberté à sa volonté. Enfin c’est une convention vaine & contradictoire de stipuler d’une part une autorité absolue & de l’autre une obéissance sans bornes. N’est-il pas clair qu’on n’est engagé à rien envers celui dont on a droit de tout éxiger, & cette seule condition sans équivalent sans échange n’entraîne-t-elle pas la nullité de l’acte? Car quel droit mon esclave auroit-il contre moi, puisque tout ce qu’il a m’appartient, & que son droit étant le mien, ce droit de moi contre moi-même est un mot qui n’a aucun sens?\n\nGrotius & les autres tirent de la guerre une autre origine du prétendu droit d’esclavage. Le vainqueur ayant, selon eux, le droit de tuer le vaincu, celui-ci peut racheter sa vie aux dépens de sa liberté; convention d’autant plus légitime qu’elle tourne au profit de tous deux.\n\nMais il est clair que ce prétendu droit de tuer les vaincus ne résulte en aucune maniere de l’état de guerre. Par cela seul que les hommes vivant dans leur primitive indépendance n’ont point entre eux de rapport assez constant pour constituer ni l’état de paix ni l’état de guerre, ils ne sont point naturellement ennemis. C’est le rapport des choses & non des hommes qui constitue la guerre, & l’état de guerre ne pouvant naitre des simples rélations personnelles, mais seulement des rélations réelles, la guerre privée ou d’homme à homme ne peut exister, ni dans l’état de nature où il n’y a point de propriété constante, ni dans l’état social où tout est sous l’autorité des loix.\n\nLes combats particuliers, les duels, les rencontres sont des actes qui ne constituent point un état; & à l’égard des guerres privées, autorisées par les établissemens de Louis IX roi de France & suspendues par la paix de Dieu, ce sont des abus du gouvernement féodal, systême absurde s’il en fut jamais, contraire aux principes du droit naturel, & à toute bonne politie.\n\nLa guerre n’est donc point une rélation d’homme à homme, mais une rélation d’État à État, dans laquelle les particuliers ne sont ennemis qu’accidentellement, non point comme hommes ni même comme citoyens, mais comme soldats; non point comme membres de la patrie, mais comme ses défenseurs. Enfin chaque État ne peut avoir pour ennemis que d’autres États & non pas des hommes, attendu qu’entre choses de diverses natures on ne peut fixer aucun vrai rapport.\n\nCe principe est même conforme aux maximes établies de tous les tems & à la pratique constante de tous les peuples policés. Les déclarations de guerre sont moins des avertissemens aux puissances qu’à leurs sujets. L’étranger, soit roi, soit particulier, soit peuple, qui vole tüe ou détient les sujets sans déclarer la guerre au prince, n’est pas un ennemi, c’est un brigand. Même en pleine guerre un prince juste s’empare bien en pays ennemi de tout ce qui appartient au public, mais il respecte la personne & les biens des particuliers; il respecte des droits sur lesquels sont fondés les siens. La fin de la guerre étant la destruction de l’Etat ennemi, on a droit d’en tuer les défenseurs tant qu’ils ont les armes à la main; mais sitôt qu’ils les posent & se rendent, cessant d’être ennemis ou instrumens de l’ennemi, ils redeviennent simplement hommes & l’on n’a plus de droit sur leur vie. Quelquefois, on peut tuer l’Etat sans tuer un seul de ses membres: Or la guerre ne donne aucun droit qui ne soit nécessaire à sa fin. Ces principes ne sont pas ceux de Grotius; ils ne sont pas fondés sur des autorités de poëtes, mais ils dérivent de la nature des choses, & sont fondés sur la raison.\n\nA l’egard du droit de conquête, il n’a d’autre fondement que la loi du plus fort. Si la guerre ne donne point au vainqueur le droit de massacrer les peuples vaincus, ce droit qu’il n’a pas ne peut fonder celui de les asservir. On n’a le droit de tuer l’ennemi que quand on ne peut le faire esclave; le droit de le faire esclave ne vient donc pas du droit de le tuer: C’est donc un échange inique de lui faire acheter au prix de sa liberté sa vie sur laquelle on n’a aucun droit. En établissant le droit de vie & de mort sur le droit d’esclavage, & le droit d’esclavage sur le droit de vie & de mort, n’est-il pas clair qu’on tombe dans le cercle vicieux?\n\nEn supposant même ce terrible droit de tout tuer, je dis qu’un esclave fait à la guerre ou un peuple conquis n’est tenu à rien du tout envers son maitre, qu’à lui obéir autant qu’il y est forcé. En prenant un équivalent à sa vie le vainqueur ne lui en a point fait grace: au lieu de le tuer sans fruit il l’a tué utilement. Loin donc qu’il ait acquis sur lui nulle autorité jointe à la force, l’état de guerre subsiste entre eux comme auparavant, leur rélation même en est l’effet, & l’usage du droit de la guerre ne suppose aucun traité de paix. Ils ont fait une convention; soit: mais cette convention, loin de détruire l’état de guerre, en suppose la continuité.\n\nAinsi, de quelque sens qu’on envisage les choses, le droit d’esclavage est nul, non seulement parce qu’il est illégitime, mais parce qu’il est absurde & ne signifie rien. Ces mots, esclave, &, droit sont contradictoires; ils s’excluent mutuellement. Soit d’un homme à un homme, soit d’un homme à un peuple, ce discours sera toujours également insensé. Je fais avec toi une convention toute à ta charge & toute à mon profit, que j’observerai tant qu’il me plaira, & que tu observeras tant qu’il me plaira.\n\n### Book I, Chapter 5\n\nQu’il faut toujours remonter à une premiere convention.\n\nQuand j’accorderois tout ce que j’ai réfuté jusqu’ici, les fauteurs du despotisme n’en seroient pas plus avancés. Il y aura toujours une grande différence entre soumettre une multitude, & régir une société. Que des hommes épars soient successivement asservis à un seul, en quelque nombre qu’ils puissent être, je ne vois là qu’un maitre & des esclaves, je n’y vois point un peuple & son chef; c’est si l’on veut une agrégation, mais non pas une association; il n’y a là ni bien public ni corps politique. Cet homme, eut-il asservi la moitié du monde, n’est toujours qu’un particulier; son intérêt, séparé de celui des autres, n’est toujours qu’un intérêt privé. Si ce même homme vient à périr, son empire après lui reste épars & sans liaison, comme un chêne se dissout & tombe en un tas de cendres, après que le feu l’a consumé.\n\nUn peuple, dit Grotius, peut se donner à un roi. Selon Grotius un peuple est donc un peuple avant de se donner à un roi. Ce don même est un acte civil, il suppose une délibération publique. Avant donc que d’examiner l’acte par lequel un peuple élit un roi, il seroit bon d’examiner l’acte par lequel un peuple est un peuple. Car cet acte étant nécessairement antérieur à l’autre est le vrai fondement de la société.\n\nEn effet, s’il n’y avoit point de convention antérieure, où seroit, à moins que l’élection ne fut unanime, l’obligation pour le petit nombre de se soumettre au choix du grand, & d’où cent qui veulent un maitre ont-ils le droit de vôter pour dix qui n’en veulent point? La loi de la pluralité des suffrages est elle-même un établissement de convention, & suppose au moins une fois l’unanimité.\n\n### Book I, Chapter 6\n\nDu pacte Social.\n\nJe suppose les hommes parvenus à ce point où les obstacles qui nuisent à leur conservation dans l’état de nature, l’emportent par leur résistance sur les forces que chaque individu peut employer pour se maintenir dans cet état. Alors cet état primitif ne peut plus subsister, & le genre humain périroit s’il ne changeoit sa maniere d’être.\n\nOr comme les hommes ne peuvent engendrer de nouvelles forces, mais seulement unir & diriger celles qui existent, ils n’ont plus d’autre moyen pour se conserver, que de former par aggrégation une somme de forces qui puisse l’emporter sur la résistance, de les  mettre en jeu par un seul mobile & de les faire agir de concert.\n\nCette somme de forces ne peut naitre que du concours de plusieurs: mais la force & la liberté de chaque homme étant les premiers instrumens de sa conservation, comment les engagera-t-il sans se nuire, & sans négliger les soins qu’il se doit? Cette difficulté ramenée à mon sujet peut s’énoncer en ces termes.\n\n« Trouver une forme d’association qui défende & protege de toute la force commune la personne & les biens de chaque associé, & par laquelle chacun s’unissant à tous n’obéisse pourtant qu’à lui-même & reste aussi libre qu’auparavant? » Tel est le problême fondamental dont le contract social donne la solution.\n\nLes clauses de ce contract sont tellement déterminées par la nature de l’acte, que la moindre modification les rendroit vaines & de nul effet; en sorte que, bien qu’elles n’aient peut-être jamais été formellement énoncées, elles sont par-tout les mêmes, par-tout tacitement admises & reconnües; jusqu’à ce que, le pacte social étant violé, chacun rentre alors dans ses premiers droits & reprenne sa liberté naturelle, en perdant la liberté conventionnelle pour laquelle il y renonça.\n\nCes clauses bien entendues se réduisent toutes à une seule, savoir l’aliénation totale de chaque associé avec tous ses droits à toute la communauté: Car premierement, chacun se donnant tout entier, la condition est égale pour tous, & la condition étant égale pour tous, nul n’a intérêt de la rendre onéreuse aux autres.\n\nDe plus, l’aliénation se faisant sans reserve, l’union est aussi parfaite qu’elle peut l’être & nul associé n’a plus rien à réclamer: Car s’il restoit quelques droits aux particuliers, comme il n’y auroit aucun supérieur commun qui put prononcer entre eux & le public, chacun étant en quelque point son propre juge prétendroit bientôt l’être en tous, l’état de nature subsisteroit, & l’association deviendroit nécessairement tyrannique ou vaine.\n\nEnfin chacun se donnant à tous ne se donne à personne, & comme il n’y a pas un associé sur lequel on n’acquiere le même droit qu’on lui cede sur soi, on gagne l’équivalent de tout ce qu’on perd, & plus de force pour conserver ce qu’on a.\n\nSi donc on écarte du pacte social ce qui n’est pas de son essence, on trouvera qu’il se réduit aux termes suivans. Chacun de nous met en commun sa personne & toute sa puissance sous la suprême direction de la volonté générale; & nous recevons en corps chaque membre comme partie indivisible du tout.\n\nA l’instant, au lieu de la personne particuliere de chaque contractant, cet acte d’association produit un corps moral & collectif composé d’autant de membres que l’assemblée a de voix, lequel reçoit de ce même acte son unité, son moi commun, sa vie & sa volonté. Cette personne publique qui se forme ainsi par l’union de toutes les autres prenoit autrefois le nom de Cité\n, & prend maintenant celui de République ou de corps politique,  lequel est appelé par ses membres État quand il est passif, Souverain quand il est actif, Puissance en le comparant à ses semblables. À l’égard des associés ils prennent collectivement le nom de peuple,  & s’appellent en particulier Citoyens comme participans à l’autorité souveraine, & Sujets comme soumis aux loix de l’Etat. Mais ces termes se confondent souvent & se prennent l’un pour l’autre; il suffit de les savoir distinguer quand ils sont employés dans toute leur précision.\n\n### Book I, Chapter 7\n\nDu Souverain.\n\nOn voit par cette formule que l’acte d’association renferme un engagement réciproque du public avec les particuliers, & que chaque individu, contractant, pour ainsi dire, avec lui-même, se trouve engagé sous un double rapport; savoir, comme membre du Souverain envers les particuliers, & comme membre de l’Etat envers le Souverain. Mais on ne peut appliquer ici la maxime du droit civil que nul n’est tenu aux engagemens pris avec lui-même; car il y a bien de la différence entre s’obliger envers soi, ou envers un tout dont on fait partie.\n\nIl faut remarquer encore que la  délibération publique, qui peut obliger tous les sujets envers le Souverain, à cause des deux différens rapports sous lesquels chacun d’eux est envisagé, ne peut, par la raison contraire, obliger le Souverain envers lui-même, & que, par conséquent, il est contre la nature du corps politique que le Souverain s’impose une loi qu’il ne puisse enfreindre. Ne pouvant se considérer que sous un seul & même rapport il est alors dans le cas d’un particulier contractant avec soi-même: par où l’on voit qu’il n’y a ni ne peut y avoir nulle espece de loi fondamentale obligatoire pour le corps du peuple, pas même le contract social. Ce qui ne signifie pas que ce corps ne puisse fort bien s’engager envers autrui en ce qui ne déroge point à ce contract; car à l’égard de l’étranger, il devient un être simple, un individu.\n\nMais le corps politique ou le Souverain ne tirant son être que de la sainteté du contract ne peut jamais s’obliger, même envers autrui, à rien qui déroge à cet acte primitif, comme d’aliéner quelque portion de lui-même ou de se soumettre à un autre Souverain. Violer l’acte par lequel il existe seroit s’anéantir, & ce qui n’est rien ne produit rien.\n\nSitot que cette multitude est ainsi réunie en un corps, on ne peut offenser un des membres sans attaquer le corps; encore moins offenser le corps sans que les membres s’en ressentent. Ainsi le devoir & l’intérêt obligent également les deux parties contractantes à s’entre-aider mutuellement, & les mêmes hommes doivent chercher à réunir sous ce double rapport tous les avantages qui en dépendent.\n\nOr le Souverain n’étant formé que des particuliers qui le composent n’a ni ne peut avoir d’intérêt contraire au leur; par conséquent la puissance Souveraine n’a nul besoin de garant envers les sujets, parce qu’il est impossible que le corps veuille nuire à tous ses membres, & nous verrons ci-après qu’il ne peut nuire à aucun en particulier. Le Souverain, par cela seul qu’il est, est toujours ce qu’il doit être.\n\nMais il n’en est pas ainsi des sujets envers le Souverain, auquel malgré l’intérêt commun, rien ne répondroit de leurs engagemens s’il ne trouvoit des moyens de s’assurer de leur fidélité.\n\nEn effet chaque individu peut comme homme avoir une volonté particuliere contraire ou dissemblable à la volonté générale qu’il a comme Citoyen. Son intérêt particulier peut lui parler tout autrement que l’intérêt commun; son existence absolue & naturellement indépendante peut lui faire envisager ce qu’il doit à la cause commune comme une contribution gratuite, dont la perte sera moins nuisible aux autres que le payement n’en sera onéreux pour lui, & regardant la personne morale qui constitue l’Etat comme un être de raison parce que ce n’est pas un homme, il jouiroit des droits du citoyen sans vouloir remplir les devoirs du sujet; injustice dont le progrès causeroit la ruine du corps politique.\n\nAfin donc que ce pacte social ne soit pas un vain formulaire, il renferme tacitement cet engagement qui seul peut donner de la force aux autres, que quiconque refusera d’obéir à la volonté générale, y sera contraint par tout le corps: ce qui ne signifie autre chose sinon qu’on le forcera d’être libre; car telle est la condition qui donnant chaque Citoyen à la Patrie le garantit de toute dépendance personnelle; condition qui fait l’artifice & le jeu de la machine politique, & qui seule rend légitimes les engagemens civils, lesquels, sans cela seroient absurdes, tyranniques, & sujets aux plus énormes abus.\n\n### Book I, Chapter 8\n\nDe l’état civil.\n\nCe passage de l’état de nature à l’état civil produit dans l’homme un changement très rémarquable, en substituant dans sa conduite la justice à l’instinct, & donnant à ses actions la moralité qui leur manquoit auparavant. C’est alors seulement que la voix du devoir succédant à l’impulsion physique & le droit à l’appetit, l’homme, qui jusque là n’avoit regardé que lui-même, se voit forcé d’agir sur d’autres principes, & de consulter sa raison avant d’écouter ses penchans. Quoiqu’il se prive dans cet état de plusieurs avantages qu’il tient de la nature, il en regagne de si grands, ses facultés s’exercent & se développent, ses idées s’étendent, ses sentimens s’ennoblissent, son ame tout entiere s’éleve à tel point, que si les abus de cette nouvelle condition ne le dégradoient souvent au dessous de celle dont il est sorti, il devroit bénir sans cesse l’instant heureux qui l’en arracha pour jamais, & qui, d’un animal stupide & borné, fit un être intelligent & un homme.\n\nReduisons toute cette balance à des termes faciles à comparer. Ce que l’homme perd par le contract social, c’est sa liberté naturelle & un droit illimité à tout ce qui le tente & qu’il peut atteindre; ce qu’il gagne, c’est la liberté civile & la propriété de tout ce qu’il possede. Pour ne pas se tromper dans ces compensations, il faut bien distinguer la liberté naturelle qui n’a pour bornes que les forces de l’individu, de la liberté civile qui est limitée par la volonté générale, & la possession qui n’est que l’effet de la force ou le droit du premier  occupant, de la propriété qui ne peut être fondée que sur un titre positif.\n\nOn pourroit sur ce qui précede ajouter à l’acquis de l’état civil la liberté morale, qui seule rend l’homme vraiment maitre de lui; car l’impulsion du seul appetit est esclavage, & l’obéissance à la loi qu’on s’est prescrite est liberté. Mais je n’en ai déjà que trop dit sur cet article, & le sens philosophique du mot liberté n’est pas ici de mon sujet.\n\n### Book I, Chapter 9\n\nDu domaine réel.\n\nChaque membre de la communauté se donne à elle au moment qu’elle se forme, tel qu’il se trouve actuellement, lui & toutes ses forces, dont les biens qu’il possede font partie. Ce n’est pas que par cet acte la possession change de nature en changeant de mains, & devienne propriété dans celles du Souverain: Mais comme les forces de la Cité sont incomparablement plus grandes que celles d’un particulier, la possession publique est aussi dans le fait plus forte & plus irrévocable, sans être plus légitime, au moins pour les étrangers. Car l’Etat à l’égard de ses membres est maitre de tous leurs biens par le contract social, qui dans  l’Etat sert de base à tous les droits; mais il ne l’est à l’égard des autres Puissances que par le droit de premier occupant qu’il tient des particuliers.\n\nLe droit de premier occupant, quoique plus réel que celui du plus fort, ne devient un vrai droit qu’après l’établissement de celui de propriété. Tout homme a naturellement droit à tout ce qui lui est nécessaire; mais l’acte positif qui le rend propriétaire de quelque bien l’exclud de tout le reste. Sa part étant faite il doit s’y borner, & n’a plus aucun droit à la communauté. Voilà pourquoi le droit de premier occupant, si foible dans l’état de nature, est respectable à tout homme civil. On respecte moins dans ce droit ce qui est à autrui que ce qui n’est pas à soi.\n\nEn general, pour autoriser sur un terrain quelconque le droit de premier occupant, il faut les conditions suivantes. Premierement que ce terrain ne soit encore habité par personne; secondement, qu’on n’en occupe que la quantité dont on a besoin pour subsister: En troisieme lieu qu’on en prenne possession, non par une vaine cérémonie, mais par le travail & la culture, seul signe de propriété qui au défaut de titres juridiques doive être respecté d’autrui.\n\nEn effet, accorder au besoin & au travail le droit de premier occupant, n’est-ce pas l’étendre aussi loin qu’il peut aller? Peut-on ne pas donner des bornes à ce droit? Suffira-t-il de mettre le pied sur un terrain commun pour s’en prétendre aussi-tôt le maitre? Suffira-t-il d’avoir la force d’en écarter un moment les autres hommes pour leur ôter le droit d’y jamais revenir? Comment un homme ou un peuple peut-il s’emparer d’un territoire immense & en  priver tout le genre humain autrement que par une usurpation punissable, puisqu’elle ôte au reste des hommes le séjour & les alimens que la nature leur donne en commun? Quand Nuñez Balbao prenoit sur le rivage possession de la mer du sud & de toute l’Amérique méridionale au nom de la couronne de Castille, étoit-ce assez pour en déposséder tous les habitans & en exclurre tous les Princes du monde? Sur ce pied-là ces cérémonies se multiplioient assez vainement, & le Roi catholique n’avoit tout d’un coup qu’à prendre de son cabinet possession de tout l’univers; sauf à retrancher ensuite de son empire ce qui étoit auparavant possédé par les autres Princes.\n\nOn conçoit comment les terres des particuliers réunies & contigues deviennent le territoire public, & comment le droit de souveraineté s’étendant des sujets au terrain qu’ils  occupent, devient à la fois réel & personnel; ce qui met les possesseurs dans une plus grande dépendance, & fait de leurs forces mêmes les garants de leur fidélité. Avantage qui ne paroît pas avoir été bien senti des anciens monarques qui ne s’appellant que Rois des Perses, des Scithes, des Macédoniens, sembloient se regarder comme les chefs des hommes plutôt que comme les maitres du pays. Ceux d’aujourd’hui s’appellent plus habilement Rois de France, d’Espagne, d’Angleterre, &c. En tenant ainsi le terrain, ils sont bien sûrs d’en tenir les habitans.\n\nCe qu’il y a de singulier dans cette aliénation, c’est que, loin qu’en acceptant les biens des particuliers la communauté les en dépouille, elle ne fait que leur en assurer la légitime possession, changer l’usurpation en un véritable droit, & la jouissance en propriété. Alors les possesseurs étant considérés comme dépositaires du bien public, leurs droits étant respectés de tous les membres de l’Etat & maintenus de toutes ses forces contre l’étranger, par une cession avantageuse au public & plus encore à eux-mêmes, ils ont, pour ainsi dire, acquis tout ce qu’ils ont donné: Paradoxe qui s’explique aisément par la distinction des droits que le souverain & le propriétaire ont sur le même fond, comme on verra ci-après.\n\nIl peut arriver aussi que les hommes commencent à s’unir avant que de rien posséder, & que, s’emparant ensuite d’un terrain suffisant pour tous, ils en jouissent en commun, ou qu’ils le partagent entre eux, soit également soit selon des proportions établies par le Souverain. De quelque maniere que se fasse cette acquisition, le droit que chaque particulier a sur son propre fond est toujours subordonné au droit que la communauté a sur tous, sans quoi il n’y auroit ni solidité dans le lien social, ni force réelle dans l’exercice de la Souveraineté.\n\nJe terminerai ce chapitre & ce livre par une remarque qui doit servir de base à tout sistême social; c’est qu’au lieu de détruire l’égalité naturelle, le pacte fondamental substitue au contraire une égalité morale & légitime à ce que la nature avoit pu mettre d’inégalité physique entre les hommes, & que, pouvant être inégaux en force ou en génie, ils deviennent tous égaux par convention & de droit.\n\nFin du Livre premier.\n\n### Book II, Chapter 1\n\nQue la souveraineté est inaliénable\n\nLa premiere & la plus importante conséquence des principes ci-devant établis est que la volonté générale peut seule diriger les forces de l’Etat selon la fin de son institution, qui est le bien commun: car si l’opposition des intérêts particuliers a rendu nécessaire l’établissement des sociétés, c’est l’accord de ces mêmes intérêts qui l’a rendu possible. C’est ce qu’il y a de commun dans ces différens intérêts qui forme le lien social, & s’il n’y avoit pas quelque point dans lequel tous les intérêts s’accordent, nulle société ne sauroit exister. Or c’est uniquement sur cet intérêt commun que la société doit être gouvernée.\n\nJe dis donc que la souveraineté n’étant que l’exercice de la volonté générale ne peut jamais s’aliéner, & que le souverain, qui n’est qu’un être collectif, ne peut être représenté que par lui-même; le pouvoir peut bien se transmettre, mais non pas la volonté.\n\nEn effet, s’il n’est pas impossible qu’une volonté particuliere s’accorde sur quelque point avec la volonté générale; il est impossible au moins que cet accord soit durable & constant; car la volonté particuliere tend par sa nature aux préférences, & la volonté générale à l’égalité. Il est plus impossible encore qu’on ait un garant de cet accord quand même il devroit toujours exister; ce ne seroit pas un effet de l’art mais du hazard. Le Souverain peut bien dire, je veux actuellement ce que veut un tel homme ou du moins ce qu’il dit vouloir; mais il ne peut pas dire; ce que cet homme voudra demain, je le voudrai encore; puisqu’il est absurde que la volonté se donne des chaines pour l’avenir, & puisqu’il ne dépend d’aucune volonté de consentir à rien de contraire au bien de l’être qui veut. Si donc le peuple promet simplement d’obéir, il se dissout par cet acte, il perd sa qualité de peuple; à l’instant qu’il y a un maitre il n’y a plus de Souverain, & dès lors le corps politique est détruit.\n\nCe n’est point à dire que les ordres des chefs ne puissent passer pour des volontés générales, tant que le Souverain libre de s’y opposer ne le fait pas. En pareil cas, du silence universel on doit présumer le consentement du peuple. Ceci s’expliquera plus au long.\n\n### Book II, Chapter 2\n\nQue la souveraineté est indivisible.\n\nPar la même raison que la souveraineté est inaliénable, elle est indivisible. Car la volonté est générale\n, ou elle ne l’est pas; elle est celle du corps du peuple, ou seulement d’une partie. Dans le premier cas cette volonté déclarée est un acte de souveraineté & fait loi: Dans le second, ce n’est qu’une volonté particuliere, ou un acte de magistrature; c’est un décret tout au plus.\n\nMais nos politiques ne pouvant diviser la souveraineté dans son principe, la divisent dans son objet; ils la divisent en force & en volonté, en puissance législative & en puissance exécutive, en droits d’impôts, de justice, & de guerre, en administration intérieure & en pouvoir de traitter avec l’étranger: tantôt ils confondent toutes ces parties & tantôt ils les séparent; ils font du Souverain un être fantastique & formé de pieces rapportées; c’est comme s’ils composoient l’homme de plusieurs corps dont l’un auroit des yeux, l’autre des bras, l’autre des pieds, & rien de plus. Les charlatans du Japon depécent, dit-on, un enfant aux yeux des spectateurs, puis jettant en l’air tous ses membres l’un après l’autre, ils font retomber l’enfant vivant & tout rassemblé. Tels sont à peu près les tours de gobelets de nos politiques; après avoir démembré le corps social par un prestige digne de la foire, ils rassemblent les pieces on ne sait comment.\n\nCette erreur vient de ne s’être pas fait des notions exactes de l’autorité souveraine, & d’avoir pris pour des parties de cette autorité ce qui n’en étoit que des émanations. Ainsi, par exemple, on a regardé l’acte de déclarer la guerre & celui de faire la paix comme des actes de souveraineté, ce qui n’est pas; puisque chacun de ces actes n’est point une loi mais seulement une application de la loi, un acte particulier qui détermine le cas de la loi, comme on le verra clairement quand l’idée attachée au mot loi sera fixée.\n\nEn suivant de même les autres divisions on trouveroit que toutes les fois qu’on croit voir la souveraineté partagée on se trompe, que les droits qu’on prend pour des parties de cette souveraineté lui sont tous subordonnés, & supposent toujours des volontés suprêmes dont ces droits ne donnent que l’exécution.\n\nOn ne sauroit dire combien ce défaut d’exactitude a jetté d’obscurité sur les décisions des auteurs en matiere de droit politique, quand ils ont voulu juger des droits respectifs des rois & des peuples, sur les principes qu’ils avoient établis. Chacun peut voir dans les chapitres III & IV du premier livre de Grotius comment ce savant homme & son traducteur Barbeyrac s’enchevêtrent s’embarrassent dans leurs sophismes, crainte d’en dire trop ou de n’en dire pas assez selon leurs vues, & de choquer les intérêts qu’ils avoient à concilier. Grotius, refugié en France, mécontent de sa patrie, & voulant faire sa cour à Louis XIII à qui son livre est dédié, n’épargne rien pour dépouiller les peuples de tous leurs droits & pour en revétir les rois avec tout l’art possible. C’eut bien été aussi le goût de Barbeyrac, qui dédioit sa traduction au Roi d’Angleterre Georges I. Mais  malheureusement l’expulsion de Jacques II qu’il appelle abdication, le forçoit à se tenir sur la reserve, à gauchir à tergiverser pour ne pas faire de Guillaume un usurpateur. Si ces deux écrivains avoient adopté les vrais principes, toutes les difficultés étoient levées, & ils eussent été toujours conséquents; mais ils auroient tristement dit la vérité & n’auroient fait leur cour qu’au peuple. Or la vérité ne mene point à la fortune, & le peuple ne donne ni ambassades, ni chaires, ni pensions.\n\n### Book II, Chapter 3\n\nSi la volonté générale peut errer.\n\nIl s’ensuit de ce qui précede que la volonté générale est toujours droite & tend toujours à l’utilité publique: mais il ne s’ensuit pas que les déliberations du peuple aient toujours la même rectitude. On veut toujours son bien, mais on ne le voit pas toujours: Jamais on ne corrompt le peuple, mais souvent on le trompe, & c’est alors seulement qu’il paroit vouloir ce qui est mal.\n\nIl y a souvent bien de la différence entre la volonté de tous & la volonté générale; celle-ci ne regarde qu’à l’intérêt commun, l’autre regarde à l’intérêt privé, & n’est qu’une somme de volontés particulieres; mais ôtez de ces  mêmes volontés les plus & les moins qui s’entredétruisent, reste pour somme des différences la volonté générale.\n\nSi, quand le peuple suffisamment informé délibére, les Citoyens n’avoient aucune communication entre eux, du grand nombre de petites différences résulteroit toujours la volonté générale, & la délibération seroit toujours bonne. Mais quand il se fait des brigues, des associations partielles aux dépends de la grande, la volonté de chacune de ces associations devient générale par rapport à ses membres, & particuliere par rapport à l’Etat; on peut  dire alors qu’il n’y a plus autant de votans que d’hommes, mais seulement autant que d’associations. Les différences deviennent moins nombreuses & donnent un résultat moins général. Enfin quand une de ces associations est si grande qu’elle l’emporte sur toutes les autres, vous n’avez plus pour résultat une somme de petites différences, mais une différence unique; alors il n’y a plus de volonté générale, & l’avis qui l’emporte n’est qu’un avis particulier.\n\nIl importe donc pour avoir bien l’énoncé de la volonté générale qu’il n’y ait pas de société partielle dans l’Etat & que chaque Citoyen n’opine que d’après lui. Telle fut  l’unique & sublime institution du grand Lycurgue. Que s’il y a des sociétés partielles, il en faut multiplier le nombre & en prévenir l’inégalité, comme firent Solon, Numa, Servius. Ces précautions sont les seules bonnes pour que la volonté générale soit toujours éclairée, & que le peuple ne se trompe point.\n\n### Book II, Chapter 4\n\nDes bornes du pouvoir Souverain.\n\nSi l’Etat ou la Cité n’est qu’une personne morale dont la vie consiste dans l’union de ses membres, & si le plus important de ses soins est celui de sa propre conservation, il lui faut une force universelle & compulsive pour mouvoir & disposer chaque partie de la maniere la plus convenable au tout. Comme la nature donne à chaque homme un pouvoir absolu sur tous ses membres, le pacte social donne au corps politique un pouvoir absolu sur tous les siens, & c’est ce même pouvoir, qui, dirigé par la volonté générale porte, comme j’ai dit, le nom de souveraineté.\n\nMais outre la personne publique, nous avons à considérer les personnes privées qui la composent, & dont la vie & la liberté sont naturellement indépendantes d’elle. Il s’agit donc de bien distinguer les droits respectifs des Citoyens & du Souverain, & les devoirs qu’ont à remplir les premiers en qualité de sujets, du droit naturel dont ils doivent jouir en qualité d’hommes.\n\nOn convient que tout ce que chacun aliéne par le pacte social de sa puissance de ses biens de sa liberté, c’est seulement la partie de tout cela dont l’usage importe à la communauté, mais il faut convenir aussi que le Souverain seul est juge de cette importance.\n\nTous les services qu’un citoyen peut rendre à l’Etat, il les lui doit sitôt que le Souverain les demande; mais le Souverain de son côté ne peut charger les sujets d’aucune chaine inutile à la communauté; il ne peut pas même le vouloir: car sous la loi de raison rien ne se fait sans cause, non plus que sous la loi de nature.\n\nLes engagemens qui nous lient au corps social ne sont obligatoires que parce qu’ils sont mutuels, & leur nature est telle qu’en les remplissant on ne peut travailler pour autrui sans travailler aussi pour soi. Pourquoi la volonté générale est elle toujours droite, & pourquoi tous veulent-ils constamment le bonheur de chacun d’eux, si ce n’est parce qu’il n’y a personne qui ne s’approprie ce mot chacun, & qui ne songe à lui-même en votant pour tous? Ce qui prouve que l’égalité de droit & la notion de justice qu’elle produit dérivent de la préférence que chacun se donne & par conséquent de la nature de l’homme, que la volonté générale pour être vraîment telle doit l’être dans son objet ainsi que dans son essence, qu’elle doit partir de tous pour s’appliquer à tous, & qu’elle perd sa rectitude naturelle lorsqu’elle tend à quelque objet individuel & déterminé; parce qu’alors jugeant de ce qui nous est étranger nous n’avons aucun vrai principe d’équité qui nous guide.\n\nEn effet, sitôt qu’il s’agit d’un fait ou d’un droit particulier sur un point qui n’a pas été réglé par une convention générale & antérieure, l’affaire devient contentieuse. C’est un procès où les particuliers intéressés sont une des parties & le public l’autre, mais où je ne vois ni la loi qu’il faut suivre, ni le juge qui doit prononcer. Il seroit ridicule de vouloir alors s’en rapporter à une expresse décision de la volonté générale, qui ne peut être que la conclusion de l’une des parties, & qui par conséquent n’est pour l’autre qu’une volonté étrangere, particuliere, portée en cette occasion à l’injustice & sujette à l’erreur. Ainsi de même qu’une volonté particuliere ne peut représenter la volonté générale, la volonté générale à son tour change de nature ayant un objet particulier, & ne peut comme générale prononcer ni sur un homme ni sur un fait. Quand le peuple d’Athenes, par exemple, nommoit ou cassoit ses chefs, décernoit des honneurs à l’un, imposoit des peines à l’autre, & par des multitudes de décrets particuliers exerçoit indistinctement tous les actes du Gouvernement, le peuple alors n’avoit plus de volonté générale proprement dite; il n’agissoit plus comme Souverain mais comme magistrat. Ceci paroitra contraire aux idées communes, mais il faut me laisser le tems d’exposer les miennes.\n\nOn doit concevoir par là, que ce qui généralise la volonté est moins le nombre des voix, que l’intérêt commun qui les unit: car dans cette institution chacun se soumet nécessairement aux conditions qu’il impose aux autres; accord admirable de l’intérêt & de la justice qui donne aux délibérations communes un caractere d’équité qu’on voit évanouir dans la discussion de toute affaire particuliere, faute d’un intérêt commun qui unisse & identifie la regle du juge avec celle de la partie.\n\nPar quelque côté qu’on remonte au principe, on arrive toujours à la même conclusion; savoir, que le pacte social établit entre les citoyens une telle égalité qu’ils s’engagent tous sous les mêmes conditions, & doivent jouir tous des mêmes droits. Ainsi par la nature du pacte, tout acte de souveraineté, c’est-à-dire tout acte authentique de la volonté générale oblige ou favorise également tous les Citoyens, en sorte que le Souverain connoit seulement le corps de la nation & ne distingue aucun de ceux qui la composent. Qu’est-ce donc proprement qu’un acte de souveraineté? Ce n’est pas une convention du supérieur avec l’inférieur, mais une convention du corps avec chacun de ses membres: Convention légitime, parce qu’elle a pour base le contract social, équitable, parce qu’elle est commune à tous, utile, parce qu’elle ne peut avoir d’autre objet que le bien général, & solide, parce qu’elle a pour garant la force publique & le pouvoir suprême. Tant que les sujets ne sont soumis qu’à de telles conventions, ils n’obéissent à personne, mais seulement à leur propre volonté; & demander jusqu’où s’étendent les droits respectifs du Souverain & des Citoyens, c’est demander jusqu’à quel point ceux-ci peuvent s’engager avec eux-mêmes, chacun envers tous & tous envers chacun d’eux.\n\nOn voit par-là que le pouvoir Souverain, tout absolu, tout sacré, tout inviolable qu’il est, ne passe ni ne peut passer les bornes des conventions générales, & que tout homme peut disposer pleinement de ce qui lui a été laissé de ses biens & de sa liberté par ces conventions; de sorte que le Souverain n’est jamais en droit de charger un sujet plus qu’un autre, parce qu’alors, l’affaire devenant particuliere, son pouvoir n’est plus compétent.\n\nCes distinctions une fois admises, il est si faux que dans le contract social il y ait de la part des particuliers aucune renonciation véritable, que leur situation, par l’effet de ce contract se trouve réellement préférable à ce qu’elle étoit auparavant, & qu’au lieu d’une aliénation, ils n’ont fait qu’un échange avantageux d’une maniere d’être incertaine & précaire contre une autre meilleure & plus sûre, de  l’indépendance naturelle contre la liberté, du pouvoir de nuire à autrui contre leur propre sureté, & de leur force que d’autres pouvoient surmonter contre un droit que l’union sociale rend invincible. Leur vie même qu’ils ont dévouée à l’Etat en est continuellement protégée, & lorsqu’ils l’exposent pour sa défense que font-ils alors que lui rendre ce qu’ils ont reçu de lui? Que font-ils qu’ils ne fissent plus fréquemment & avec plus de danger dans l’état de nature, lorsque livrant des combats inévitables, ils défendroient au péril de leur vie ce qui leur sert à la conserver? Tous ont à combattre au besoin pour la patrie, il est vrai; mais aussi nul n’a jamais à combattre pour soi. Ne gagne-t-on pas encore à courir pour ce qui fait notre sureté une partie des risques qu’il faudroit courir pour nous-mêmes sitôt qu’elle nous seroit ôtée?\n\n### Book II, Chapter 5\n\nDu droit de vie & de mort.\n\nOn demande comment les particuliers n’ayant point droit de disposer de leur propre vie peuvent transmettre au Souverain ce même droit qu’ils n’ont pas? Cette question ne paroit difficile à résoudre que parce qu’elle est mal posée. Tout homme a droit de risquer sa propre vie pour la conserver. A-t-on jamais dit que celui qui se jette par une fenêtre pour échapper à un incendie, soit coupable de suicide? A-t-on même jamais imputé ce crime à celui qui périt dans une tempête dont en s’embarquant il n’ignoroit pas le danger?\n\nLe traité social a pour fin la conservation des contractans. Qui veut la fin veut aussi les moyens, & ces moyens sont inséparables de quelques risques, même de quelques pertes. Qui veut conserver sa vie aux dépends des autres, doit la donner aussi pour eux quand il faut. Or le Citoyen n’est plus juge du péril auquel la loi veut qu’il s’expose, & quand le Prince lui a dit, il est expédient à l’Etat que tu meures, il doit mourir; puisque ce n’est qu’à cette condition qu’il a vécu en sureté jusqu’alors, & que sa vie n’est plus seulement un bienfait de la nature, mais un don conditionnel de l’Etat.\n\nLa peine de mort infligée aux criminels peut être envisagée à peu près sous le même point de vue: c’est pour n’être pas la victime d’un assassin que l’on consent à mourir si on le devient. Dans ce traité, loin de disposer de sa propre vie on ne songe qu’à la garantir, & il n’est pas à présumer qu’aucun des  contractans prémédite alors de se faire pendre.\n\nD’ailleurs tout malfaiteur attaquant le droit social devient par ses forfaits rebelle & traître à la patrie, il cesse d’en être membre en violant ses loix, & même il lui fait la guerre. Alors la conservation de l’Etat est incompatible avec la sienne, il faut qu’un des deux périsse, & quand on fait mourir le coupable, c’est moins comme Citoyen que comme ennemi. Les procédures, le jugement, sont les preuves & la déclaration qu’il a rompu le traité social, & par conséquent qu’il n’est plus membre de l’Etat. Or comme il s’est reconnu tel, tout au moins par son séjour, il en doit être retranché par l’exil comme infracteur du pacte, ou par la mort comme ennemi public; car un tel ennemi n’est pas une personne morale, c’est un homme, & c’est alors que le droit de la guerre est de tuer le vaincu.\n\nMais dira-t-on, la condannation d’un Criminel est un acte particulier. D’accord; aussi cette condannation n’appartient-elle point au Souverain; c’est un droit qu’il peut conférer sans pouvoir l’exercer lui-même. Toutes mes idées se tiennent, mais je ne saurois les exposer toutes à la fois.\n\nAu reste la fréquence des supplices est toujours un signe de foiblesse ou de paresse dans le Gouvernement. Il n’y a point de méchant qu’on ne pût rendre bon à quelque chose. On n’a droit de faire mourir, même pour l’exemple, que celui qu’on ne peut conserver sans danger.\n\nA l’egard du droit de faire grace, ou d’exempter un coupable de la peine portée par la loi & prononcée par le juge, il n’appartient qu’à celui qui est au dessus du juge & de la loi, c’est-à-dire au Souverain: Encore son droit en ceci n’est-il pas bien net, & les cas d’en user sont-ils très rares. Dans un État bien gouverné il y a peu de punitions, non parce qu’on fait beaucoup de graces, mais parce qu’il y a peu de criminels: la multitude des crimes en assure l’impunité lorsque l’État dépérit. Sous la République Romaine jamais le Sénat ni les Consuls ne tenterent de faire grace; le peuple même n’en faisoit pas, quoiqu’il révocât quelquefois son propre jugement. Les fréquentes graces annoncent que bientôt les forfaits n’en auront plus besoin, & chacun voit où cela mene. Mais je sens que mon cœur murmure & retient ma plume; laissons discuter ces questions à l’homme juste qui n’a point failli, & qui jamais n’eût lui-même besoin de grace.\n\n### Book II, Chapter 6\n\nDe la loi.\n\nPar le pacte social nous avons donné l’existence & la vie au corps politique: il s’agit maintenant de lui donner le mouvement & la volonté par la législation. Car l’acte primitif par lequel ce corps se forme & s’unit ne détermine rien encore de ce qu’il doit faire pour se conserver.\n\nCe qui est bien & conforme à l’ordre est tel par la nature des choses & indépendamment des conventions humaines. Toute justice vient de Dieu, lui seul en est la source; mais si nous savions la recevoir de si haut nous n’aurions besoin ni de gouvernement ni de loix. Sans doute il est une justice universelle émanée de la raison seule; mais cette justice pour être admise entre nous doit être réciproque. A considérer humainement les choses, faute de sanction naturelle les loix de la justice sont vaines parmi les hommes; elles ne font que le bien du méchant & le mal du juste, quand celui-ci les observe avec tout le monde sans que personne les observe avec lui. Il faut donc des conventions & des loix pour unir les droits aux devoirs & ramener la justice à son objet. Dans l’état de nature, où tout est commun, je ne dois rien à ceux à qui je n’ai rien promis, je ne reconnois pour être à autrui que ce qui m’est inutile. Il n’en est pas ainsi dans l’état civil où tous les droits sont fixés par la loi.\n\nMais qu’est-ce donc enfin qu’une loi? Tant qu’on se contentera de n’attacher à ce mot que des idées métaphysiques, on continuera de raisonner sans s’entendre, & quand on aura dit ce que c’est qu’une loi de la nature on n’en saura pas mieux ce que c’est qu’une loi de l’Etat.\n\nJ’ai déjà dit qu’il n’y avoit point de volonté générale sur un objet particulier. En effet cet objet particulier est dans l’Etat ou hors de l’Etat. S’il est hors de l’Etat, une volonté qui lui est étrangere n’est point générale par rapport à lui; & si cet objet est dans l’Etat, il en fait partie: Alors il se forme entre le tout & sa partie une rélation qui en fait deux êtres séparés, dont la partie est l’un, & le tout moins cette même partie est l’autre. Mais le tout moins une partie n’est point le tout, & tant que ce rapport subsiste il n’y a plus de tout mais deux parties inégales; d’où il suit que la volonté de l’une n’est point non plus générale par rapport à l’autre.\n\nMais quand tout le peuple statue sur tout le peuple il ne considere que lui-même, & s’il se forme alors un rapport, c’est de l’objet entier sous un point-de-vue à l’objet entier sous un autre point de vue, sans aucune division du tout. Alors la matiere sur laquelle on statue est générale comme la volonté qui statue. C’est cet acte que j’appelle une loi.\n\nQuand je dis que l’objet des loix est toujours général, j’entends que la loi considere les sujets en corps & les actions comme abstraites, jamais un homme comme individu ni une action particuliére. Ainsi la loi peut bien statuer qu’il y aura des privileges, mais elle n’en peut donner nommément à personne; la loi peut faire plusieurs Classes de Citoyens, assigner même les qualités qui donneront droit à ces classes, mais elle ne peut nommer tels & tels pour y être admis; elle peut établir un Gouvernement royal & une succession héréditaire, mais elle ne peut élire un roi ni nommer une famille royale; en un mot toute fonction qui se rapporte à un objet individuel n’appartient point à la puissance législative.\n\nSur cette idée on voit à l’instant qu’il ne faut plus demander à qui il appartient de faire des loix, puisqu’elles sont des actes de la volonté générale; ni si le Prince est au dessus des loix, puisqu’il est membre de l’Etat; ni si la loi peut être injuste, puisque nul n’est injuste envers lui-même; ni comment on est libre & soumis aux loix, puisqu’elles ne sont que des régistres de nos volontés.\n\nOn voit encore que la loi réunissant l’universalité de la volonté & celle de l’objet, ce qu’un homme, quel qu’il puisse être, ordonne de son chef n’est point une loi; ce qu’ordonne même le Souverain sur un objet particulier n’est pas non plus une loi mais un décret, ni un acte de souveraineté mais de magistrature.\n\nJ’appelle donc République tout État régi par des loix, sous quelque forme d’administration que ce puisse être: car alors seulement l’intérêt public gouverne, & la chose publique est quelque chose. Tout Gouvernement légitime est républicain\n: j’expliquerai ci-après ce que c’est que Gouvernement.\n\nLes loix ne sont proprement que les conditions de l’association civile. Le Peuple soumis aux loix en doit être l’auteur; il n’appartient qu’à ceux qui s’associent de regler les conditions de la société: mais comment les régleront-ils? Sera-ce d’un commun accord, par une inspiration subite? Le corps politique a-t-il un organe pour énoncer ses volontés? Qui lui donnera la prévoyance nécessaire pour en former les actes & les publier d’avance, ou comment les prononcera-t-il au moment du besoin? Comment une multitude aveugle qui souvent ne sait ce qu’elle veut, parce qu’elle sait rarement ce qui lui est bon, exécuteroit-elle d’elle-même une entreprise aussi grande aussi difficile qu’un sistême de législation? De lui-même le peuple veut toujours le bien, mais de lui-même il ne le voit pas toujours. La volonté générale est toujours droite, mais le jugement qui la guide n’est pas toujours éclairé. Il faut lui faire voir les objets tels qu’ils sont, quelquefois tels qu’ils doivent lui paroitre, lui montrer le bon chemin qu’elle cherche, la garantir de la séduction des volontés particulieres, rapprocher à ses yeux les lieux & les tems, balancer l’attrait des avantages présens & sensibles, par le danger des maux éloignés & cachés. Les particuliers voyent le bien qu’ils rejettent: le public veut le bien qu’il ne voit pas. Tous ont également besoin de guides: Il faut obliger les uns à conformer leurs volontés à leur raison; il faut apprendre à l’autre à connoitre ce qu’il veut. Alors des lumieres publiques résulte l’union de l’entendement & de la volonté dans le corps social, de-là l’exact concours des parties, & enfin la plus grande force du tout. Voilà d’où naît la nécessité d’un Législateur.\n\n### Book II, Chapter 7\n\nDu Législateur.\n\nPour découvrir les meilleures regles de société qui conviennent aux Nations, il faudroit une intelligence supérieure, qui vit toutes les passions des hommes & qui n’en éprouvât aucune, qui n’eut aucun rapport avec notre nature & qui la connût à fond, dont le bonheur fût indépendant de nous & qui pourtant voulut bien s’occuper du nôtre; enfin qui, dans le progrès des tems se ménageant une gloire éloignée, put travailler dans un siecle & jouir dans un autre. Il faudroit des Dieux pour donner des loix aux hommes.\n\nLe meme raisonnement que faisoit Caligula quant au fait, Platon le faisoit quant au droit pour définir l’homme civil ou royal qu’il cherche dans son livre du regne; mais s’il est vrai qu’un grand Prince est un homme rare, que sera-ce d’un grand Législateur? Le premier n’a qu’à suivre le modele que l’autre doit proposer. Celui-ci est le méchanicien qui invente la machine, celui-là n’est que l’ouvrier qui la monte & la fait marcher. Dans la naissance des sociétés, dit Montesquieu, ce sont les chefs des républiques qui font l’institution, & c’est ensuite l’institution qui forme les chefs des républiques.\n\nCelui qui ose entreprendre d’instituer un peuple doit se sentir en état de changer, pour ainsi dire, la nature humaine; de transformer chaque individu, qui par lui-même est un tout parfait & solitaire, en partie d’un plus grand tout dont cet individu reçoive en quelque sorte sa vie & son être; d’altérer la constitution de l’homme pour la renforcer; de substituer une existence partielle & morale à l’existence physique & indépendante que nous avons tous reçue de la nature. Il faut, en un mot, qu’il ôte à l’homme ses forces propres pour lui en donner qui lui soient étrangeres & dont il ne puisse faire usage sans le secours d’autrui. Plus ces forces naturelles sont mortes & anéanties, plus les acquises sont grandes & durables, plus aussi l’institution est solide & parfaite: En sorte que si chaque Citoyen n’est rien, ne peut rien, que par tous les autres, & que la force acquise par le tout soit égale ou supérieure à la somme des forces naturelles de tous les individus, on peut dire que la législation est au plus haut point de perfection qu’elle puisse atteindre.\n\nLe legislateur est à tous égards un homme extraordinaire dans l’Etat. S’il doit l’être par son génie, il ne l’est pas moins par son emploi. Ce n’est point magistrature, ce n’est point souveraineté. Cet emploi, qui constitue la république, n’entre point dans sa constitution: C’est une fonction particuliere & supérieure qui n’a rien de commun avec l’empire humain; car si celui qui commande aux hommes ne doit pas commander aux loix, celui qui commande aux loix ne doit pas non plus commander aux hommes; autrement ses loix, ministres de ses passions, ne feroient souvent que perpétuer ses injustices, & jamais il ne pourroit éviter que des vues particulieres n’altérassent la sainteté de son ouvrage.\n\nQuand Lycurgue donna des loix à sa patrie, il commença par abdiquer la Royauté. C’étoit la coutume de la plupart des villes grecques de confier à des étrangers l’établissement des leurs. Les Républiques modernes de l’Italie imiterent souvent cet usage; celle de Genève en fit autant & s’en trouva bien. Rome dans son plus bel âge vit renaitre en son sein tous les crimes de la Tirannie, & se vit prête à périr, pour avoir réuni sur les mêmes têtes l’autorité législative & le pouvoir souverain.\n\nCependant les Décemvirs eux-mêmes ne s’arrogerent jamais le droit de faire passer aucune loi de leur seule autorité. Rien de ce que nous vous proposons, disoient-ils au peuple, ne peut passer en loi sans votre consentement. Romains, soyez vous-mêmes les auteurs des loix qui doivent faire votre bonheur.\n\nCelui qui rédige les loix n’a donc ou ne doit avoir aucun droit législatif, & le peuple même ne peut, quand il le voudroit, se dépouiller de ce droit incommunicable; parce que selon le pacte fondamental il n’y a que la volonté générale qui oblige les particuliers, & qu’on ne peut jamais s’assurer qu’une volonté particuliere est conforme à la volonté générale, qu’après l’avoir soumise aux suffrages libres du peuple: j’ai déjà dit cela, mais il n’est pas inutile de le répéter.\n\nAinsi l’on trouve à la fois dans l’ouvrage de la législation deux choses qui semblent incompatibles: une entreprise au dessus de la force humaine, & pour l’exécuter, une autorité qui n’est rien.\n\nAutre difficulté qui mérite attention. Les sages qui veulent parler au vulgaire leur langage au lieu du sien n’en sauroient être entendus. Or il y a mille sortes d’idées qu’il est impossible de traduire dans la langue du peuple. Les vues trop générales & les objets trop éloignés sont également hors de sa portée; chaque individu ne goûtant d’autre plan de gouvernement que celui qui se rapporte à son intérêt particulier, apperçoit difficilement les avantages qu’il doit retirer des privations continuelles qu’imposent les bonnes loix. Pour qu’un peuple naissant put goûter les saines maximes de la politique & suivre les regles fondamentales de la raison d’Etat, il faudroit que l’effet put devenir la cause, que l’esprit social qui doit être l’ouvrage de l’institution présidât à l’institution même, & que les hommes fussent avant les loix ce qu’ils doivent devenir par elles. Ainsi donc le Législateur ne pouvant employer ni la force ni le raisonnement, c’est une nécessité qu’il recoure à une autorité d’un autre ordre, qui puisse entraîner sans violence & persuader sans convaincre.\n\nVoila ce qui força de tous tems les peres des nations de recourir à l’intervention du ciel & d’honorer les Dieux de leur propre sagesse, afin que les peuples, soumis aux loix de l’Etat comme à celles de la nature, & reconnoissant le même pouvoir dans la formation de l’homme & dans celle de la cité, obéissent avec liberté & portassent docilement le joug de la félicité publique.\n\nCette raison sublime qui s’éleve au dessus de la portée des hommes vulgaires est celle dont le législateur met les décisions dans la bouche des immortels, pour entraîner par l’autorité divine ceux que ne pourroit ébranler la prudence humaine\n. Mais il n’appartient pas à tout homme de faire parler les Dieux, ni d’en être cru quand il s’annonce pour être leur interprête. La grande ame du Législateur est le vrai miracle qui doit prouver sa mission. Tout homme peut graver des tables de pierre, ou acheter un oracle, ou feindre un secret commerce avec quelque divinité, ou dresser un oiseau pour lui parler à l’oreille, ou trouver d’autres moyens grossiers d’en imposer au peuple. Celui qui ne saura que cela pourra même assembler par hazard une troupe d’insensés, mais il ne fondera jamais un empire, & son extravagant ouvrage périra bientôt avec lui. De vains prestiges forment un lien passager, il n’y a que la sagesse qui le rende durable. La loi judaïque, toujours subsistante, celle de l’enfant d’Ismaël qui depuis dix siecles régit la moitié du monde, annoncent encore aujourd’hui les grands hommes qui les ont dictées; & tandis que l’orgueilleuse philosophie ou l’aveugle esprit de parti ne voit en eux que d’heureux imposteurs, le vrai politique admire dans leurs institutions ce grand & puissant génie qui préside aux établissemens durables.\n\nIl ne faut pas, de tout ceci conclure avec Warburton que la politique & la religion aient parmi nous un objet commun, mais que dans l’origine des nations l’une sert d’instrument à l’autre.\n\n### Book II, Chapter 8\n\nDu peuple.\n\nComme avant d’élever un grand édifice l’architecte observe & sonde le sol, pour voir s’il en peut soutenir le poids, le sage instituteur ne commence pas par rédiger de bonnes loix elles-mêmes, mais il examine auparavant si le peuple auquel il les destine est propre à les supporter. C’est pour cela que Platon refusa de donner des loix aux Arcadiens & aux Cyréniens, sachant que ces deux peuples étoient riches & ne pouvoient souffrir l’égalité: c’est pour cela qu’on vit en Crete de bonnes loix & de méchans hommes, parce que Minos n’avoit discipliné qu’un peuple chargé de vices.\n\nMille nations ont brillé sur la terre qui n’auroient jamais pu souffrir de bonnes loix, & celles mêmes qui l’auroient pu n’ont eu dans toute leur durée qu’un tems fort court pour cela. Les Peuples ainsi que les hommes ne sont dociles que dans leur jeunesse, ils deviennent incorrigibles en vieillissant; quand une fois les coutumes sont établies & les préjugés enracinés, c’est une entreprise dangereuse & vaine de vouloir les réformer; le peuple ne peut pas même souffrir qu’on touche à ses maux pour les détruire, semblable à ces malades stupides & sans courage qui frémissent à l’aspect du médecin.\n\nCe n’est pas que, comme quelques maladies bouleversent la tête des hommes & leur ôtent le souvenir du passé, il ne se trouve quelquefois dans la durée des États des époques violentes où les révolutions font sur les peuples ce que certaines crises font sur les individus, où l’horreur du passé tient lieu d’oubli, & où l’Etat, embrasé par les guerres civiles, renait pour ainsi dire de sa cendre & reprend la vigueur de la jeunesse en sortant des bras de la mort. Telle fut Sparte au tems de Lycurgue, telle fut Rome après les Tarquins; & telles ont été parmi nous la Hollande & la Suisse après l’expulsion des Tirans.\n\nMais ces événemens sont rares; ce sont des exceptions dont la raison se trouve toujours dans la constitution particuliere de l’Etat excepté. Elles ne sauroient même avoir lieu deux fois pour le même peuple, car il peut se rendre libre tant qu’il n’est que barbare, mais il ne le peut plus quand le ressort civil est usé. Alors les troubles peuvent le détruire sans que les révolutions puissent le rétablir, & sitôt que ses fers sont brisés, il tombe épars & n’existe plus: Il lui faut désormais un maitre & non pas un libérateur. Peuples libres, souvenez-vous de cette maxime: On peut acquérir la liberté; mais on ne la recouvre jamais.\n\nIl est pour les Nations comme pour les hommes un tems de maturité qu’il faut attendre avant de les soumettre à des loix; mais la maturité d’un peuple n’est pas toujours facile à connoitre, & si on la prévient l’ouvrage est manqué. Tel peuple est disciplinable en naissant, tel autre ne l’est pas au bout de dix siecles. Les Russes ne seront jamais vraiment policés, parce qu’ils l’ont été trop tôt. Pierre avoit le génie imitatif; il n’avoit pas le vrai génie, celui qui crée & fait tout de rien. Quelques unes des choses qu’il fit étoient bien, la plupart étoient déplacées. Il a vu que son peuple étoit barbare, il n’a point vu qu’il n’étoit pas mur pour la police; il l’a voulu civiliser quand il ne faloit que l’agguerrir. Il a d’abord voulu faire des Allemands, des Anglois, quand il faloit commencer par faire des Russes; il a empêché ses sujets de jamais devenir ce qu’ils pourroient être, en leur persuadant qu’ils étoient ce qu’ils ne sont pas. C’est ainsi qu’un Précepteur françois forme son éleve pour briller un moment dans son enfance, & puis n’être jamais rien. L’Empire de Russie voudra subjuguer l’Europe & sera subjugué lui-même. Les Tartares ses sujets ou ses voisins, deviendront ses maitres & les notres: Cette révolution me paroit infaillible. Tous les Rois de l’Europe travaillent de concert à l’accélérer.\n\n### Book II, Chapter 9\n\nSuite.\n\nComme la nature a donné des termes à la stature d’un homme bien conformé, passé lesquels elle ne fait plus que des Géants ou des Nains, il y a de même, eu égard à la meilleure constitution d’un État, des bornes à l’étendue qu’il peut avoir, afin qu’il ne soit ni trop grand pour pouvoir être bien gouverné, ni trop petit pour pouvoir se maintenir par lui-même. Il y a dans tout corps politique un maximum de force qu’il ne sauroit passer, & duquel souvent il s’éloigne à force de s’aggrandir. Plus le lien social s’étend, plus il se relâche, & en général un petit État est proportionnellement plus fort qu’un grand.\n\nMille raisons démontrent cette maxime. Premierement l’administration devient plus pénible dans les grandes distances, comme un poids devient plus lourd au bout d’un plus grand lévier. Elle devient aussi plus onéreuse à mesure que les degrés se multiplient; car chaque ville a d’abord la sienne que le peuple paye, chaque district la sienne encore payée par le peuple, ensuite chaque province, puis les grands gouvernemens, les Satrapies, les Viceroyautés qu’il faut toujours payer plus cher à mesure qu’on monte, & toujours aux dépends du malheureux peuple; enfin vient l’administration suprême qui écrase tout. Tant de surcharges épuisent continuellement les sujets; loin d’être mieux gouvernés par tous ces différens ordres, ils le sont bien moins que s’il n’y en avoit qu’un seul au dessus d’eux. Cependant à peine reste-t-il des ressources pour les cas extraordinaires, & quand il y faut recourir l’Etat est toujours à la veille de sa ruine.\n\nCe n’est pas tout; non seulement le Gouvernement a moins de vigueur & de célérité pour faire observer les loix, empêcher les véxations, corriger les abus, prévenir les entreprises séditieuses qui peuvent se faire dans des lieux éloignés; mais le peuple a moins d’affection pour ses chefs qu’il ne voit jamais, pour la patrie qui est à ses yeux comme le monde, & pour ses concitoyens dont la plus-part lui sont étrangers. Les mêmes loix ne peuvent convenir à tant de provinces diverses qui ont des mœurs différentes, qui vivent sous des climats opposés, & qui ne peuvent souffrir la même forme de gouvernement. Des loix différentes n’engendrent que trouble & confusion parmi des peuples qui, vivant sous les mêmes chefs & dans une communication continuelle, passent ou se marient les uns chez les autres &, soumis à d’autres coutumes, ne savent jamais si leur patrimoine est bien à eux. Les talens sont enfouis, les vertus ignorées, les vices impunis, dans cette multitude d’hommes inconnus les uns aux autres, que le siege de l’administration suprême rassemble dans un même lieu. Les Chefs accablés d’affaires ne voyent rien par eux-mêmes, des commis gouvernent l’Etat. Enfin les mesures qu’il faut prendre pour maintenir l’autorité générale, à laquelle tant d’Officiers éloignés veulent se soustraire ou en imposer, absorbe tous les soins publics, il n’en reste plus pour le bonheur du peuple, à peine en reste-t-il pour sa défense au besoin, & c’est ainsi qu’un corps trop grand pour sa constitution s’affaisse & périt écrasé sous son propre poids.\n\nD’un autre côté, l’Etat doit se donner une certaine base pour avoir de la solidité, pour résister aux secousses qu’il ne manquera pas d’éprouver & aux efforts qu’il sera contraint de faire pour se soutenir: car tous les peuples ont une espece de force centrifuge, par laquelle ils agissent continuellement les uns contre les autres & tendent à s’aggrandir aux dépens de leurs voisins, comme les tourbillons de Descartes. Ainsi les foibles risquent d’être bientôt engloutis, & nul ne peut gueres se conserver qu’en se mettant avec tous dans une espece d’équilibre, qui rende la compression par-tout à peu près égale.\n\nOn voit par-là qu’il y a des raisons de s’étendre & des raisons de se resserrer, & ce n’est pas le moindre talent du politique de trouver, entre les unes & les autres, la proportion la plus avantageuse à la conservation de l’État. On peut dire en général que les premieres, n’étant qu’extérieures & rélatives, doivent être subordonnées aux autres, qui sont internes & absolues; une saine & forte constitution est la premiere chose qu’il faut rechercher, & l’on doit plus compter sur la vigueur qui nait d’un bon gouvernement, que sur les ressources que fournit un grand territoire.\n\nAu reste, on a vu des États tellement constitués, que la nécessité des conquêtes entroit dans leur constitution même, & que pour se maintenir, ils étoient forcés de s’aggrandir sans cesse. Peut-être se félicitoient-ils beaucoup de cette heureuse nécessité, qui leur montroit pourtant, avec le terme de leur grandeur, l’inévitable moment de leur chute.\n\n### Book II, Chapter 10\n\nSuite.\n\nOn peut mésurer un corps politique de deux manieres; savoir, par l’étendue du territoire, & par le nombre du peuple, & il y a, entre l’une & l’autre de ces mésures, un rapport convenable pour donner à l’Etat sa véritable grandeur: Ce sont les hommes qui font l’Etat, & c’est le terrain qui nourrit les hommes; ce rapport est donc que la terre suffise à l’entretien de ses habitans, & qu’il y ait autant d’habitans que la terre en peut nourrir. C’est dans cette proportion que se trouve le maximum de force d’un nombre donné de peuple; car s’il y a du terrein de trop, la garde en est onéreuse, la culture insuffisante, le produit superflu; c’est la cause prochaine des guerres deffensives; s’il n’y en a pas assés, l’Etat se trouve pour le supplément à la discretion de ses voisins; c’est la cause prochaine des guerres offensives. Tout peuple qui n’a par sa position que l’alternative entre le commerce ou la guerre, est foible en lui-même; il dépend de ses voisins, il dépend des événemens; il n’a jamais qu’une existence incertaine & courte. Il subjugue & change de situation, ou il est subjugué & n’est rien. Il ne peut se conserver libre qu’à force de petitesse ou de grandeur.\n\nOn ne peut donner en calcul un rapport fixe entre l’étendue de terre & le nombre d’hommes qui se suffisent l’un à l’autre; tant à cause des différences qui se trouvent dans les qualités du terrein, dans ses dégrés de fertilité, dans la nature de ses productions, dans l’influence des climats, que de celles qu’on remarque dans les tempéramens des hommes qui les habitent, dont les uns consomment peu dans un pays fertile, les autres beaucoup sur un sol ingrat. Il faut encore avoir égard à la plus grande ou moindre fécondité des femmes, à ce que le pays peut avoir de plus ou moins favorable à la population, à la quantité dont le législateur peut espérer d’y concourir par ses établissemens; de sorte qu’il ne doit pas fonder son jugement sur ce qu’il voit mais sur ce qu’il prévoit, ni s’arrêter autant à l’état actuel de la population qu’à celui où elle doit naturellement parvenir. Enfin il y a mille occasions où les accidens particuliers du lieu exigent ou permettent qu’on embrasse plus de terrein qu’il ne paroit nécessaire. Ainsi l’on s’étendra beaucoup dans un pays de montagnes, où les productions  naturelles, savoir les bois, les paturages, demandent moins de travail, où l’expérience apprend que les femmes sont plus fécondes que dans les plaines, & où un grand sol incliné ne donne qu’une petite base horisontale, la seule qu’il faut compter pour la végétation. Au contraire, on peut se resserrer au bord de la mer, même dans des rochers & des sables presque stériles; parce que la pêche y peut suppléer en grande partie aux productions de la terre, que les hommes doivent être plus rassemblés pour répousser les pyrates, & qu’on a d’ailleurs plus de facilité pour délivrer le pays par les colonies, des habitans dont il est surchargé.\n\nA ces conditions pour instituer un peuple, il en faut ajouter une qui ne peut suppléer à nulle autre, mais sans laquelle elles sont toutes inutiles; c’est qu’on jouisse de l’abondance & de la paix; car le tems où s’ordonne un État est, comme celui où se forme un bataillon, l’instant où le corps est le moins capable de résistance & le plus facile à détruire. On résisteroit mieux dans un désordre absolu que dans un moment de fermentation, où chacun s’occupe de son rang & non du péril. Qu’une guerre une famine une sédition survienne en ce tems de crise, l’État est infailliblement renversé.\n\nCe n’est pas qu’il n’y ait beaucoup de gouvernemens établis durant ces orages; mais alors ce sont ces gouvernemens-mêmes qui détruisent l’État. Les usurpateurs amenent ou choisissent toujours ces tems de trouble pour faire passer, à la faveur de l’effroi public, des loix destructives que le peuple n’adopteroit jamais de sang-froid. Le choix du moment de l’institution est un des caracteres les plus surs par lesquels on peut distinguer l’œuvre du  Législateur d’avec celle du Tiran.\n\nQuel peuple est donc propre à la législation? Celui qui, se trouvant déjà lié par quelque union d’origine d’intérêt ou de convention, n’a point encore porté le vrai joug des loix; celui qui n’a ni coutumes ni superstitions bien enracinées; celui qui ne craint pas d’être accablé par une invasion subite, qui, sans entrer dans les querelles de ses voisins, peut résister seul à chacun d’eux, ou s’aider de l’un pour repousser l’autre; celui dont chaque membre peut être connu de tous, & où l’on n’est point forcé de charger un homme d’un plus grand fardeau qu’un homme ne peut porter; celui qui peut se passer des autres peuples & dont tout autre peuple peut se passer\n; Celui qui n’est ni riche ni  pauvre & peut se suffire à lui-même; enfin celui qui réunit la consistance d’un ancien peuple avec la docilité d’un peuple nouveau. Ce qui rend pénible l’ouvrage de la législation, est moins ce qu’il faut établir que ce qu’il faut détruire; & ce qui rend le succès si rare, c’est l’impossibilité de trouver la simplicité de la nature jointe aux besoins de la société. Toutes ces conditions, il est vrai, se trouvent difficilement rassemblées. Aussi voit-on peu d’États bien constitués.\n\nIl est encore en Europe un pays capable de législation; c’est l’Isle de Corse. La valeur & la constance avec laquelle ce brave peuple a su recouvrer & défendre sa liberté, mériteroit bien que quelque homme sage lui apprit à la conserver. J’ai quelque pressentiment qu’un jour cette petite Isle étonnera l’Europe.\n\n### Book II, Chapter 11\n\nDes divers sistêmes de Législation.\n\nSi l’on recherche en quoi consiste précisément le plus grand bien de tous, qui doit être la fin de tout sistême de législation, on trouvera qu’il se réduit à ces deux objets principaux, la liberté,  & l’égalité. La liberté, parce que toute dépendance particuliere est autant de force ôtée au corps de l’Etat; l’égalité, parce que la liberté ne peut subsister sans elle.\n\nJ’ai déjà dit ce que c’est que la liberté civile; à l’égard de l’égalité, il ne faut pas entendre par ce mot que les degrés de puissance & de richesse soient absolument les mêmes, mais que, quant à la puissance, elle soit au dessous de toute violence & ne s’exerce jamais qu’en vertu du rang & des loix, & quant à la richesse, que nul citoyen ne soit assez opulent pour en pouvoir acheter un autre, & nul assez pauvre pour être contraint de se vendre: Ce qui suppose du côté des grands modération de biens & de crédit, & du côté des petits, modération d’avarice & de convoitise.\n\nCette égalité, disent-ils, est une chimere de spéculation qui ne peut exister dans la pratique: Mais si l’abus est inévitable, s’ensuit-il qu’il ne faille pas au moins le regler? C’est précisément parce que la force des choses tend toujours à détruire l’égalité, que la force de la législation doit toujours tendre à la maintenir.\n\nMais ces objets généraux de toute bonne institution doivent être modifiés en chaque pays par les rapports qui naissent, tant de la situation locale, que du caractere des habitans, & c’est sur ces rapports qu’il faut assigner à chaque peuple un sistême particulier d’institution, qui soit le meilleur, non peut-être en lui-même, mais pour l’Etat auquel il est destiné. Par exemple le sol est-il ingrat & stérile, ou le pays trop serré pour les habitans? Tournez-vous du côté de l’industrie & des arts, dont vous échangerez les productions contre les denrées qui vous manquent. Au contraire, occupez-vous de riches plaines & des côteaux fertiles? Dans un bon terrain, manquez-vous d’habitans? Donnez tous vos soins à l’agriculture qui multiplie les hommes, & chassez les arts qui ne feroient qu’achever de dépeupler le pays, en attroupant sur quelques points du territoire le peu d’habitans qu’il a\n. Occupez-vous des rivages étendus & comodes? Couvrez la mer de vaisseaux, cultivez le commerce & la navigation; vous aurez une existence brillante & courte. La mer ne baigne-t-elle sur vos côtes que des rochers presque inaccessibles? Restez barbares & Ichtyophages; vous en vivrez plus tranquilles, meilleurs peut-être, & surement plus heureux. En un mot, outre les maximes communes à tous, chaque Peuple renferme en lui quelque cause qui les ordonne d’une maniere particuliere & rend sa législation propre à lui seul. C’est ainsi qu’autrefois les Hébreux & recemment les Arabes ont eu pour principal objet la Religion, les Athéniens les lettres, Carthage & Tyr le commerce, Rhodes la marine, Sparte la guerre, & Rome la vertu. L’Auteur de l’esprit des loix a montré dans des foules d’exemples par quel art le législateur dirige l’institution vers chacun de ces objets.\n\nCe qui rend la constitution d’un État véritablement solide & durable, c’est quand les convenances sont tellement observées que les rapports naturels & les loix tombent toujours de concert sur les mêmes points, & que celles-ci ne font, pour ainsi dire, qu’assurer accompagner rectifier les autres. Mais si le Législateur, se trompant dans son objet, prend un principe différent de celui qui nait de la nature des choses, que l’un tende à la servitude & l’autre à la liberté, l’un aux richesses l’autre à la population, l’un à la paix l’autre aux conquêtes, on verra les loix s’affoiblir insensiblement, la constitution s’altérer, & l’Etat ne cessera d’être agité jusqu’à ce qu’il soit détruit ou changé, & que l’invincible nature ait repris son empire.\n\n### Book II, Chapter 12\n\nDivision des Loix.\n\nPour ordonner le tout, ou donner la meilleure forme possible à la chose publique, il y a diverses rélations à considérer. Premierement l’action du corps entier agissant sur lui-même, c’est-à-dire le rapport du tout au tout, ou du Souverain à l’État, & ce rapport est composé de celui des termes intermédiaires, comme nous le verrons ci-après.\n\nLes loix qui reglent ce rapport portent le nom de loix politiques, & s’appellent aussi loix fondamentales, non sans quelque raison si ces loix sont sages. Car s’il n’y a dans chaque État qu’une bonne maniere de l’ordonner, le peuple qui l’a trouvée doit s’y tenir: mais si l’ordre établi est mauvais, pourquoi prendroit-on pour fondamentales des loix qui l’empêchent d’être bon? D’ailleurs, en tout état de cause, un peuple est toujours le maitre de changer ses loix, mêmes les meilleures; car s’il lui plait de se faire mal à lui-même, qui est-ce qui a droit de l’en empêcher?\n\nLa seconde rélation est celle des membres entre-eux, ou avec le corps entier, & ce rapport doit être au premier égard aussi petit & au second aussi grand qu’il est possible: en sorte que chaque Citoyen soit dans une parfaite indépendance de tous les autres, & dans une excessive dépendance de la Cité; ce qui se fait toujours par les mêmes moyens; car il n’y a que la force de l’Etat qui fasse la liberté de ses membres. C’est de ce deuxieme rapport que naissent les loix civiles.\n\nOn peut considérer une troisieme sorte de rélation entre l’homme & la loi, savoir celle de la désobéissance à la peine, & celle-ci donne lieu à l’établissement des loix criminelles, qui dans le fond sont moins une espece particuliere de loix, que la sanction de toutes les autres.\n\nA ces trois sortes de loix, il s’en joint une quatrieme, la plus importante de toutes; qui ne se grave ni sur le marbre ni sur l’airain, mais dans les cœurs des citoyens; qui fait la véritable constitution de l’Etat; qui prend tous les jours de nouvelles forces; qui, lorsque les autres loix vieillissent ou s’éteignent, les ranime ou les supplée, conserve un peuple dans l’esprit de son institution, & substitue insensiblement la force de l’habitude à celle de l’autorité. Je parle des mœurs, des coutumes, & sur-tout de l’opinion; partie inconnue à nos politiques, mais de laquelle  dépend le succès de toutes les autres: partie dont le grand Législateur s’occupe en secret, tandis qu’il paroit se borner à des réglemens particuliers qui ne sont que le ceintre de la voûte, dont les mœurs, plus lentes à naitre, forment enfin l’inébranlable Clef.\n\nEntre ces diverses Classes, les loix politiques, qui constituent la forme du Gouvernement, sont la seule relative à mon sujet.\n\nFin du Livre Deuxieme.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 1\n\nAvant de parler des diverses formes de Gouvernement, tâchons de fixer le sens précis de ce mot, qui n’a pas encore été fort bien expliqué.\n\n CHAPITRE I.\n\nDu Gouvernement en général.\n\nJ’avertis le lecteur que ce chapitre doit être lû posément, & que je ne sais pas l’art d’être clair pour qui ne veut pas être attentif.\n\nToute action libre a deux causes qui concourent à la produire, l’une morale, savoir la volonté qui détermine l’acte, l’autre physique, savoir la puissance qui l’exécute. Quand je marche vers un objet, il faut premierement que j’y veuille aller; en second lieu, que mes pieds m’y portent. Qu’un paralytique veuille courir, qu’un homme agile ne le veuille pas, tous deux resteront en place. Le corps politique a les mêmes mobiles; on y distingue de même la force & la volonté; Celle-ci sous le nom de puissance législative,  l’autre sous le nom de puissance exécutive. Rien ne s’y fait ou ne s’y doit faire sans leur concours.\n\nNous avons vu que la puissance législative appartient au peuple, & ne peut appartenir qu’à lui. Il est aisé de voir au contraire, par les principes ci-devant établis, que la puissance exécutive ne peut appartenir à la généralité comme Législatrice ou Souveraine; parce que cette puissance ne consiste qu’en des actes particuliers qui ne sont point du ressort de la loi, ni par conséquent de celui du Souverain, dont tous les actes ne peuvent être que des loix.\n\nIl faut donc à la force publique un agent propre qui la réunisse & la mette en œuvre selon les directions de la volonté  générale, qui serve à la communication de l’Etat & du Souverain, qui fasse en quelque sorte dans la personne publique ce que fait dans l’homme l’union de l’ame & du corps. Voilà quelle est dans l’Etat la raison du Gouvernement, confondu mal à propos avec le Souverain, dont il n’est que le ministre.\n\nQu’est-ce donc que le Gouvernement? Un corps intermédiaire établi entre les sujets & le Souverain pour leur mutuelle correspondance, chargé de l’exécution des loix, & du maintien de la liberté, tant civile que politique.\n\nLes membres de ce corps s’appellent Magistrats ou Rois, c’est-à-dire Gouverneurs, & le corps entier porte le nom de Prince. Ainsi ceux qui prétendent que l’acte par lequel un peuple se soumet à des chefs n’est point un contract, ont grande raison. Ce n’est absolument qu’une commission, un emploi dans lequel, simples officiers du Souverain, ils exercent en son nom le pouvoir dont il les a faits dépositaires, & qu’il peut limiter, modifier & reprendre quand il lui plait, l’aliénation d’un tel droit étant incompatible avec la nature du corps social, & contraire au but de l’association.\n\nJ’appelle donc Gouvernement ou suprême administration l’exercice légitime de la puissance exécutive, & Prince ou magistrat l’homme ou le corps chargé de cette administration.\n\nC’est dans le Gouvernement que se trouvent les forces intermédiaires, dont les rapports composent celui du tout au tout ou du Souverain à l’Etat. On peut réprésenter ce dernier rapport par celui des extrêmes d’une proportion continue, dont la moyenne proportionnelle est le Gouvernement. Le Gouvernement reçoit du Souverain les ordres qu’il donne au peuple, & pour que l’Etat soit dans un bon équilibre il faut, tout compensé, qu’il y ait égalité entre le produit ou la puissance du Gouvernement pris en lui-même & le produit ou la puissance des citoyens, qui sont souverains d’un côté & sujets de l’autre.\n\nDe plus, on ne sauroit altérer aucun des trois termes sans rompre à l’instant la proportion. Si le Souverain veut gouverner, ou si le magistrat veut donner des loix, ou si les sujets refusent d’obéir, le désordre succede à la regle, la force & la volonté n’agissent plus de concert, & l’Etat dissout tombe ainsi dans le despotisme ou dans l’anarchie. Enfin  comme il n’y a qu’une moyenne proportionnelle entre chaque rapport, il n’y a non plus qu’un bon gouvernement possible dans un État: Mais comme mille événemens peuvent changer les rapports d’un peuple, non seulement différens Gouvernemens peuvent être bons à divers peuples, mais au même peuple en différens tems.\n\nPour tâcher de donner une idée des divers rapports qui peuvent regner entre ces deux extrêmes, je prendrai pour exemple le nombre du peuple, comme un rapport plus facile à exprimer.\n\nSupposons que l’État soit composé de dix-mille Citoyens. Le Souverain ne peut être considéré que collectivement & en corps: Mais chaque particulier en qualité de sujet est considéré comme individu: Ainsi le Souverain est au sujet comme dix-mille est à un: C’est-à-dire que chaque membre de l’Etat n’a pour sa part que la dix-millieme partie de l’autorité souveraine, quoi qu’il lui soit soumis tout entier. Que le peuple soit composé de cent-mille hommes, l’état des sujets ne change pas, & chacun porte également tout l’empire des loix, tandis que son suffrage, réduit à un cent-millieme, a dix fois moins d’influence dans leur rédaction. Alors le sujet restant toujours un, le rapport du Souverain augmente en raison du nombre des Citoyens. D’où il suit que plus l’Etat s’agrandit, plus la liberté diminue.\n\nQuand je dis que le rapport augmente, j’entends qu’il s’éloigne de l’égalité. Ainsi plus le rapport est grand dans l’acception des Géometres, moins il y a de rapport dans l’acception commune; dans la premiere le rapport considéré selon la quantité se mésure par l’exposant, & dans l’autre, considéré selon l’identité, il s’estime par la similitude.\n\nOr moins les volontés particulieres se rapportent à la volonté générale, c’est-à-dire les mœurs aux loix, plus la force réprimante doit augmenter. Donc le Gouvernement, pour être bon, doit être rélativement plus fort à mésure que le peuple est plus nombreux.\n\nD’un autre côté, l’aggrandissement de l’Etat donnant aux dépositaires de l’autorité publique plus de tentations & de moyens d’abuser de leur pouvoir, plus le Gouvernement doit avoir de force pour contenir le peuple, plus le Souverain doit en avoir à son tour pour contenir le Gouvernement. Je ne parle pas ici d’une force absolue, mais de la force rélative des diverses parties de l’Etat.\n\nIl suit de ce double rapport que la proportion continue entre le Souverain le Prince & le peuple, n’est point une idée arbitraire, mais une conséquence nécessaire de la nature du corps politique. Il suit encore que l’un des extrêmes, savoir le peuple comme sujet, étant fixe & représenté par l’unité, toutes les fois que la raison doublée augmente ou diminue, la raison simple augmente ou diminue semblablement, & que par conséquent le moyen terme est changé. Ce qui fait voir qu’il n’y a pas une constitution de Gouvernement unique & absolue, mais qu’il peut y avoir autant de Gouvernemens différens en nature que d’Etats différens en grandeur.\n\nSi, tournant ce sistême en ridicule, on disoit que pour trouver cette moyenne proportionnelle & former le corps du Gouvernement il ne faut, selon moi, que tirer la racine quarrée du nombre du peuple; je répondrois que je ne prends ici ce nombre que pour un exemple, que les rapports dont je parle ne se mésurent pas seulement par le nombre des hommes, mais en général par la quantité d’action, laquelle se combine par des multitudes de causes, qu’au reste si, pour m’exprimer en moins de paroles, j’emprunte un moment des termes de géométrie, je n’ignore pas, cependant, que la précision géométrique n’a point lieu dans les quantités morales.\n\nLe Gouvernement est en petit ce que le corps politique qui le renferme est en grand. C’est une personne morale douée de certaines facultés, active comme le Souverain, passive comme l’Etat, & qu’on peut décomposer en d’autres rapports semblables, d’où nait par conséquent une nouvelle proportion, une autre encore dans celle-ci selon l’ordre des tribunaux, jusqu’à ce qu’on arrive à un moyen terme indivisible, c’est-à-dire à un seul chef ou magistrat suprême, qu’on peut se représenter au milieu de cette progression, comme l’unité entre la série des fractions & celles des nombres.\n\nSans nous embarrasser dans cette multiplication de termes, contentons-nous de considérer le Gouvernement comme un nouveau corps dans l’Etat, distinct du peuple & du Souverain, & intermédiaire entre l’un & l’autre.\n\nIl y a cette différence essentielle entre ces deux corps, que l’Etat existe par lui-même, & que le Gouvernement n’existe que par le Souverain. Ainsi la volonté dominante du Prince n’est ou ne doit être que la volonté générale ou la loi, sa force n’est que la force publique concentrée en lui, sitôt qu’il veut tirer de lui-même quelque acte absolu & indépendant, la liaison du tout commence à se relâcher. S’il arrivoit enfin que le Prince eut une volonté particuliere plus active que celle du Souverain, & qu’il usât pour obéir à cette volonté particuliere de la force publique qui est dans ses mains, en sorte qu’on eut, pour ainsi dire, deux Souverains, l’un de droit & l’autre de fait; à l’instant l’union sociale s’évanouiroit, & le corps politique seroit dissout.\n\nCependant pour que le corps du Gouvernement ait une existence une vie réelle qui le distingue du corps de l’Etat, pour que tous ses membres puissent agir de concert & répondre à la fin pour laquelle il est institué, il lui faut un moi particulier, une sensibilité commune à ses membres, une force une volonté propre qui tende à sa conservation. Cette existence particuliere suppose des assemblées, des conseils, un pouvoir de délibérer de résoudre, des droits, des titres, des privileges qui appartiennent au Prince  exclusivement, & qui rendent la condition du magistrat plus honorable à proportion qu’elle est plus pénible. Les difficultés sont dans la maniere d’ordonner dans le tout ce tout subalterne, de sorte qu’il n’altere point la constitution générale en affermissant la sienne, qu’il distingue toujours sa force particuliere destinée à sa propre conservation de la force publique destinée à la conservation de l’Etat, & qu’en un mot il soit toujours prêt à sacrifier le Gouvernement au peuple & non le peuple au Gouvernement.\n\nD’ailleurs, bien que le corps artificiel du Gouvernement soit l’ouvrage d’un autre corps artificiel, & qu’il n’ait en quelque sorte qu’une vie empruntée & subordonnée, cela n’empêche pas qu’il ne puisse agir avec plus ou moins de vigueur ou de célérité, jouir, pour ainsi dire d’une santé plus ou moins robuste. Enfin, sans s’éloigner directement du but de son institution, il peut s’en écarter plus ou moins, selon la maniere dont il est constitué.\n\nC’est de toutes ces différences que naissent les rapports divers que le Gouvernement doit avoir avec le corps de l’État, selon les rapports accidentels & particuliers par lesquels ce même État est modifié. Car souvent le Gouvernement le meilleur en soi deviendra le plus vicieux, si ses rapports ne sont altérés selon les défauts du corps politique auquel il appartient.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 2\n\nDu principe qui constitue les diverses formes de Gouvernement.\n\nPour exposer la cause générale de ces différences, il faut distinguer ici le Prince & le Gouvernement, comme j’ai distingué ci-devant l’Etat & le Souverain.\n\nLe corps du magistrat peut être composé d’un plus grand ou moindre nombre de membres. Nous avons dit que le rapport du Souverain aux sujets étoit d’autant plus grand que le peuple étoit plus nombreux, & par une évidente analogie nous en pouvons dire autant du Gouvernement à l’égard des Magistrats.\n\nOr la force totale du Gouvernement étant toujours celle de l’Etat, ne varie point: d’où il suit que plus il use de cette force sur ses propres membres, moins il lui en reste pour agir sur tout le peuple.\n\nDonc plus les Magistrats sont nombreux, plus le Gouvernement est foible. Comme cette maxime est fondamentale, appliquons-nous à la mieux éclaircir.\n\nNous pouvons distinguer dans la personne du magistrat trois volontés essentiellement différentes. Premierement la volonté propre de l’individu, qui ne tend qu’à son avantage particulier; secondement la volonté commune des magistrats, qui se rapporte uniquement à l’avantage du Prince, & qu’on peut appeller volonté de corps, laquelle est générale par rapport au Gouvernement, & particuliere par rapport à l’Etat, dont le Gouvernement fait partie; en troisieme lieu la volonté du peuple ou la volonté souveraine, laquelle est générale, tant par rapport à l’Etat considéré comme le tout, que par rapport au Gouvernement considéré comme partie du tout.\n\nDans une législation parfaite, la volonté particuliere ou individuelle doit être nulle, la volonté de corps propre au Gouvernement très subordonnée, & par conséquent la volonté générale ou souveraine toujours dominante & la regle unique de toutes les autres.\n\nSelon l’ordre naturel, au contraire, ces différentes volontés deviennent plus actives à mesure qu’elles se concentrent. Ainsi la volonté générale est toujours la plus foible, la volonté de corps a le second rang, & la volonté particuliere le premier de tous: de sorte que dans le Gouvernement, chaque membre est premierement soi-même, & puis Magistrat, & puis citoyen. Gradation directement opposée à celle qu’exige l’ordre social.\n\nCela posé: que tout le Gouvernement soit entre les mains d’un seul homme. Voilà la volonté particuliere & la volonté de corps parfaitement réunies, & par conséquent celle-ci au plus haut dégré d’intensité qu’elle puisse avoir. Or comme c’est du dégré de la volonté que dépend l’usage de la force, & que la force absolue du Gouvernement ne varie point, il s’ensuit que le plus actif des Gouvernemens est celui d’un seul.\n\nAu contraire, unissons le Gouvernement à l’autorité législative; faisons le Prince du Souverain, & de tous les Citoyens autant de magistrats: Alors la volonté de corps, confondue avec la volonté générale, n’aura pas plus d’activité qu’elle, & laissera la volonté particuliere dans toute sa force. Ainsi le Gouvernement, toujours avec la même force absolue, sera dans son minimum de force rélative ou d’activité.\n\nCes rapports sont incontestables, & d’autres considérations servent encore à les confirmer. On voit, par exemple, que chaque magistrat est plus actif dans son corps que chaque citoyen dans le sien, & que par conséquent la volonté particuliere a beaucoup plus d’influence dans les actes du Gouvernement que dans ceux du Souverain; car chaque magistrat est presque toujours chargé de quelque fonction du Gouvernement, au lieu que chaque citoyen pris à part n’a aucune fonction de la souveraineté. D’ailleurs, plus l’Etat s’étend, plus sa force réelle augmente, quoiqu’elle n’augmente pas en raison de son étendue: mais l’Etat restant le même, les magistrats ont beau se multiplier, le Gouvernement n’en acquiert pas une plus grande force réelle, parce que cette force est celle de l’Etat, dont la mésure est toujours égale. Ainsi la force rélative ou l’activité du Gouvernement diminue, sans que sa force absolue ou réelle puisse augmenter.\n\nIl est sûr encore que l’expédition des affaires devient plus lente à mésure que plus de gens en sont chargés, qu’en donnant trop à la prudence on ne donne pas assez à la fortune, qu’on laisse échapper l’occasion, & qu’à force de délibérer on perd souvent le fruit de la délibération.\n\nJe viens de prouver que le Gouvernement se relâche à mésure que les magistrats se multiplient, & j’ai prouvé ci-devant que plus le peuple est nombreux, plus la force réprimante doit augmenter. D’où il suit que le rapport des magistrats au Gouvernement doit être inverse du rapport des sujets au Souverain: C’est-à-dire que, plus l’Etat s’aggrandit, plus le Gouvernement doit se resserrer;  tellement que le nombre des chefs diminue en raison de l’augmentation du peuple.\n\nAu reste je ne parle ici que de la force rélative du Gouvernement, & non de sa rectitude: Car, au contraire, plus le magistrat est nombreux, plus la volonté de corps se rapproche de la volonté générale; au lieu que, sous un magistrat unique cette même volonté de corps n’est, comme je l’ai dit, qu’une volonté particuliere. Ainsi l’on perd d’un côté ce qu’on peut gagner de l’autre, & l’art du Législateur est de savoir fixer le point où la force & la volonté du Gouvernement, toujours en proportion réciproque, se combinent dans le rapport le plus avantageux à l’Etat.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 3\n\nDivision des Gouvernemens.\n\nOn a vu dans le chapitre précédent pourquoi l’on distingue les diverses especes ou formes de Gouvernemens par le nombre des membres qui les composent; il reste à voir dans celui-ci comment se fait cette division.\n\nLe Souverain peut, en premier lieu, commettre le dépôt du Gouvernement à tout le peuple ou à la plus grande partie du peuple, en sorte qu’il y ait plus de citoyens magistrats que de citoyens simples particuliers. On donne à cette forme de Gouvernement le nom de Démocratie.\n\nOu bien il peut resserrer le Gouvernement entre les mains d’un petit nombre, en sorte qu’il y ait plus de simples Citoyens que de magistrats, & cette forme porte le nom d’Aristocratie.\n\nEnfin il peut concentrer tout le Gouvernement dans les mains d’un magistrat unique dont tous les autres tiennent leur pouvoir. Cette troisieme forme est la plus commune, & s’appelle Monarchie ou Gouvernement royal.\n\nOn doit remarquer que toutes ces formes ou du moins les deux premieres sont susceptibles de plus ou de moins, & ont même une assez grande latitude; car la Démocratie peut embrasser tout le peuple ou se resserrer jusqu’à la moitié. L’Aristocratie à son tour peut de la moitié du peuple se resserrer jusqu’au plus petit nombre indéterminément. La Royauté même est susceptible de quelque partage. Sparte eut constamment deux Rois par sa constitution, & l’on a vu dans l’empire romain jusqu’à huit Empereurs à la fois, sans qu’on pût dire que l’Empire fut divisé. Ainsi il y a un point où chaque forme de Gouvernement se confond avec la suivante, & l’on voit, que sous trois seules dénominations, le Gouvernement est réellement susceptible d’autant de formes diverses que l’Etat a de Citoyens.\n\nIl y a plus: Ce même Gouvernement pouvant à certains égards se subdiviser en d’autres parties, l’une administrée d’une maniere & l’autre d’une autre, il peut résulter de ces trois formes combinées une multitude de formes mixtes, dont chacune est multipliable par toutes les formes simples.\n\nOn a de tous tems beaucoup disputé sur la meilleure forme de Gouvernement, sans considérer que chacune d’elles est la meilleure en certains cas, & la pire en d’autres.\n\nSi dans les différens États le nombre des magistrats suprêmes doit être en raison inverse de celui des Citoyens, il s’ensuit qu’en général le Gouvernement Démocratique convient aux petits États, l’Aristocratique aux médiocres, & le Monarchique aux grands. Cette regle se tire immédiatement du principe; mais comment compter la multitude de circonstances qui peuvent fournir des exceptions?\n\n### Book III, Chapter 4\n\nDe la Démocratie.\n\nCelui qui fait la loi sait mieux que personne comment elle doit être éxecutée & interprêtée. Il semble donc qu’on ne sauroit avoir une meilleure constitution que celle où le pouvoir exécutif est joint au législatif: Mais c’est cela même qui rend ce Gouvernement insuffisant à certains égards, parce que les choses qui doivent être distinguées ne le sont pas, & que le Prince & le Souverain n’étant que la même personne, ne forment, pour ainsi dire, qu’un Gouvernement sans Gouvernement.\n\nIl n’est pas bon que celui qui fait les loix les éxécute, ni que le corps du peuple détourne son attention des vues générales, pour les donner aux objets particuliers. Rien n’est plus dangereux que l’influence des intérêts privés dans les affaires publiques, & l’abus des loix par le Gouvernement est un mal moindre que la corruption du Législateur, suite infaillible des vues particulieres. Alors l’Etat étant altéré dans sa substance, toute réforme devient impossible. Un peuple qui n’abuseroit jamais du Gouvernement n’abuseroit pas non plus de l’indépendance; un peuple qui gouverneroit toujours bien n’auroit pas besoin d’être gouverné.\n\nA prendre le terme dans la rigueur de l’acception, il n’a jamais existé de véritable Démocratie, & il n’en existera jamais. Il est contre l’ordre naturel que le grand nombre gouverne & que le petit soit gouverné. On ne peut imaginer que le peuple reste incessamment assemblé pour vaquer aux affaires publiques, & l’on voit aisément qu’il ne  sauroit établir pour cela des commissions sans que la forme de l’administration change.\n\nEn effet, je crois pouvoir poser en principes que quand les fonctions du Gouvernement sont partagées entre plusieurs tribunaux, les moins nombreux acquierent tôt ou tard la plus grande autorité; ne fut-ce qu’à cause de la facilité d’expédier les affaires, qui les y amene naturellement.\n\nD’ailleurs que de choses difficiles à réunir ne suppose pas ce Gouvernement? Premierement, un État très petit où le peuple soit facile à rassembler & où chaque citoyen puisse aisément connoitre tous les autres: secondement, une grande simplicité de mœurs qui prévienne la multitude d’affaires & les discussions épineuses: Ensuite beaucoup d’égalité dans les rangs & dans les fortunes, sans quoi l’égalité ne sauroit subsister longtems dans les droits & l’autorité: Enfin peu ou point de luxe; car, ou le luxe est l’effet des richesses, ou il les rend nécessaires; il corrompt à la fois le riche & le pauvre, l’un par la possession l’autre par la convoitise; il vend la patrie à la molesse à la vanité; il ôte à l’État tous ses Citoyens pour les asservir les uns aux autres, & tous à l’opinion.\n\nVoilà pourquoi un Auteur célebre a donné la vertu pour principe à la République; car toutes ces conditions ne sauroient subsister sans la vertu: mais, faute d’avoir fait les distinctions nécessaires, ce beau génie a manqué souvent de justesse, quelquefois de clarté, & n’a pas vu que l’autorité Souveraine étant par tout la même, le même principe doit avoir lieu dans tout État bien constitué, plus ou moins, il est vrai, selon la forme du Gouvernement.\n\nAjoutons qu’il n’y a pas de Gouvernement si sujet aux guerres civiles & aux agitations intestines que le Démocratique ou populaire, parce qu’il n’y en a aucun qui tende si fortement & si continuellement à changer de forme, ni qui demande plus de vigilance & de courage pour être maintenu dans la sienne. C’est sur-tout dans cette constitution que le Citoyen doit s’armer de force & de constance, & dire chaque jour de sa vie au fond de son cœur ce que disoit un vertueux Palatin dans la Diete de Pologne: Malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium.\n\nS’il y avoit un peuple de Dieux, il se gouverneroit Démocratiquement. Un Gouvernement si parfait ne convient pas à des hommes.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 5\n\nDe l’Aristocratie.\n\nNous avons ici deux personnes morales très distinctes, savoir le Gouvernement & le Souverain, & par conséquent deux volontés générales, l’une par rapport à tous les citoyens, l’autre seulement pour les membres de l’administration. Ainsi, bien que le Gouvernement puisse régler sa police intérieure comme il lui plait, il ne peut jamais parler au peuple qu’au nom du Souverain, c’est-à-dire au nom du peuple même; ce qu’il ne faut jamais oublier.\n\nLes premieres sociétés se gouvernerent aristocratiquement. Les chefs des familles délibéroient entre eux des affaires publiques; Les jeunes gens cédoient sans peine à l’autorité de l’expérience. Delà les noms de Prêtres, d’anciens, de sénat, de Gérontes.. Les sauvages de l’amérique septentrionale se gouvernent encore ainsi de nos jours, & sont très bien gouvernés.\n\nMais à mésure que l’inégalité d’institution l’emporta sur l’inégalité naturelle, la richesse ou la puissance fut préférée à l’âge, & l’Aristocratie devint élective. Enfin la puissance transmise avec les biens du pere aux enfans, rendant les familles patriciennes, rendit le Gouvernement héréditaire, & l’on vit des Sénateurs de vingt ans.\n\nIl y a donc trois sortes d’Aristocratie; naturelle, élective, héréditaire. La premiere ne convient qu’à des peuples simples; la troisieme est le pire de tous les Gouvernemens. La deuxieme est le meilleur: c’est l’Aristocratie proprement dite.\n\nOutre l’avantage de la distinction des deux pouvoirs, elle a celui du choix de ses membres; car dans le Gouvernement populaire tous les Citoyens naissent magistrats, mais celui-ci les borne à un petit nombre, & ils ne le deviennent que par élection; moyen par lequel la probité, les lumieres, l’expérience, & toutes les autres raisons de préférence & d’estime publique, sont autant de nouveaux garants qu’on sera sagement gouverné.\n\nDe plus, les assemblées se font plus  comodément, les affaires se discutent mieux s’expédient avec plus d’ordre & de diligence, le crédit de l’État est mieux soutenu chez l’étranger par de vénérables sénateurs que par une multitude inconnue ou méprisée.\n\nEn un mot, c’est l’ordre le meilleur & le plus naturel que les plus sages gouvernent la multitude, quand on est sûr qu’ils la gouverneront pour son profit & non pour le leur; il ne faut point multiplier en vain les ressorts, ni faire avec vingt mille hommes ce que cent hommes choisis peuvent encore mieux. Mais il faut remarquer que l’intérêt de corps commence à moins diriger ici la force publique — sur la regle de la volonté générale, & qu’une autre pente inévitable enlêve aux loix une partie de la puissance exécutive.\n\nÀ l’egard des convenances particulieres, il ne faut ni un État si petit ni un peuple si simple & si droit que l’exécution des loix suive immédiatement de la volonté publique, comme dans une bonne Démocratie. Il ne faut pas non plus une si grande nation que les chefs épars pour la gouverner puissent trancher du Souverain chacun dans son département, & commencer par se rendre indépendans pour devenir enfin les maitres.\n\nMais si l’Aristocratie exige quelques vertus de moins que le Gouvernement populaire, elle en exige aussi d’autres qui lui sont propres; comme la modération dans les riches & le contentement dans les pauvres; car il semble qu’une égalité rigoureuse y seroit déplacée; elle ne fut pas même observée à Sparte.\n\nAu reste, si cette forme comporte une certaine inégalité de fortune, c’est bien pour qu’en général l’administration des affaires  publiques soit confiée à ceux qui peuvent les mieux y donner tout leur tems, mais non pas, comme prétend Aristote, pour que les riches soient toujours préférés. Au contraire, il importe qu’un choix opposé apprenne quelquefois au peuple qu’il y a dans le mérite des hommes des raisons de préférence plus importantes que la richesse.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 6\n\nDe la Monarchie.\n\nJusqu’ici nous avons considéré le Prince comme une personne morale & collective, unie par la force des loix, & dépositaire dans l’Etat de la puissance exécutive. Nous avons maintenant à considérer cette puissance réunie entre les mains d’une personne naturelle, d’un homme réel, qui seul ait droit d’en disposer selon les loix. C’est ce qu’on appelle un Monarque ou un Roi.\n\nTout au contraire des autres administrations, où un être collectif représente un individu, dans celle-ci un individu représente un être collectif; en sorte que l’unité morale qui constitue le Prince est en même tems une  unité physique, dans laquelle toutes les facultés que la loi réunit dans l’autre avec tant d’effort se trouvent naturellement réunies.\n\nAinsi la volonté du peuple, & la volonté du Prince, & la force publique de l’État, & la force particuliere du Gouvernement, tout répond au même mobile, tous les ressorts de la machine sont dans la même main, tout marche au même but, il n’y a point de mouvemens opposés qui s’entredétruisent, & l’on ne peut imaginer aucune sorte de constitution dans laquelle un moindre effort produise une action plus considérable. Archimede assis tranquilement sur le rivage & tirant sans peine à flot un grand Vaisseau, me représente un monarque habile gouvernant de son cabinet ses vastes États, & faisant tout mouvoir en paroissant immobile.\n\nMais s’il n’y a point de Gouvernement qui ait plus de vigueur, il n’y en a point où la volonté particuliere ait plus d’empire & domine plus aisément les autres; tout marche au même but, il est vrai; mais ce but n’est point celui de la félicité publique, & la force même de l’Administration tourne sans cesse au préjudice de l’Etat.\n\nLes Rois veulent être absolus, & de loin on leur crie que le meilleur moyen de l’être est de se faire aimer de leurs peuples. Cette maxime est très belle, & même très vraye à certains égards. Malheureusement on s’en moquera toujours dans les Cours. La puissance qui vient de l’amour des peuples est sans doute la plus grande; mais elle est précaire & conditionnelle, jamais les Princes ne s’en contenteront. Les meilleurs Rois veulent pouvoir être méchans s’il leur plait, sans cesser d’être les maitres: Un sermoneur politique aura beau leur dire que la force du peuple étant la leur, leur plus grand intérêt est que le peuple soit florissant, nombreux, redoutable: ils savent très bien que cela n’est pas vrai. Leur intérêt personnel est premierement que le Peuple soit foible, misérable, & qu’il ne puisse jamais leur résister. J’avoue que, supposant les sujets toujours parfaitement soumis, l’intérêt du Prince seroit alors que le peuple fut puissant, afin que cette puissance étant sienne le rendit rédoutable à ses voisins; mais comme cet intérêt n’est que secondaire & subordonné, & que les deux suppositions sont incompatibles, il est naturel que les Princes donnent toujours la préférence à la maxime qui leur est le plus immédiatement utile. C’est ce que Samuël représentoit fortement aux Hébreux; c’est ce que Machiavel a fait voir avec évidence. En feignant de donner des leçons aux Rois il en a donné de grandes aux peuples. Le Prince de Machiavel est le livre des républicains.\n\nNous avons trouvé, par les rapports généraux que la monarchie n’est convenable qu’aux grands États, & nous le trouvons encore en l’examinant en elle-même. Plus l’administration publique est nombreuse, plus le rapport du Prince aux sujets diminue & s’approche de l’égalité, en sorte que ce rapport est un ou l’égalité-même dans la Démocratie. Ce même rapport augmente à mésure que le Gouvernement se resserre, & il est dans son maximum quand le Gouvernement est dans les mains d’un seul. Alors il se trouve une trop grande distance entre le Prince & le Peuple, & l’État manque de liaison. Pour la former il faut donc des ordres intermédiaires: Il faut des Princes, des Grands, de la noblesse pour les remplir. Or rien de tout cela ne convient à un petit État, que ruinent tous ces degrés.\n\nMais s’il est difficile qu’un grand État soit bien gouverné, il l’est beaucoup plus qu’il soit bien gouverné par un seul homme, & chacun sait ce qu’il arrive quand le Roi se donne des substituts.\n\nUn defaut essenciel & inévitable, qui mettra toujours le gouvernement monarchique au dessous du républicain, est que dans celui-ci la voix publique n’éleve presque jamais aux premieres places que des hommes éclairés & capables, qui les remplissent avec honneur: au lieu que ceux qui parviennent dans les monarchies ne sont le plus souvent que de petits brouillons, de petits fripons, de petits intrigans, à qui les petits talens qui font dans les Cours parvenir aux grandes  places, ne servent qu’à montrer au public leur ineptie aussi-tôt qu’ils y sont parvenus. Le peuple se trompe bien moins sur ce choix que le Prince, & un homme d’un vrai mérite est presque aussi rare dans le ministere, qu’un sot à la tête d’un gouvernement républicain. Aussi, quand par quelque heureux hazard un de ces hommes nés pour gouverner prend le timon des affaires dans une Monarchie presque abimée par ces tas de jolis régisseurs, on est tout surpris des ressources qu’il trouve, & cela fait époque dans un pays.\n\nPour qu’un État monarchique put être bien gouverné, il faudroit que sa grandeur ou son étendue fut mésurée aux facultés de celui qui gouverne. Il est plus aisé de conquérir que de régir. Avec un levier suffisant, d’un doigt on peut ébranler le monde, mais pour le soutenir il faut les épaules d’Hercule. Pour peu qu’un État soit grand, le Prince est presque toujours trop petit. Quand, au contraire il arrive que l’État est trop petit pour son chef, ce qui est très rare, il est encore mal gouverné, parce que le chef, suivant toujours la grandeur de ses vues, oublie les intérêts des peuples, & ne les rend pas moins malheureux par l’abus des talens qu’il a de trop, qu’un chef borné par le défaut de ceux qui lui manquent. Il faudroit, pour ainsi dire, qu’un royaume s’étendit ou se resserrât à chaque regne selon la portée du Prince; au lieu que les talens d’un Sénat ayant des mésures plus fixes, l’État peut avoir des bornes constantes & l’administration n’aller pas moins bien.\n\nLe plus sensible inconvénient du Gouvernement d’un seul est le défaut de cette succession continuelle qui forme dans les deux autres une liaison non interrompue. Un Roi mort, il en faut un autre; les élections laissent des intervalles dangereux, elles sont orageuses, & à moins que les Citoyens ne soient d’un désintéressement, d’une intégrité que ce Gouvernement ne comporte gueres, la brigue & la corruption s’en mêlent. Il est difficile que celui à qui l’Etat s’est vendu ne le vende pas à son tour, & ne se dédommage pas sur les foibles de l’argent que les puissans lui ont extorqué. Tôt ou tard tout devient venal sous une pareille administration, & la paix dont on jouit alors sous les rois, est pire que le désordre des interregnes.\n\nQu’a-t-on fait pour prévenir ces maux? On a rendu les Couronnes héréditaires dans certaines familles, & l’on a établi un ordre de Succession qui prévient toute dispute à la mort des Rois: C’est-à-dire que, substituant l’inconvénient des régences à celui des élections, on a préféré une apparente tranquillité à une administration sage, & qu’on a mieux aimé risquer d’avoir pour chefs des enfans, des monstres, des imbéciles, que d’avoir à disputer sur le choix des bons Rois; on n’a pas considéré qu’en s’exposant ainsi aux risques de l’alternative on met presque toutes les chances contre soi. C’étoit un mot très-sensé que celui du jeune Denis, à qui son pere en lui reprochant une action honteuse, disoit, t’en ai-je donné l’exemple? Ah, répondit le fils, votre pere n’étoit pas roi!\n\nTout concourt à priver de justice & de raison un homme élevé pour commander aux autres. On prend beaucoup de peine, à ce qu’on dit, pour enseigner aux jeunes Princes l’art de regner; il ne paroit pas que cette éducation leur profite. On feroit mieux de commencer par leur enseigner l’art  d’obéir. Les plus grands rois qu’ait célébrés l’histoire n’ont point été élevés pour regner; c’est une science qu’on ne possede jamais moins qu’après l’avoir trop apprise, & qu’on acquiert mieux en obéissant qu’en commandant. Nam utilissimus idem ac brevissimus bonarum malarumque rerum delectus, cogitare quid aut nolueris sub alio Principe aut volueris.\n\nUne suite de ce défaut de cohérence est l’inconstance du gouvernement royal qui, se réglant tantôt sur un plan & tantôt sur un autre selon le caractere du Prince qui regne ou des gens qui regnent pour lui, ne peut avoir longtems un objet fixe ni une conduite conséquente: variation qui rend toujours l’Etat flottant de maxime en maxime, de projet en projet, & qui n’a pas lieu dans les  autres Gouvernemens où le Prince est toujours le même. Aussi voit-on qu’en général, s’il y a plus de ruse dans une Cour, il y a plus de sagesse dans un Sénat, & que les Républiques vont à leurs fins par des vues plus constantes & mieux suivies, au lieu que chaque révolution dans le Ministere en produit une dans l’Etat; la maxime commune à tous les Ministres, & presque à tous les Rois, étant de prendre en toute chose le contrepied de leur prédécesseur.\n\nDe cette même incohérence se tire encore la solution d’un sophisme très familier aux politiques royaux; c’est, non seulement de comparer le Gouvernement civil au Gouvernement domestique & le prince au pere de famille, erreur déjà réfutée, mais encore de donner libéralement à ce magistrat toutes les vertus dont il auroit besoin, & de supposer toujours que le Prince est ce qu’il devroit être: supposition à l’aide de laquelle le Gouvernement royal est évidemment préférable à tout autre, parce qu’il est incontestablement le plus fort, & que pour être aussi le meilleur il ne lui manque qu’une volonté du corps plus conforme à la volonté générale.\n\nMais si selon Platon le roi par nature est un personnage si rare, combien de fois la nature & la fortune concourront-elles à le couronner, & si l’éducation royale corrompt nécessairement ceux qui la reçoivent, que doit-on espérer d’une suite d’hommes élevés pour regner? C’est donc bien vouloir s’abuser que de confondre le Gouvernement royal avec celui d’un bon Roi. Pour voir ce qu’est ce Gouvernement en lui-même, il faut le considérer sous des Princes bornés ou méchans; car ils arriveront tels au Trône, ou le Trône les rendra tels.\n\nCes difficultés n’ont pas échappé à nos Auteurs, mais ils n’en sont point embarrassés. Le remede est, disent-ils, d’obéir sans murmure. Dieu donne les mauvais Rois dans sa colére, & il les faut supporter comme des châtimens du Ciel. Ce discours est édifiant, sans doute; mais je ne sais s’il ne conviendroit pas mieux en chaire que dans un livre de politique. Que dire d’un Medecin qui promet des miracles, & dont tout l’art est d’exhorter son malade à la patience? On sait bien qu’il faut souffrir un mauvais Gouvernement quand on l’a; la question seroit d’en trouver un bon.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 7\n\nDes Gouvernemens mixtes.\n\nA proprement parler il n’y a point de Gouvernement simple. Il faut qu’un Chef unique ait des magistrats subalternes; il faut qu’un Gouvernement populaire ait un Chef. Ainsi dans le partage de la puissance exécutive il y a toujours gradation du grand nombre au moindre, avec cette différence que tantôt le grand nombre dépend du petit, & tantôt le petit du grand.\n\nQuelquefois il y a partage égal; soit quand les parties constitutives sont dans une dépendance mutuelle, comme dans le Gouvernement d’Angleterre; soit quand l’autorité de chaque partie est indépendante mais  imparfaite, comme en Pologne. Cette derniere forme est mauvaise, parce qu’il n’y a point d’unité dans le Gouvernement, & que l’Etat manque de liaison.\n\nLequel vaut le mieux, d’un Gouvernement simple ou d’un Gouvernement mixte? Question fort agitée chez les politiques, & à laquelle il faut faire la même réponse que j’ai faite ci-devant sur toute forme de Gouvernement.\n\nLe Gouvernement simple est le meilleur en soi, par cela seul qu’il est simple. Mais quand la Puissance exécutive ne dépend pas assez de la législative, c’est-à-dire, quand il y a plus de rapport du Prince au Souverain que du Peuple au Prince, il faut remédier à ce défaut de proportion en divisant le Gouvernement; car alors toutes ses parties n’ont pas moins d’autorité sur les sujets, & leur division les rend toutes ensemble moins fortes contre le Souverain.\n\nOn previent encore le même inconvénient en établissant des magistrats intermédiaires, qui, laissant le Gouvernement en son entier, servent seulement à balancer les deux Puissances & à maintenir leurs droits respectifs. Alors le Gouvernement n’est pas mixte, il est tempéré.\n\nOn peut remédier par des moyens semblables à l’inconvénient opposé, & quand le Gouvernement est trop lâche, ériger des Tribunaux pour le concentrer. Cela se pratique dans toutes les Démocraties. Dans le premier cas on divise le Gouvernement pour l’affoiblir, & dans le second pour le renforcer; car les maximum de force & de foiblesse se trouvent également dans les Gouvernemens simples, au lieu que les formes mixtes donnent une force moyenne.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 8\n\nQue toute forme de Gouvernement n’est pas propre à tout pays.\n\nLa liberté n’étant pas un fruit de tous les Climats n’est pas à la portée de tous les peuples. Plus on médite ce principe établi par Montesquieu, plus on en sent la vérité. Plus on le conteste, plus on donne occasion de l’établir par de nouvelles preuves.\n\nDans tous les Gouvernemens du monde la personne publique consomme & ne produit rien. D’où lui vient donc la substance consommée? Du travail de ses membres. C’est le superflu des particuliers qui produit le nécessaire du public. D’où il suit que l’état civil ne peut subsister qu’autant que le travail des hommes rend au delà de leurs besoins.\n\nOr cet excédent n’est pas le même dans tous les pays du monde. Dans plusieurs il est considérable, dans d’autres médiocres, dans d’autres nul, dans d’autres négatif. Ce rapport dépend de la fertilité du climat, de la sorte de travail que la terre exige, de la nature de ses productions, de la force de ses habitans, de la plus ou moins grande consommation qui leur est nécessaire, & de plusieurs autres rapports semblables desquels il est composé.\n\nD’autre part, tous les Gouvernemens ne sont pas de même nature; il y en a de plus ou moins dévorans, & les différences sont fondées sur cet autre principe que, plus les contributions publiques s’éloignent de leur source, & plus elles sont onéreuses. Ce n’est pas sur la quantité des impositions qu’il faut mésurer cette charge, mais sur le chemin  qu’elles ont à faire pour retourner dans les mains dont elles sont sorties; quand cette circulation est prompte & bien établie, qu’on paye peu ou beaucoup, il n’importe; le peuple est toujours riche & les finances vont toujours bien. Au contraire, quelque peu que le Peuple donne, quand ce peu ne lui revient point, en donnant toujours bientôt il s’épuise; l’État n’est jamais riche, & le peuple est toujours gueux.\n\nIl suit de-là que plus la distance du peuple au Gouvernement augmente, & plus les tributs deviennent onéreux; ainsi dans la Démocratie le peuple est le moins chargé, dans l’Aristocratie il l’est davantage, dans la Monarchie il porte le plus grand poids. La Monarchie ne convient donc qu’aux nations opulentes, l’Aristocratie aux États médiocres en richesse ainsi qu’en grandeur, la  Démocratie aux États petits & pauvres.\n\nEn effet, plus on y réfléchit, plus on trouve en ceci de différence entre les États libres & les monarchiques; dans les premiers tout s’emploie à l’utilité commune; dans les autres les forces publiques & particulieres sont réciproques, & l’une s’augmente par l’affoiblissement de l’autre. Enfin au lieu de gouverner les sujets pour les rendre heureux, le despotisme les rend misérables pour les gouverner.\n\nVoila donc dans chaque climat des causes naturelles sur lesquelles on peut assigner la forme de Gouvernement à laquelle la force du climat l’entraîne, & dire même quelle espece d’habitans il doit avoir. Les lieux ingrats & stériles où le produit ne vaut pas le travail doivent rester incultes & deserts, ou seulement peuplés de Sauvages: Les lieux où le travail des hommes ne rend exactement que le nécessaire doivent être habités par des peuples barbares, toute politie y seroit impossible: les lieux où l’excès du produit sur le travail est médiocre conviennent aux peuples libres; ceux où le terroir abondant & fertile donne beaucoup de produit pour peu de travail veulent être gouvernés monarchiquement, pour consumer par le luxe du Prince l’excès du superflu des sujets; car il vaut mieux que cet excès soit absorbé par le gouvernement que dissipé par les particuliers. Il y a des exceptions, je le sais; mais ces exceptions-mêmes confirment la regle, en ce qu’elles produisent tôt ou tard des révolutions qui ramenent les choses dans l’ordre de la nature.\n\nDistingons toujours les loix générales des causes particulieres qui peuvent en modifier l’effet. Quand tout le midi seroit  couvert de Républiques & tout le nord d’Etats despotiques il n’en seroit pas moins vrai que par l’effet du climat le despotisme convient aux pays chauds, la barbarie aux pays froids, & la bonne politie aux régions intermédiaires. Je vois encore qu’en accordant le principe on pourra disputer sur l’application: on pourra dire qu’il y a des pays froids très-fertiles & des méridionaux très-ingrats. Mais cette difficulté n’en est une que pour ceux qui n’examinent pas la chose dans tous ses rapports. Il faut, comme je l’ai déjà dit, compter ceux des travaux, des forces, de la consommation, &c.\n\nSupposons que de deux terreins égaux l’un rapporte cinq & l’autre dix. Si les habitans du premier consomment quatre & ceux du dernier neuf, l’excès du premier produit sera 1/5. & celui du second 1/10. Le rapport de ces deux excès étant donc inverse de celui des produits, le terrein qui ne produira que cinq donnera un superflu double de celui du terrein qui produira dix.\n\nMais il n’est pas question d’un produit double, & je ne crois pas que personne ose mettre en général la fertilité des pays froids en égalité même avec celle des pays chauds. Toutefois supposons cette égalité; laissons, si l’on veut, en balance l’Angleterre avec la Sicile, & la Pologne avec l’Egypte. Plus au midi nous n’aurons l’Affrique & les Indes, plus au nord nous n’aurons plus rien. Pour cette égalité de produit, quelle différence dans la culture? En Sicile il ne faut que grater la terre; en Angleterre que de soins pour la labourer! Or là où il faut plus de bras pour donner le même produit, le superflu doit être nécessairement moindre.\n\nConsiderez, outre cela, que la même quantité d’hommes consomme beaucoup moins dans les pays chauds. Le climat demande qu’on y soit sobre pour se porter bien: les Européens qui veulent y vivre comme chez eux périssent tous de disserenterie & d’indigestions. Nous sommes,  dit Chardin, des bêtes carnacieres, des loups, en comparaison des Asiatiques. Quelques-uns attribuent la sobriété des Persans à ce que leur pays est moins cultivé, & moi je crois au contraire que leur pays abonde moins en denrées parce qu’il en faut moins aux habitans. Si leur frugalité,  continue-t-il, étoit un effet de la disette du pays, il n’y auroit que les pauvres qui mangeroient peu, au lieu que c’est généralement tout le monde, & on mangeroit plus ou moins en chaque province selon la fertilité du pays, au lieu que la même sobriété se trouve par tout le royaume. Ils se louent fort  de leur maniere de vivre, disant qu’il ne faut que regarder leur teint pour reconnoitre combien elle est plus excellente que celle des chrétiens. En effet le teint des Persans est uni; ils ont la peau belle fine & polie, au lieu que le teint des Arméniens leurs sujets qui vivent à l’Européenne est rude, couperosé, & que leurs corps sont gros & pesants.\n\nPlus on approche de la ligne, plus les peuples vivent de peu. Ils ne mangent presque pas de viande; le ris, le mays, le cuzcuz, le mil, la cassave, sont leurs alimens ordinaires. Il y a aux Indes des millions d’hommes dont la nourriture ne coute pas un sol par jour. Nous voyons en Europe-même des différences sensibles pour l’appetit entre les peuples du nord & ceux du midi. Un Espagnol vivra huit jours du diner d’un Allemand. Dans les pays où les hommes sont plus voraces le luxe se tourne aussi vers les choses de consommation. En Angleterre, il se montre sur une table chargée de viandes; en Italie on vous régale de sucre & de fleurs.\n\nLe luxe des vêtemens offre encore de semblables différences. Dans les climats où les changemens des saisons sont prompts & violens, on a des habits meilleurs & plus simples, dans ceux où l’on ne s’habille que pour la parure on y cherche plus d’éclat que d’utilité, les habits eux-mêmes y sont un luxe. A Naples vous verrez tous les jours se promener au Pausylippe des hommes en veste dorée & point de bas. C’est la même chose pour les bâtimens; on donne tout à la magnificence quand on n’a rien à craindre des injures de l’air. A Paris à Londres on veut être logé chaudement & commodément. A Madrid on a des salons superbes, mais point de fénêtres qui ferment, & l’on couche dans des nids-à-rats.\n\nLes alimens sont beaucoup plus substanciels & succulens dans les pays chauds; c’est une troisieme différence qui ne peut manquer d’influer sur la seconde. Pourquoi mange-t-on tant de légumes en Italie? parce qu’ils y sont bons, nourrissans, d’excellent goût: En France où ils ne sont nourris que d’eau ils ne nourrissent point, & sont presque comptés pour rien sur les tables. Ils n’occupent pourtant pas moins de terrein & coûtent du moins autant de peine à cultiver. C’est une expérience faite que les bleds de Barbarie, d’ailleurs inférieurs à ceux de France, rendent beaucoup plus en farine, & que ceux de France à leur tour rendent plus que les bleds du Nord. D’où l’on peut inférer qu’une gradation semblable s’observe généralement dans la même direction de la ligne au pole. Or n’est-ce pas un desavantage visible d’avoir dans un produit égal une moindre quantité d’aliment?\n\nA toutes ces différentes considérations j’en puis ajoûter une qui en découle & qui les fortifie; c’est que les pays chauds ont moins besoins d’habitans que les pays froids, & pourroient en nourrir davantage; ce qui produit un double superflu toujours à l’avantage du despotisme. Plus le même nombre d’habitans occupe une grande surface, plus les révoltes deviennent difficiles; parce qu’on ne peut se concerter ni promptement ni secretement, & qu’il est toujours facile au Gouvernement d’éventer les projets & de couper les communications; mais plus un peuple nombreux se rapproche, moins le Gouvernement peut usurper sur le Souverain; les chefs déliberent aussi surement dans leurs chambres que le Prince dans son conseil, & la foule s’assemble aussi-tôt dans les places que les troupes dans leurs quartiers. L’avantage d’un Gouvernement tirannique est donc en ceci d’agir à grandes distances. À l’aide des points d’appui qu’il se donne sa force augmente au loin comme celle des léviers\n. Celle du peuple au contraire n’agit que concentrée, elle s’évapore & se perd en s’étendant, comme l’effet de la poudre éparse à terre & qui ne prend feu que grain à grain. Les pays les moins peuplés sont ainsi les plus propres à la Tirannie: les bêtes féroces ne regnent que dans les déserts.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 9\n\nDes signes d’un bon Gouvernement.\n\nQuand donc on demande absolument quel est le meilleur Gouvernement, on fait une question insoluble comme indéterminée; ou si l’on veut, elle a autant de bonnes solutions qu’il y a de combinaisons possibles dans les positions absolues & rélatives des peuples.\n\nMais si l’on demandoit à quel signe on peut connoitre qu’un peuple donné est bien ou mal gouverné, ce seroit autre chose, & la question de fait pourroit se résoudre.\n\nCependant on ne la résout point, parce que chacun veut la résoudre à sa maniere. Les sujets vantent la tranquillité publique, les Citoyens la liberté des particuliers; l’un  préfere la sureté des possessions, & l’autre celle des personnes; l’un veut que le meilleur Gouvernement soit le plus sévère, l’autre soutient que c’est le plus doux; celui-ci veut qu’on punisse les crimes, & celui-là qu’on les prévienne; l’un trouve beau qu’on soit craint des voisins, l’autre aime mieux qu’on en soit ignoré; l’un est content quand l’argent circule, l’autre exige que le peuple ait du pain. Quand-même on conviendroit sur ces points & d’autres semblables, en seroit-on plus avancé? Les qualités morales manquant de mesure précise, fut-on d’accord sur le signe, comment l’être sur l’estimation?\n\nPour moi, je m’étonne toujours qu’on méconnoisse un signe aussi simple, ou qu’on ait la mauvaise foi de n’en pas convenir. Quelle est la fin de l’association politique? C’est la conservation & la prospérité de ses  membres. Et quel est le signe le plus sûr qu’ils se conservent & prospérent? C’est leur nombre & leur population. N’allez donc pas chercher ailleurs ce signe si disputé. Toute chose d’ailleurs égale, le Gouvernement sous lequel, sans moyens étrangers sans naturalisations sans colonies les Citoyens peuplent & multiplient davantage, est infailliblement le meilleur: celui sous lequel un peuple diminue & dépérit est le pire. Calculateurs, c’est maintenant votre affaire; comptez, mesurez, comparez\n.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 10\n\nDe l’abus du Gouvernement, & de sa pente à dégénérer.\n\nComme la volonté particuliere agit sans cesse contre la volonté générale, ainsi le Gouvernement fait un effort continuel contre la Souveraineté. Plus cet effort augmente, plus la constitution s’altere, & comme il n’y a point ici d’autre volonté de corps qui résistant à celle du Prince fasse équilibre avec elle, il doit arriver tôt ou tard que le Prince opprime enfin le Souverain & rompe le traité Social. C’est-là le vice inhérent & inévitable qui dès la naissance du corps politique tend sans relàche à le détruire, de même que la vieillesse & la mort détruisent enfin le corps de l’homme.\n\nIl y a deux voyes générales par lesquelles un Gouvernement dégénere; savoir, quand il se resserre, ou quand l’Etat se dissoût.\n\nLe Gouvernement se resserre quand il passe du grand nombre au petit, c’est-à-dire de la Démocratie à l’Aristocratie, & de l’Aristocratie à la Royauté. C’est-là son inclinaison naturelle. S’il rétrogradoit du petit nombre au grand, on pourroit dire qu’il se relâche, mais ce progrès inverse est impossible.\n\nEn effet, jamais le Gouvernement ne change de forme que quand son ressort usé le laisse trop affoibli pour pouvoir conserver la sienne. Or s’il se relâchoit encore en  s’étendant, sa force deviendroit tout-à-fait nulle, & il subsisteroit encore moins. Il faut donc remonter & serrer le ressort à mesure qu’il cede, autrement l’Etat qu’il soutient tomberoit en ruine.\n\nLe cas de la dissolution de l’Etat peut arriver de deux manieres.\n\nPremierement quand le Prince n’administre plus l’État selon les loix & qu’il usurpe le pouvoir souverain. Alors il se fait un changement remarquable; c’est que, non pas le Gouvernement, mais l’État se resserre; je veux dire que le grand État se dissout & qu’il s’en forme un autre dans celui-là, composé seulement des membres du Gouvernement, & qui n’est plus rien au reste du Peuple que son maitre & son tiran. De sorte qu’à l’instant que le Gouvernement usurpe la souveraineté, le pacte social est rompu, & tous les simples Citoyens, rentrés de droit dans leur liberté naturelle, sont forcés mais non pas obligés d’obéir.\n\nLe meme cas arrive aussi quand les membres du Gouvernement usurpent séparément le pouvoir qu’ils ne doivent exercer qu’en corps; ce qui n’est pas une moindre infraction des loix, & produit encore un plus grand désordre. Alors on a, pour ainsi dire, autant de Princes que de Magistrats, & l’Etat, non moins divisé que le Gouvernement, périt ou change de forme.\n\nQuand l’Etat se dissout, l’abus du Gouvernement quel qu’il soit prend le nom commun d’anarchie. En distingant, la Démocratie dégénere en Ochlocratie, l’Aristocratie en Olygarchie; j’ajoûterois que la Royauté dégénere en Tyrannie, mais ce dernier mot est équivoque & demande explication.\n\nDans le sens vulgaire un Tyran est un Roi qui gouverne avec violence & sans égard à la justice & aux loix. Dans le sens précis un Tyran est un particulier qui s’arroge l’autorité royale sans y avoir droit. C’est ainsi que les Grecs entendoient ce mot de Tyran: Ils le donnoient indifféremment aux bons & aux mauvais Princes dont l’autorité n’étoit pas légitime. Ainsi Tyran & usurpateur sont deux mots parfaitement synonimes.\n\nPour donner différens noms à différentes choses, j’appelle Tyran l’usurpateur de l’autorité royale, & Despote l’usurpateur du pouvoir Souverain. Le Tyran est celui qui s’ingere contre les loix à gouverner selon les loix; le Despote est celui qui se met au dessus des loix-mêmes. Ainsi le Tyran peut n’être pas Despote, mais le Despote est toujours Tyran.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 11\n\nDe la mort du corps politique.\n\nTelle est la pente naturelle & inévitable des Gouvernemens les mieux constitués. Si Sparte & Rome ont péri, quel État peut espérer de durer toujours? Si nous voulons former un établissement durable, ne songeons donc point à le rendre éternel. Pour réussir il ne faut pas tenter l’impossible, ni se flater de donner à l’ouvrage des hommes une solidité que les choses humaines ne comportent pas.\n\nLe corps politique, aussi bien que le corps de l’homme, commence à mourir dès sa naissance & porte en lui-même les causes de sa déstruction. Mais l’un & l’autre peut avoir une constitution plus ou moins robuste & propre à le conserver plus ou moins  longtems. La constitution de l’homme est l’ouvrage de la nature, celle de l’Etat est l’ouvrage de l’art. Il ne dépend pas des hommes de prolonger leur vie, il depend d’eux de prolonger celle de l’Etat aussi loin qu’il est possible, en lui donnant la meilleure constitution qu’il puisse avoir. Le mieux constitué finira, mais plus tard qu’un autre, si nul accident imprévu n’amene sa perte avant le tems.\n\nLe principe de la vie politique est dans l’autorité Souveraine. La puissance législative est le cœur de l’Etat, la puissance exécutive en est le cerveau, qui donne le mouvement à toutes les parties. Le cerveau peut tomber en paralysie & l’individu vivre encore. Un homme reste imbécile & vit: mais sitôt que le cœur a cessé ses fonctions, l’animal est mort.\n\nCe n’est point par les loix que l’Etat subsiste, c’est par le pouvoir législatif. La loi d’hier n’oblige pas aujourd’hui, mais le consentement tacite est présumé du silence, & le Souverain est censé confirmer incessamment les loix qu’il n’abroge pas, pouvant le faire. Tout ce qu’il a déclaré vouloir une fois il le veut toujours, à moins qu’il ne le révoque.\n\nPourquoi donc porte-t-on tant de respect aux anciennes loix? C’est pour cela même. On doit croire qu’il n’y a que l’excellence des volontés antiques qui les ait pu conserver si longtems; si le Souverain ne les eut reconnu constamment salutaires il les eut mille fois révoquées. Voilà pourquoi loin de s’affoiblir les loix acquierent sans cesse une force nouvelle dans tout État bien constitué; le préjugé de l’antiquité les rend chaque jour plus vénérables; au lieu que par-tout où les loix s’affoiblissent en vieillissant, cela prouve qu’il n’y a plus de pouvoir législatif, & que l’État ne vit plus.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 12\n\nComment se maintient l’autorité Souveraine.\n\nLe Souverain n’ayant d’autre force que la puissance législative n’agit que par des loix, & les loix n’étant que des actes authentiques de la volonté générale, le Souverain ne sauroit agir que quand le peuple est assemblé. Le peuple assemblé, dira-t-on! Quelle chimere! C’est une chimere aujourd’hui, mais ce n’en étoit pas une il y a deux mille ans: Les hommes ont-ils changé de nature?\n\nLes bornes du possible dans les choses morales sont moins étroites que nous ne pensons: Ce sont nos foiblesses, nos vices, nos préjugés qui les rétrécissent. Les ames basses ne croyent point aux grands hommes: de vils esclaves sourient d’un air moqueur à ce mot de liberté.\n\nPar ce qui s’est fait considérons ce qui se peut faire; je ne parlerai pas des anciennes républiques de la Grece, mais la République romaine étoit, ce me semble, un grand État, & la ville de Rome une grande ville. Le dernier Cens donna dans Rome quatre cent mille Citoyens portans armes, & le dernier dénombrement de l’Empire plus de quatre millions de Citoyens sans compter les sujets, les étrangers, les femmes, les enfans, les esclaves.\n\nQuelle difficulté n’imagineroit-on pas d’assembler fréquemment le peuple immense de cette capitale & de ces environs? Cependant il se passoit peu de semaines que le peuple romain ne fut assemblé, & même plusieurs fois. Non seulement il exerceoit les droit de la souveraineté, mais une partie de ceux du Gouvernement. Il traittoit certaines affaires, il jugeoit certaines causes, & tout ce peuple étoit sur la place publique presque aussi souvent magistrat que Citoyen.\n\nEn remontant aux premiers tems des Nations on trouveroit que la plupart des anciens gouvernemens, même monarchiques tels que ceux des Macédoniens & des Francs, avoient de semblables Conseils. Quoi qu’il en soit, ce seul fait incontestable répond à toutes les difficultés: De l’existant au possible la conséquence me paroit bonne.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 13\n\nSuite.\n\nIl ne suffit pas que le peuple assemblé ait une fois fixé la constitution de l’Etat en donnant la sanction à un corps de loix: il ne suffit pas qu’il ait établi un Gouvernement perpétuel ou qu’il ait pourvu une fois pour toutes à l’élection des magistrats. Outre les assemblées extraordinaires que des cas imprévus peuvent exiger, il faut qu’il y en ait de fixes & de périodiques que rien ne puisse abolir ni proroger, tellement qu’au jour marqué le peuple soit légitimement convoqué par la loi, sans qu’il soit besoin pour cela d’aucune autre convocation formelle.\n\nMais hors de ces assemblées juridiques par leur seule date, toute assemblée du Peuple qui n’aura pas été convoquée par les magistrats préposés à cet effet & selon les formes prescrites doit être tenue pour illégitime & tout ce qui s’y fait pour nul; parce que l’ordre même de s’assembler doit émaner de la loi.\n\nQuant aux retours plus ou moins fréquens des assemblées légitimes, ils dépendent de tant de considérations qu’on ne sauroit donner là-dessus de regles précises. Seulement on peut dire en général que plus le Gouvernement a de force, plus le Souverain doit se montrer fréquemment.\n\nCeci me dira-t-on, peut être bon pour une seule ville; mais que faire quand l’Etat en comprend plusieurs? Partagera-t-on l’autorité Souveraine, ou bien doit-on la concentrer dans une seule ville & assujetir tout le reste?\n\nJe reponds qu’on ne doit faire ni l’un ni l’autre. Premierement, l’autorité souveraine est simple & une, & l’on ne peut la diviser sans la détruire. En second lieu, une ville non plus qu’une Nation ne peut être légitimement sujette d’une autre, parce que l’essence du corps politique est dans l’accord de l’obéissance & de la liberté, & que ces mots de sujet & de souverain sont des corrélations identiques dont l’idée se réunit sous le seul mot de Citoyen.\n\nJe reponds encore que c’est toujours un mal d’unir plusieurs villes en une seule cité, & que, voulant faire cette union, l’on ne doit pas se flater d’en éviter les inconvéniens naturels. Il ne faut point objecter l’abus des grands États à celui qui n’en veut que de petits: mais comment donner aux petits États assez de force pour résister aux grands? Comme jadis les villes grecques résisterent au grand Roi, & comme plus récemment la Hollande & la Suisse ont resisté à la maison d’Autriche.\n\nToutefois si l’on ne peut réduire l’État à de justes bornes, il reste encore une ressource; c’est de n’y point souffrir de capitale, de faire siéger le Gouvernement alternativement dans chaque ville, & d’y rassembler aussi tour-à-tour les États du pays.\n\nPeuplez également le territoire, étendez-y par tout les mêmes droits, portez-y par-tout l’abondance & la vie, c’est ainsi que l’État deviendra tout à la fois le plus fort & le mieux gouverné qu’il soit possible. Souvenez-vous que les murs des villes ne se forment que du débris des maisons des champs. À chaque Palais que je vois élever dans la capitale, je crois voir mettre en mazures tout un pays.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 14\n\nSuite.\n\nA l’instant que le Peuple est légitimement assemblé en corps Souverain, toute jurisdiction du Gouvernement cesse, la puissance exécutive est suspendue, & la personne du dernier Citoyen est aussi sacrée & inviolable que celle du premier Magistrat, parce qu’où se trouve le Représenté, il n’y a plus de Représentant. La plupart des tumultes qui s’éleverent à Rome dans les comices vinrent d’avoir ignoré ou négligé cette regle. Les Consuls alors n’étoient que les Présidens du Peuple, les Tribuns de simples Orateurs, le Sénat n’étoit rien du tout.\n\nCes intervalles de suspension où le Prince reconnoit ou doit reconnoitre un supérieur actuel, lui ont toujours été redoutables, & ces assemblées du peuple, qui sont l’égide du corps politique & le frein du Gouvernement, ont été de tout tems l’horreur des chefs: aussi n’épargnent-ils jamais ni soins, ni objections, ni difficultés, ni promesses, pour en rebuter les Citoyens. Quand ceux-ci sont avares, lâches, pussillanimes, plus amoureux du repos que de la liberté, ils ne tiennent pas longtems contre les efforts redoublés du Gouvernement; c’est ainsi que la force résistante augmentant sans cesse, l’autorité Souveraine s’évanouit à la fin, & que la plupart des cités tombent & périssent avant le tems.\n\nMais entre l’autorité Souveraine & le Gouvernement arbitraire, il s’introduit quelquefois un pouvoir moyen dont il faut parler.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 15\n\nDes Députés ou Réprésentans.\n\nSitôt que le service public cesse d’être la principale affaire des Citoyens, & qu’ils aiment mieux servir de leur bourse que de leur personne, l’Etat est déjà près de sa ruine. Faut-il marcher au combat? ils payent des troupes & restent chez eux; faut-il aller au Conseil? ils nomment des Députés & restent chez eux. A force de paresse & d’argent ils ont enfin des soldats pour asservir la patrie & des réprésentans pour la vendre.\n\nC’est le tracas du commerce & des arts, c’est l’avide intérêt du gain, c’est la mollesse & l’amour des comodités, qui changent les services personnels en argent. On cede une partie de son profit pour l’augmenter à son aise. Donnez de l’argent, & bientôt vous aurez des fers. Ce mot de finance est un mot d’esclave; il est inconnu dans la Cité. Dans un État vraiment libre les citoyens font tout avec leurs bras & rien avec de l’argent: Loin de payer pour s’exempter de leurs devoirs, ils payeroient pour les remplir eux-mêmes. Je suis bien loin des idées communes; je crois les corvées moins contraires à la liberté que les taxes.\n\nMieux l’État est constitué, plus les affaires publiques l’emportent sur les privées dans l’esprit des Citoyens. Il y a même beaucoup moins d’affaires privées, parce que la somme du bonheur commun fournissant une portion plus considérable à celui de chaque individu, il lui en reste moins à chercher dans les soins particuliers. Dans une cité bien conduite  chacun vole aux assemblées; sous un mauvais Gouvernement nul n’aime à faire un pas pour s’y rendre; parce que nul ne prend intérêt à ce qui s’y fait, qu’on prévoit que la volonté générale n’y dominera pas, & qu’enfin les soins domestiques absorbent tout. Les bonnes loix en font faire de meilleures, les mauvaises en amenent de pires. Sitôt que quelqu’un dit des affaires de l’État, que m’importe?  on doit compter que l’État est perdu.\n\nL’attiedissement de l’amour de la patrie, l’activité de l’intérêt privé, l’immensité des États, les conquêtes, l’abus du Gouvernement ont fait imaginer la voye des Députés ou Réprésentans du peuple dans les assemblées de la Nation. C’est ce qu’en certains pays on ose appeller le Tiers-État. Ainsi l’intérêt particulier de deux ordres est mis au premier & second rang, l’intérêt public n’est qu’au troisieme.\n\nLa Souveraineté ne peut être réprésentée, par la même raison qu’elle ne peut être aliénée; elle consiste essentiellement dans la volonté générale, & la volonté ne se réprésente point: elle est la même, ou elle est autre; il n’y a point de milieu. Les députés du peuple ne sont donc ni ne peuvent être ses réprésentans, ils ne sont que ses commissaires; ils ne peuvent rien conclure définitivement. Toute loi que le Peuple en personne n’a pas ratifiée est nulle; ce n’est point une loi. Le peuple Anglois pense être libre; il se trompe fort, il ne l’est que durant l’élection des membres du Parlement; sitôt qu’ils sont élus, il est esclave, il n’est rien. Dans les courts momens de sa liberté, l’usage qu’il en fait mérite bien qu’il la perde.\n\nL’idée des Réprésentans est moderne: elle nous vient du Gouvernement féodal, de cet inique & absurde Gouvernement dans lequel l’espece humaine est dégradée, & où le nom d’homme est en deshonneur. Dans les anciennes Républiques & même dans les monarchies, jamais le Peuple n’eut des réprésentans; on ne connoissoit pas ce mot-là. Il est très singulier qu’à Rome où les Tribuns étoient si sacrés on n’ait pas même imaginé qu’ils pussent usurper les fonctions du peuple, & qu’au milieu d’une si grande multitude, ils n’aient jamais tenté de passer de leur chef un seul Plebiscite. Qu’on juge cependant de l’embarras que causoit quelquefois la foule, par ce qui arriva du tems des Gracques, où une partie des Citoyens donnoit son suffrage de dessus les toits.\n\nOù le droit & la liberté sont toutes choses, les inconvéniens ne sont rien. Chez ce sage peuple tout étoit mis à sa juste mésure: il laissoit faire à ses Licteurs ce que ses Tribuns n’eussent osé faire; il ne craignoit pas que ses Licteurs voulussent le réprésenter.\n\nPour expliquer cependant comment les Tribuns le réprésentoient quelquefois, il suffit de concevoir comment le Gouvernement réprésente le Souverain. La Loi n’étant que la déclaration de la volonté générale, il est clair que dans la puissance Législative le Peuple ne peut être réprésenté; mais il peut & doit l’être dans la puissance exécutive, qui n’est que la force appliquée à la Loi. Ceci fait voir qu’en examinant bien les choses on trouveroit que très peu de Nations ont des loix. Quoi qu’il en soit, il est sûr que les Tribuns, n’ayant aucune partie du pouvoir exécutif, ne purent jamais réprésenter le Peuple romain par les droits de leurs charges, mais seulement en usurpant sur ceux du Sénat.\n\nChez les Grecs, tout ce que le Peuple avoit à faire il le faisoit par lui-même; il étoit sans cesse assemblé sur la place. Il habitoit un climat doux, il n’étoit point avide, des esclaves faisoient ses travaux, sa grande affaire étoit sa liberté. N’ayant plus les mêmes avantages, comment conserver les mêmes droits? Vos climats plus durs vous donnent plus de besoins, six mois de l’année la place publique n’est pas tenable, vos langues sourdes ne peuvent se faire entendre en plein air, vous donnez plus à votre gain qu’à votre liberté, & vous craignez bien moins l’esclavage que la misere.\n\nQuoi! la liberté ne se maintient qu’à l’appui de la servitude? Peut-être. Les deux excès se touchent. Tout ce qui n’est point dans la nature a ses inconvéniens, & la société civile plus que tout le reste. Il y a telles positions malheureuses où l’on ne peut conserver sa liberté qu’aux dépens de celle d’autrui, & où le Citoyen ne peut être parfaitement libre que l’esclave ne soit extrêmement esclave. Telle étoit la position de Sparte. Pour vous, peuples modernes, vous n’avez point d’esclaves, mais vous l’êtes; vous payez leur liberté de la vôtre. Vous avez beau vanter cette préférence; j’y trouve plus de lâcheté que d’humanité.\n\nJe n’entens point par tout cela qu’il faille avoir des esclaves ni que le droit d’esclavage soit légitime, puisque j’ai prouvé le contraire. Je dis seulement les raisons pourquoi les peuples modernes qui se croyent libres ont des Réprésentans, & pourquoi les peuples anciens n’en avoient pas. Quoi qu’il en soit, à l’instant qu’un Peuple se donne des Réprésentans, il n’est plus libre; il n’est plus.\n\nTout bien examiné, je ne vois pas qu’il soit désormais possible au Souverain de conserver parmi nous l’exercice de ses droits si la Cité n’est très petite. Mais si elle est très petite elle sera subjuguée? Non. Je ferai voir ci-après comment on peut réunir la puissance extérieure d’un grand Peuple avec la police aisée & le bon ordre d’un petit État.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 16\n\nQue l’institution du Gouvernement n’est point un contract.\n\nLe pouvoir Législatif une fois bien établi, il s’agit d’établir de même le pouvoir exécutif; car ce dernier, qui n’opere que par des actes particuliers, n’étant pas de l’essence de l’autre, en est naturellement séparé. S’il étoit possible que le Souverain, considéré comme tel, eut la puissance exécutive, le droit & le fait seroient tellement confondus qu’on ne sauroit plus ce qui est loi & ce qui ne l’est pas, & le corps politique ainsi dénaturé seroit bien-tôt en proye à la violence contre laquelle il fut institué.\n\nLes Citoyens étant tous égaux par le contract social, ce que tous doivent faire tous peuvent le prescrire, au lieu que nul n’a droit d’exiger qu’un autre fasse ce qu’il ne fait pas lui-même. Or c’est proprement ce droit, indispensable pour faire vivre & mouvoir le corps politique, que le Souverain donne au Prince en instituant le Gouvernement.\n\nPlusieurs ont prétendu que l’acte de cet établissement étoit un contract entre le Peuple & les chefs qu’il se donne; contract par lequel on stipuloit entre les deux parties les conditions sous lesquelles l’une s’obligeoit à commander & l’autre à obéir. On conviendra, je m’assure, que voilà une étrange maniere de contracter! Mais voyons si cette opinion est soutenable.\n\nPremierement, l’autorité suprême ne peut pas plus se modifier que s’aliéner, la limiter c’est la détruire. Il est absurde & contradictoire que le Souverain se donne un supérieur; s’obliger d’obéir à un maitre c’est se remettre en pleine liberté.\n\nDe plus, il est évident que ce contract du peuple avec telles ou telles personnes seroit un acte particulier. D’où il suit que ce contract ne sauroit être une loi ni un acte de souveraineté, & que par conséquent il seroit illégitime.\n\nOn voit encore que les parties contractantes seroient entre elles sous la seule loi de nature & sans aucun garant de leurs engagemens réciproques, ce qui répugne de toutes manieres à l’état civil: Celui qui a la force en main étant toujours le maitre de l’exécution, autant vaudroit donner le nom de contract à l’acte d’un homme qui diroit à un autre; „je vous donne tout mon bien, à condition que vous m’en rendrez ce qu’il vous plaira”.\n\nIl n’y a qu’un contract dans l’Etat, c’est celui de l’association; & celui-là seul en exclut tout autre. On ne sauroit imaginer aucun Contract public, qui ne fut une violation du premier.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 17\n\nDe l’institution du Gouvernement.\n\nSous quelle idée faut-il donc concevoir l’acte par lequel le Gouvernement est institué? Je remarquerai d’abord que cet acte est complexe ou composé de deux autres, savoir l’établissement de la loi, & l’exécution de la loi.\n\nPar le premier, le Souverain statue qu’il y aura un corps de Gouvernement établi sous telle ou telle forme; & il est clair que cet acte est une loi.\n\nPar le second, le Peuple nomme les chefs qui seront chargés du Gouvernement établi. Or cette nomination étant un acte particulier n’est pas une seconde loi, mais seulement une suite de la premiere & une fonction du Gouvernement.\n\nLa difficulté est d’entendre comment on peut avoir un acte de Gouvernement avant que le Gouvernement existe, & comment le Peuple, qui n’est que Souverain ou sujet, peut devenir Prince ou Magistrat dans certaines circonstances.\n\nC’est encore ici que se découvre une de ces étonnantes propriétés du corps politique, par lesquelles il concilie des opérations contradictoires en apparence. Car celle-ci se fait par une conversion subite de la Souveraineté en Démocratie; en sorte que, sans aucun changement sensible, & seulement par une nouvelle rélation de tous à tous, les Citoyens devenus Magistrats passent des actes généraux aux actes particuliers, & de la loi à l’exécution.\n\nCe changement de rélation n’est point une subtilité de spéculation sans exemple dans la pratique: Il a lieu tous les jours dans le Parlement d’Angleterre, où la Chambre-basse en certaines occasions se tourne en grand Commité, pour mieux discuter les affaires, & devient ainsi simple commission, de Cour Souveraine qu’elle étoit l’instant précédent; en telle sorte qu’elle se fait ensuite rapport à elle-même comme chambre des Communes de ce qu’elle vient de regler en grand-Commité, & délibere de nouveau sous un titre de ce qu’elle a déjà résolu sous un autre.\n\nTel est l’avantage propre au Gouvernement Démocratique de pouvoir être établi dans le fait par un simple acte de la volonté générale. Après quoi, ce Gouvernement provisionnel reste en possession si telle est la forme adoptée, ou établit au nom du Souverain le Gouvernement prescrit par la loi, & tout se trouve ainsi dans la regle. Il n’est pas possible d’instituer le Gouvernement d’aucune autre maniere légitime, & sans renoncer aux principes ci-devant établis.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 18\n\nMoyen de prévenir les usurpations du Gouvernement.\n\nDe ces éclaircissemens il résulte en confirmation du chapitre XVI. que l’acte qui institue le Gouvernement n’est point un contract mais une Loi, que les dépositaires de la puissance exécutive ne sont point les maitres du peuple mais ses officiers, qu’il peut les établir & les destituer quand il lui plait, qu’il n’est point question pour eux de contracter mais d’obéir, & qu’en se chargeant des fonctions que l’Etat leur impose ils ne font que remplir leur devoir de Citoyens, sans avoir en aucune sorte le droit de disputer sur les conditions.\n\nQuand donc il arrive que le Peuple  institue un Gouvernement héréditaire, soit monarchique dans une famille, soit aristocratique dans un ordre de Citoyens, ce n’est point un engagement qu’il prend; c’est une forme provisionnelle qu’il donne à l’administration, jusqu’à ce qu’il lui plaise d’en ordonner autrement.\n\nIl est vrai que ces changemens sont toujours dangereux, & qu’il ne faut jamais toucher au Gouvernement établi que lors qu’il devient incompatible avec le bien public; mais cette circonspection est une maxime de politique & non pas une regle de droit, & l’Etat n’est pas plus tenu de laisser l’autorité civile à ses chefs, que l’autorité militaire à ses Généraux.\n\nIl est vrai encore qu’on ne sauroit en pareil cas observer avec trop de soin toutes les formalités requises pour distinguer un acte régulier & légitime d’un tumulte séditieux, & la volonté de tout un peuple des clameurs d’une faction. C’est ici sur-tout qu’il ne faut donner au cas odieux que ce qu’on ne peut lui refuser dans toute la rigueur du droit, & c’est aussi de cette obligation que le Prince tire un grand avantage pour conserver sa puissance malgré le peuple, sans qu’on puisse dire qu’il l’ait usurpée: Car en paroissant n’user que de ses droits il lui est fort aisé de les étendre, & d’empêcher sous le prétexte du repos public les assemblées destinées à rétablir le bon ordre; de sorte qu’il se prévaut d’un silence qu’il empêche de rompre, ou des irrégularités qu’il fait commettre, pour supposer en sa faveur l’aveu de ceux que la crainte fait taire, & pour punir ceux qui osent parler. C’est ainsi que les Décemvirs ayant été d’abord élus pour un an, puis continués pour une autre année, tenterent de retenir à perpétuité leur pouvoir, en ne  permettant plus aux comices de s’assembler; & c’est par ce facile moyen que tous les gouvernemens du monde, une fois revétus de la force publique, usurpent tôt ou tard l’autorité Souveraine.\n\nLes assemblées périodiques dont j’ai parlé ci-devant sont propres à prévenir ou différer ce malheur, sur-tout quand elles n’ont pas besoin de convocation formelle: car alors le Prince ne sauroit les empêcher sans se déclarer ouvertement infracteur des loix & ennemi de l’Etat.\n\nL’ouverture de ces assemblées qui n’ont pour objet que le maintien du traité social, doit toujours se faire par deux propositions qu’on ne puisse jamais supprimer, & qui passent separément par les suffrages.\n\nLa premiere; s’il plait au Souverain de conserver la présente forme de Gouvernement.\n\nLa seconde; s’il plait au Peuple d’en  laisser l’administration à ceux qui en sont actuellement chargés.\n\nJe suppose ici ce que je crois avoir démontré, savoir qu’il n’y a dans l’Etat aucune loi fondamentale qui ne se puisse révoquer, non pas même le pacte social; car si tous les Citoyens s’assembloient pour rompre ce pacte d’un commun accord, on ne peut douter qu’il ne fût très-légitimement rompu. Grotius pense même que chacun peut renoncer à l’Etat dont il est membre, & reprendre sa liberté naturelle & ses biens en sortant du pays. Or il seroit absurde que tous les Citoyens réunis ne pussent pas ce que peut séparément chacun d’eux.\n\nFin du Livre Troisieme.\n\n### Book IV, Chapter 1\n\nQue la volonté générale est indestructible.\n\nTant que plusieurs hommes réunis se considerent comme un seul corps, ils n’ont qu’une seule volonté, qui se rapporte à la  commune conservation, & au bien-être général. Alors tous les ressorts de l’Etat sont vigoureux & simples, ses maximes sont claires & lumineuses, il n’a point d’intérêts embrouillés, contradictoires, le bien commun se montre par tout avec évidence, & ne demande que du bon sens pour être apperçu. La paix l’union l’égalité sont ennemies des subtilités politiques. Les hommes droits & simples sont difficiles à tromper à cause de leur simplicité, les leurres les prétextes rafinés ne leur en imposent point; ils ne sont pas même assez fins pour être dupes. Quand on voit chez le plus heureux peuple du monde des troupes de paysans regler les affaires de l’Etat sous un chêne & se conduire toujours sagement, peut-on s’empêcher de mépriser les rafinemens des autres nations, qui se rendent illustres & misérables avec tant d’art & de misteres?\n\nUn État ainsi gouverné a besoin de très peu de Loix, & à mésure qu’il devient nécessaire d’en promulguer de nouvelles, cette nécessité se voit universellement. Le premier qui les propose ne fait que dire ce que tous ont déjà senti, & il n’est question ni de brigues ni d’éloquence pour faire passer en loi ce que chacun a déjà résolu de faire, sitôt qu’il sera sûr que les autres le feront comme lui.\n\nCe qui trompe les raisonneurs c’est que ne voyant que des États mal constitués dès leur origine, ils sont frappés de l’impossibilité d’y maintenir une semblable police. Ils rient d’imaginer toutes les sotises qu’un fourbe adroit, un parleur insinuant pourroit persuader au peuple de Paris ou de Londres. Ils ne savent pas que Cromwel eut été mis aux sonnêtes par le peuple de Berne, & le Duc de Beaufort à la discipline par les Génevois.\n\nMais quand le nœud social commence à se relâcher & l’Etat à s’affoiblir; quand les intérêts particuliers commencent à se faire sentir & les petites sociétés à influer sur la grande, l’intérêt commun s’altere & trouve des opposans, l’unanimité ne regne plus dans les voix, la volonté générale n’est plus la volonté de tous, il s’élêve des contradictions des débats, & le meilleur avis ne passe point sans disputes.\n\nEnfin quand l’Etat, près de sa ruine ne subsiste plus que par une forme illusoire & vaine, que le lien social est rompu dans tous les cœurs, que le plus vil intérêt se pare effrontément du nom sacré du bien public; alors la volonté générale devient muette, tous guidés par des motifs secrets n’opinent pas plus comme Citoyens que si l’Etat n’eut jamais existé, & l’on fait passer faussement sous le nom de Loix des décrets iniques qui n’ont pour but que l’intérêt particulier.\n\nS’ensuit-il de-là que la volonté générale soit anéantie ou corrompue? Non, elle est toujours constante, inaltérable & pure; mais elle est subordonnée à d’autres qui l’emportent sur elle. Chacun, détachant son intérêt de l’intérêt commun, voit bien qu’il ne peut l’en séparer tout-à-fait, mais sa part du mal public ne lui paroit rien, auprès du bien exclusif qu’il prétend s’approprier. Ce bien particulier excepté, il veut le bien général pour son propre intérêt tout aussi fortement qu’aucun autre. Même en vendant son suffrage à prix d’argent il n’éteint pas en lui la volonté générale, il l’élude. La faute qu’il commet est de changer l’état de la question & de répondre autre chose que ce qu’on lui demande: En sorte qu’au lieu de dire par son suffrage, il est avantageux à l’Etat, il dit, il est avantageux à tel homme ou à tel parti que tel ou tel avis passe. Ainsi la loi de l’ordre public dans les assemblées n’est pas tant d’y maintenir la volonté générale, que de faire qu’elle soit toujours interrogée & qu’elle réponde toujours.\n\nJ’aurois ici bien des réflexions à faire sur le simple droit de voter dans tout acte de souveraineté; droit que rien ne peut ôter aux Citoyens; & sur celui d’opiner, de proposer, de diviser, de discuter, que le Gouvernement a toujours grand soin de ne laisser qu’à ses membres; mais cette importante matiere demanderoit un traité à part, & je ne puis tout dire dans celui-ci.\n\n### Book IV, Chapter 2\n\nDes Suffrages.\n\nOn voit par le chapitre précédent que la maniere dont se traittent les affaires générales peut donner un indice assez sûr de l’état actuel des mœurs, & de la santé du corps politique. Plus le concert regne dans les assemblées, c’est-à-dire plus les avis approchent de l’unanimité, plus aussi la volonté générale est dominante; mais les longs débats, les dissentions, le tumulte, annoncent l’ascendant des intérêts particuliers & le déclin de l’Etat.\n\nCeci paroit moins évident quand deux ou plusieurs ordres entrent dans sa constitution, comme à Rome les Patriciens & les  Plébeyens, dont les querelles troublerent souvent les comices, même dans les plus beaux tems de la République; mais cette exception est plus apparente que réelle; car alors par le vice inhérent au corps politique on a, pour ainsi dire, deux États en un; ce qui n’est pas vrai des deux ensemble est vrai de chacun séparément. Et en effet dans les tems mêmes les plus orageux les plébiscites du peuple, quand le Sénat ne s’en mêloit pas, passoient toujours tranquillement & à la grande pluralité des suffrages: Les Citoyens n’ayant qu’un intérêt, le peuple n’avoit qu’une volonté.\n\nA l’autre extrémité du cercle l’unanimité revient. C’est quand les citoyens tombés dans la servitude n’ont plus ni liberté ni volonté. Alors la crainte & la flaterie changent en acclamations les suffrages; on ne  délibere plus, on adore ou l’on maudit. Telle étoit la vile maniere d’opiner du Sénat sous les Empereurs. Quelquefois cela se faisoit avec des précautions ridicules: Tacite observe que sous Othon les Sénateurs accablant Vitellius d’exécrations, affectoient de faire en même tems un bruit épouvantable, afin que, si par hazard il devenoit le maitre, il ne put savoir ce que chacun d’eux avoit dit.\n\nDe ces diverses considérations naissent les maximes sur lesquelles on doit regler la maniere de compter les voix & de comparer les avis, selon que la volonté générale est plus ou moins facile à connoitre, & l’Etat plus ou moins déclinant.\n\nIl n’y a qu’une seule loi qui par sa nature exige un consentement unanime. C’est le pacte social: car l’association civile est l’acte du monde le plus volontaire; tout homme  étant né libre & maitre de lui-même, nul ne peut, sous quelque prétexte que ce puisse être, l’assujettir sans son aveu. Décider que le fils d’une esclave nait esclave, c’est décider qu’il ne nait pas homme.\n\nSi donc lors du pacte social il s’y trouve des opposans, leur opposition n’invalide pas le contract, elle empêche seulement qu’ils n’y soient compris; ce sont des étrangers parmi les Citoyens. Quand l’État est institué le consentement est dans la résidence; habiter le territoire c’est se soumettre à la souveraineté.\n\nHors ce contract primitif, la voix du plus grand nombre oblige toujours tous les autres; c’est une suite du contract même. Mais on demande comment un homme peut être libre, & forcé de se conformer à des volontés qui ne sont pas les siennes. Comment les opposans sont-ils libres & soumis à des loix auxquelles ils n’ont pas consenti?\n\nJe reponds que la question est mal posée. Le Citoyen consent à toutes les loix, même à celles qu’on passe malgré lui, & même à celles qui le punissent quand il ose en violer quelqu’une. La volonté constante de tous les membres de l’Etat est la volonté générale; c’est par elle qu’ils sont citoyens & libres. Quand on propose une loi dans l’assemblée du Peuple, ce qu’on leur demande n’est pas précisément s’ils approuvent la proposition ou s’ils la rejettent, mais si elle est conforme ou non à la volonté générale qui est la leur; chacun en donnant son suffrage dit son avis là-dessus, & du calcul des voix se tire la déclaration de la volonté générale. Quand donc l’avis contraire au mien l’emporte, cela ne prouve autre chose sinon que je m’étois trompé, & que ce que j’estimois être la volonté générale ne l’étoit pas. Si mon avis particulier l’eut emporté, j’aurois fait autre chose que ce que j’avois voulu, c’est alors que je n’aurois pas été libre.\n\nCeci suppose, il est vrai, que tous les caracteres de la volonté générale sont encore dans la pluralité: quand ils cessent d’y être, quelque parti qu’on prenne il n’y a plus de liberté.\n\nEn montrant ci-devant comment on substituoit des volontés particulieres à la volonté générale dans les délibérations publiques, j’ai suffisamment indiqué les moyens praticables de prévenir cet abus; j’en parlerai encore ci-après. A l’égard du nombre proportionnel des suffrages pour déclarer cette volonté, j’ai aussi donné les principes sur lesquels on peut le déterminer. La différence d’une seule voix rompt l’égalité, un seul opposant rompt l’unanimité; mais entre l’unanimité & l’égalité il y a plusieurs partages inégaux, à chacun desquels on peut fixer ce nombre selon l’état & les besoins du corps politique.\n\nDeux maximes générales peuvent servir à regler ces rapports: l’une, que plus les délibérations sont importantes & graves, plus l’avis qui l’emporte doit approcher de l’unanimité: l’autre, que plus l’affaire agitée exige de célérité, plus on doit resserrer la différence prescritte dans le partage des avis; dans les délibérations qu’il faut terminer sur le champ l’excédant d’une seule voix doit suffire. La premiere de ces maximes paroit plus convenable aux loix, & la seconde aux affaires. Quoiqu’il en soit, c’est sur leur combinaison que s’établissent les meilleurs rapports qu’on peut donner à la pluralité pour prononcer.\n\n### Book IV, Chapter 3\n\nDes Elections.\n\nA l’egard des élections du Prince & des Magistrats, qui sont, comme je l’ai dit, des actes complexes, il y a deux voyes pour y proceder; savoir, le choix & le sort. L’une & l’autre ont été employées en diverses Republiques, & l’on voit encore actuellement un melange très compliqué des deux dans l’election du Doge de Venise.\n\nLe suffrage par le sort, dit Montesquieu, est de la nature de la Démocratie. J’en conviens, mais comment cela? Le sort, continue-t-il, est une façon d’élire qui n’afflige personne; il laisse à chaque Citoyen une espérance raisonnable de servir la patrie. Ce ne sont pas-là des raisons.\n\nSi l’on fait attention que l’élection des chefs est une fonction du Gouvernement & non de la Souveraineté, on verra pourquoi la voye du sort est plus dans la nature de la Démocratie, où l’administration est d’autant meilleure que les actes en sont moins multipliés.\n\nDans toute véritable Démocratie la magistrature n’est pas un avantage mais une charge onéreuse, qu’on ne peut justement imposer à un particulier plutôt qu’à un autre. La loi seule peut imposer cette charge à celui sur qui le sort tombera. Car alors la condition étant égale pour tous, & le choix ne dépendant d’aucune volonté humaine, il n’y a point d’application particuliere qui altere l’universalité de la loi.\n\nDans l’Aristocratie le Prince choisit le Prince, le Gouvernement se conserve par lui-même, & c’est là que les suffrages sont bien placés.\n\nL’exemple de l’élection du Doge de  Venise confirme cette distinction loin de la détruire: Cette forme mêlée convient dans un Gouvernement mixte. Car c’est une erreur de prendre le Gouvernement de Venise pour une véritable Aristocratie. Si le Peuple n’y a nulle part au Gouvernement, la noblesse y est peuple elle-même. Une multitude de pauvres Barnabotes n’approcha jamais d’aucune magistrature, & n’a de sa noblesse que le vain titre d’Excellence & le droit d’assister au grand Conseil. Ce grand Conseil étant aussi nombreux que notre Conseil général à Genève, ses illustres membres n’ont pas plus de privileges que nos simples Citoyens. Il est certain qu’ôtant l’extrême disparité des deux Républiques, la bourgeoisie de Genève représente exactement le Patriciat Vénitien, nos natifs & habitans représentent les Citadins & le peuple de Venise, nos paysans représentent les sujets de terre-ferme: enfin de quelque maniere que l’on considère cette République, abstraction faite de sa grandeur, son Gouvernement n’est pas plus aristocratique que le notre. Toute la différence est que n’ayant aucun chef à vie, nous n’avons pas le même besoin du sort.\n\nLes élections par le sort auroient peu d’inconvénient dans une véritable Démocratie où tout étant égal, aussi bien par les mœurs & par les talens que par les maximes & par la fortune, le choix deviendroit presque indifférent. Mais j’ai déjà dit qu’il n’y avoit point de véritable Démocratie.\n\nQuand le choix & le sort se trouvent mêlés, le premier doit remplir les places qui demandent des talens propres, telles que les emplois militaires; l’autre convient à celles où suffisent le bon-sens, la justice, l’intégrité, telles que les charges de judicature; parce que dans un état bien constitué ces qualités sont communes à tous les Citoyens.\n\nLe sort ni les suffrages n’ont aucun lieu dans le Gouvernement monarchique. Le Monarque étant de droit seul Prince & Magistrat unique, le choix de ses lieutenans n’appartient qu’à lui. Quand l’Abbé de St. Pierre proposoit de multiplier les Conseils du Roi de France & d’en élire les membres par Scrutin, il ne voyoit pas qu’il proposoit de changer la forme du Gouvernement.\n\nIl me resteroit à parler de la maniere de donner & de recueillir les voix dans l’assemblée du peuple; mais peut-être l’historique de la police Romaine à cet égard expliquera-t-il plus sensiblement toutes les maximes que je pourrois établir. Il n’est pas indigne d’un lecteur judicieux de voir un peu en détail comment se traittoient les affaires publiques & particulieres dans un Conseil de deux-cent mille hommes.\n\n### Book IV, Chapter 4\n\nDes Comices romains.\n\nNous n’avons nuls monumens bien assurés des premiers tems de Rome; il y a même grande apparence que la plupart des choses qu’on en débite sont des fables; & en général la partie la plus instructive des annales des peuples, qui est l’histoire de leur établissement, est celle qui nous manque le plus. L’expérience nous apprend tous les jours de quelles causes naissent les révolutions des empires; mais comme il ne se forme plus de peuples, nous n’avons gueres que des conjectures pour expliquer comment ils se sont formés.\n\nLes usages qu’on trouve établis attestent au moins qu’il y eut une origine à ces usages. Des traditions qui remontent à ces origines, celles qu’appuyent les plus grandes autorités & que de plus fortes raisons confirment doivent passer pour les plus certaines. Voilà les maximes que j’ai tâché de suivre en recherchant comment le plus libre & le plus puissant peuple de la terre exerceoit son pouvoir suprême.\n\nAprès la fondation de Rome la République naissante, c’est-à-dire, l’armée du fondateur, composée d’Albains, de Sabins, & d’étrangers, fut divisée en trois classes, qui de cette division prirent le nom de Tribus. Chacune de ces Tribus fut subdivisée en dix Curies, & chaque Curie en Décuries, à la tête desquelles on mit des chefs appellés Curions & Décurions.\n\nOutre cela on tira de chaque Tribu un corps de cent Cavaliers ou Chevaliers, appellé Centurie: par où l’on voit que ces divisions, peu nécessaires dans un bourg, n’étoient d’abord que militaires. Mais il semble qu’un instinct de grandeur portoit la petite ville de Rome à se donner d’avance une police convenable à la capitale du monde.\n\nDe ce premier partage resulta bientôt un inconvénient. C’est que la Tribu des Albains & celle des Sabins restant toujours au même état, tandis que celle des étrangers croissoit sans cesse par le concours perpétuel de ceux-ci, cette derniere ne tarda pas à surpasser les deux autres. Le remede que Servius trouva à ce dangereux abus fut de changer la division, & à celle des races, qu’il abolit, d’en substituer une autre tirée des lieux de la ville occupés par chaque Tribu. Au lieu de trois Tribus il en fit quatre; chacune desquelles occupoit une des collines de Rome & en portoit le nom. Ainsi remédiant à l’inégalité présente il la prévint encore pour l’avenir; & afin que cette division ne fût pas seulement de lieux mais d’hommes, il défendit aux habitans d’un quartier de passer dans un autre, ce qui empêcha les races de se confondre.\n\nIl doubla aussi les trois anciennes centuries de Cavalerie & y en ajouta douze autres, mais toujours sous les anciens noms; moyen simple & judicieux par lequel il  acheva de distinguer le corps des Chevaliers de celui du Peuple, sans faire murmurer ce dernier.\n\nA ces quatre Tribus urbaines Servius en ajouta quinze autres appellées Tribus rustiques, parce qu’elles étoient formées des habitans de la campagne, partagés en autant de cantons. Dans la suite on en fit autant de nouvelles, & le Peuple romain se trouva enfin divisé en trente-cinq Tribus; nombre auquel elles resterent fixées jusqu’à la fin de la République.\n\nDe cette distinction des Tribus de la Ville & des Tribus de la campagne resulta un effet digne d’être observé, parce qu’il n’y en a point d’autre exemple, & que Rome lui dût à la fois la conservation de ses mœurs & l’accroissement de son empire. On croiroit que les Tribus urbaines s’arrogerent bientôt la puissance & les honneurs, & ne tarderent pas d’avilir les Tribus rustiques; ce fut tout le contraire. On connoit le goût des premiers Romains pour la vie champêtre. Ce goût leur venoit du sage instituteur qui unit à la liberté les travaux rustiques & militaires, & reléga pour ainsi dire à la ville les arts, les métiers, l’intrigue, la fortune & l’esclavage.\n\nAinsi tout ce que Rome avoit d’illustre vivant aux champs & cultivant les terres, on s’accoutuma à ne chercher que là les soutiens de la République. Cet état étant celui des plus dignes Patriciens fut honoré de tout le monde: la vie simple & laborieuse des Villageois fut préférée à la vie oisive & lâche des Bourgeois de Rome, & tel n’eut été qu’un malheureux prolétaire à la ville, qui, laboureur aux champs, devint un Citoyen respecté. Ce n’est pas sans raison, disoit Varron, que nos magnanimes ancêtres établirent au Village la pépiniere de ces robustes & vaillans hommes qui les défendoient en tems de guerre & les nourrissoient en tems de paix. Pline dit positivement que les Tribus des champs étoient honorées à cause des hommes qui les composoient; au lieu qu’on transferoit par ignominie dans celles de la Ville les lâches qu’on vouloit avilir. Le Sabin Appius Claudius étant venu s’établir à Rome y fut comblé d’honneurs & inscrit dans une Tribu rustique qui prit dans la suite le nom de sa famille. Enfin les affranchis entroient tous dans les Tribus urbaines, jamais dans les rurales; & il n’y a pas durant toute la République un seul exemple d’aucun de ces affranchis parvenu à aucune magistrature, quoique devenu Citoyen.\n\nCette maxime étoit excellente; mais elle fut poussée si loin, qu’il en résulta enfin un changement & certainement un abus dans la police.\n\nPremierement, les Censeurs, après s’être arrogés longtems le droit de transférer arbitrairement les citoyens d’une Tribu à l’autre, permirent à la plupart de se faire inscrire dans celle qui leur plaisoit; permission qui surement n’étoit bonne à rien, & ôtoit un des grands ressorts de la censure. De plus, les Grands & les puissans se faisant tous inscrire dans les Tribus de la campagne, & les affranchis devenus Citoyens restant avec la populace dans celles de la ville, les Tribus en général n’eurent plus de lieu ni de territoire; mais toutes se trouverent tellement mêlées qu’on ne pouvoit plus discerner les membres de chacune que par les registres, en sorte que l’idée du mot Tribu passa ainsi du réel au personnel, ou plutôt, devint presque une chimere.\n\nIl arriva encore que les Tribus de la ville, étant plus à portée, se trouverent souvent les plus fortes dans les comices, & vendirent l’Etat à ceux qui daignoient acheter les suffrages de la canaille qui les composoit.\n\nA l’égard des Curies, l’instituteur en ayant fait dix en chaque Tribu, tout le peuple romain alors renfermé dans les murs de la ville se trouva composé de trente Curies, dont chacune avoit ses temples ses Dieux ses officiers ses prêtres, & ses fêtes appellées compitalia, semblables aux Paganalia qu’eurent dans la suite les Tribus rustiques.\n\nAu nouveau partage de Servius ce nombre de trente ne pouvant se répartir également, dans ses quatre Tribus, il n’y voulut point toucher, & les Curies indépendantes des Tribus devinrent une autre division des habitans de Rome: Mais il ne fut point question de Curies ni dans les Tribus rustiques ni dans le peuple qui les composoit, parce que les Tribus étant devenues un établissement purement civil, & une autre police ayant été introduite pour la levée des troupes, les divisions militaires de Romulus se trouverent superflues. Ainsi, quoique tout Citoyen fut inscrit dans une Tribu, il s’en faloit de beaucoup que chacun ne le fut dans une Curie.\n\nServius fit encore une troisieme division qui n’avoit aucun rapport aux deux précédentes, & devint par ses effets la plus importante de toutes. Il distribua tout le peuple romain en six classes, qu’il ne distingua ni par le lieu ni par les hommes, mais par les biens: En sorte que les premieres classes étoient remplies par les riches, les dernieres par les pauvres, & les moyennes par ceux qui jouïssoient d’une fortune médiocre. Ces six classes étoient subdivisées en 193 autres corps appellés centuries, & ces corps étoient tellement distribués que la premiere Classe en comprenoit seule plus de la moitié, & la derniere n’en formoit qu’un seul. Il se trouva ainsi que la Classe la moins nombreuse en hommes l’étoit le plus en centuries, & que la derniere classe entiere n’étoit comptée que pour une subdivision, bien qu’elle contint seule plus de la moitié des habitans de Rome.\n\nAfin que le peuple penétrât moins les conséquences de cette derniere forme, Servius affecta de lui donner un air militaire: il insera dans la seconde classe deux centuries d’armuriers, & deux d’instrumens de guerre dans la quatrieme: Dans chaque Classe, excepté la derniere, il distinga les jeunes & les vieux, c’est-à-dire ceux qui étoient obligés de porter les armes, & ceux que leur âge en exemptoit par les loix; distinction qui plus que celle des biens produisit la nécessité de recommencer souvent le cens ou denombrement: Enfin il voulut que l’assemblée se tint au champ de Mars, & que tous ceux qui étoient en âge de servir y vinssent avec leurs armes.\n\nLa raison pour laquelle il ne suivit pas dans la derniere classe cette même division des jeunes & des vieux, c’est qu’on n’accordoit point à la populace dont elle étoit composée l’honneur de porter les armes pour la patrie; il faloit avoir des foyers pour obtenir le droit de les défendre, & de ces innombrables troupes de gueux dont brillent aujourd’hui les armées des Rois, il n’y en a pas un, peut-être, qui n’eut été chassé avec  dédain d’une cohorte romaine, quand les soldats étoient les défenseurs de la liberté.\n\nOn distinga pourtant encore dans la derniere classe les prolétaires de ceux qu’on appelloit capite censi. Les premiers, non tout à fait réduits à rien, donnoient au moins des Citoyens à l’Etat, quelquefois même des soldats dans les besoins pressans. Pour ceux qui n’avoient rien du tout & qu’on ne pouvoit dénombrer que par leurs têtes, ils étoient tout à fait regardés comme nuls, & Marius fut le premier qui daigna les enroller.\n\nSans décider ici si ce troisieme denombrement étoit bon ou mauvais en lui-même, je crois pouvoir affirmer qu’il n’y avoit que les mœurs simples des premiers Romains, leur désintéressement, leur goût pour l’agriculture, leur mépris pour le commerce & pour l’ardeur du gain, qui pussent le rendre  praticable. Où est le peuple moderne chez lequel la dévorante avidité, l’esprit inquiet, l’intrigue, les déplacemens continuels, les perpétuelles révolutions des fortunes pussent laisser durer vingt ans un pareil établissement sans bouleverser tout l’Etat? Il faut même bien remarquer que les mœurs & la censure plus fortes que cette institution en corrigerent le vice à Rome, & que tel riche se vit relegué dans la classe des pauvres, pour avoir trop étalé sa richesse.\n\nDe tout ceci l’on peut comprendre aisément pourquoi il n’est presque jamais fait mention que de cinq classes, quoiqu’il y en eut réellement six. La sixieme, ne fournissant ni soldats à l’armée ni votans au champ de Mars & n’étant presque d’aucun usage dans la République, étoit rarement comptée pour quelque chose.\n\nTelles furent les différentes divisions du peuple Romain. Voyons à présent l’effet qu’elles produisoient dans les assemblées. Ces assemblées légitimement convoquées s’appelloient Comices; elles se tenoient ordinairement dans la place de Rome ou au champ de Mars, & se distingoient en comices par Curies, Comices par Centuries, & Comices par Tribus, selon celle de ces trois formes sur laquelle elles étaient ordonnées: les comices par Curies étoient de l’institution de Romulus, ceux par Centuries de Servius, ceux par Tribus des Tribuns du peuple. Aucune loi ne recevoit la sanction, aucun magistrat n’étoit élu que dans les Comices, & comme il n’y  avoit aucun Citoyen qui ne fut inscrit dans une Curie, dans une Centurie, ou dans une Tribu, il s’ensuit qu’aucun Citoyen n’étoit exclud du droit de suffrage, & que le Peuple Romain étoit véritablement Souverain de droit & de fait.\n\nPour que les Comices fussent légitimement assemblés & que ce qui s’y faisoit eut force de loi il faloit trois conditions: la premiere que le corps ou le Magistrat qui les convoquoit fut revêtu pour cela de l’autorité nécessaire; la seconde que l’assemblée se fit un des jours permis par la loi; la troisieme que les augures fussent favorables.\n\nLa raison du premier reglement n’a pas besoin d’être expliquée. Le second est une affaire de police; ainsi il n’étoit pas permis de tenir les Comices les jours de férie & de marché, où les gens de la campagne venant à Rome pour leurs affaires n’avoient pas le tems de passer la journée dans la place publique. Par le troisieme le Sénat tenoit en bride un peuple fier & remuant, & tempéroit à propos l’ardeur des Tribuns séditieux; mais ceux-ci trouverent plus d’un moyen de se délivrer de cette gêne.\n\nLes loix & l’élection des chefs n’étoient pas les seuls points soumis au jugement des Comices: Le Peuple romain ayant usurpé les plus importantes fonctions du Gouvernement, on peut dire que le sort de l’Europe étoit réglé dans ses assemblées. Cette variété d’objets donnoit lieu aux diverses formes que prenoient ces assemblées selon les matieres sur lesquelles il avoit à prononcer.\n\nPour juger de ces diverses formes il suffit de les comparer. Romulus en instituant les Curies avoit en vue de contenir le Sénat par le peuple & le Peuple par le Sénat, en dominant également sur tous. Il donna donc au peuple par cette forme toute l’autorité du nombre pour balancer celle de la puissance & des richesses qu’il laissoit aux Patriciens. Mais selon l’esprit de la Monarchie, il laissa cependant plus d’avantage aux Patriciens par l’influence de leurs Cliens sur la pluralité des suffrages. Cette admirable institution des Patrons & des Cliens fut un chef-d’œuvre de politique & d’humanité, sans lequel le Patriciat, si contraire à l’esprit de la République, n’eut pu subsister. Rome seule a eu l’honneur de donner au monde ce bel exemple, duquel il ne résulta jamais d’abus, & qui pourtant n’a jamais été suivi.\n\nCette même forme des Curies ayant subsisté sous les Rois jusqu’à Servius, & le regne du dernier Tarquin n’étant point compté pour légitime, cela fit distinguer généralement les loix royales par le nom de leges curiatæ.\n\nSous la République les Curies, toujours bornées aux quatre Tribus urbaines, & ne contenant plus que la populace de Rome, ne pouvoient convenir ni au Sénat qui étoit à la tête des Patriciens, ni aux Tribuns qui, quoique plebeyens, étoient à la tête des Citoyens aisés. Elles tomberent donc dans le discrédit, & leur avilissement fut tel, que leurs trente Licteurs assemblés faisoient ce que les comices par Curies auroient dû faire.\n\nLa division par Centuries étoit si favorable à l’Aristocratie, qu’on ne voit pas d’abord comment le Sénat ne l’emportoit pas toujours dans les Comices qui portoient ce nom, & par lesquels étoient élus les Consuls, les Censeurs, & les autres Magistrats curules. En effet de cent quatre-vingt-treize centuries qui formoient les six Classes de tout le Peuple romain, la premiere Classe en comprenant quatre vingt dix huit, & les voix ne se comptant que par Centuries, cette seule premiere Classe l’emportoit en nombre de voix sur toutes les autres. Quand toutes ses Centuries étoient d’accord on ne continuoit pas même à recueillir les suffrages; ce qu’avoit décidé le plus petit nombre passoit pour une décision de la multitude, & l’on peut dire que dans les Comices par Centuries les affaires se regloient à la pluralité des écus bien plus qu’à celle des voix.\n\nMais cette extrême autorité se tempéroit par deux moyens. Premierement les Tribuns pour l’ordinaire, & toujours un grand nombre de Plebeyens, étant dans la classe des riches balançoient le crédit des Patriciens dans cette premiere classe.\n\nLe second moyen consistoit en ceci, qu’au lieu de faire d’abord voter les Centuries selon leur ordre, ce qui auroit toujours fait commencer par la premiere, on en tiroit une au sort, & celle-là procédoit seule à l’élection; après quoi toutes les Centuries appellées un autre jour selon leur rang répétoient la même élection & la confirmoit ordinairement. On ôtoit ainsi l’autorité de l’exemple au rang pour la donner au sort selon le principe de la Démocratie.\n\nIl resultoit de cet usage un autre avantage encore; c’est que les Citoyens de la campagne avoient le tems entre les deux élections de s’informer du mérite du Candidat provisionnellement nommé, afin de ne donner leur voix qu’avec connoissance de cause. Mais sous prétexte de célérité l’on vint à bout d’abolir cet usage, & les deux élections se firent le même jour.\n\nLes Comices par Tribus étoient proprement le Conseil du peuple romain. Ils ne se convoquoient que par les Tribuns; les Tribuns y étoient élus & y passoient leurs plebiscites. Non seulement le Sénat n’y avoit point de rang, il n’avoit pas même le droit d’y assister, & forcés d’obéir à des loix sur lesquelles ils n’avoient pû vôter, les Sénateurs à cet égard étoient moins libres que les derniers Citoyens. Cette injustice étoit tout-à-fait mal entendue, & suffisoit seule pour invalider les décrets d’un corps où tous ses membres n’étoient pas admis. Quand tous les Patriciens eussent assisté à ces Comices selon le droit qu’ils en avoient comme Citoyens, devenus alors simples particuliers ils n’eussent guere influé sur une forme de suffrages qui se recueilloient par tête, & où le moindre prolétaire pouvoit autant que le Prince du Sénat.\n\nOn voit donc qu’outre l’ordre qui résultoit de ces diverses distributions pour le recueillement des suffrages d’un si grand Peuple, ces distributions ne se réduisoient pas à des formes indifférentes en elles-mêmes, mais que chacune avoit des effets rélatifs aux vues qui la faisoient préférer.\n\nSans entrer là dessus en de plus longs détails, il résulte des éclaircissemens précédens que les Comices par Tribus étoient les plus favorables au Gouvernement populaire, & les Comices par Centuries à l’Aristocratie. A l’égard des Comices par Curies où la seule populace de Rome formoit la pluralité, comme ils n’étoient bons qu’à favoriser la tirannie & les mauvais desseins, ils durent tomber dans le décri, les séditieux eux-mêmes s’abstenant d’un moyen qui mettoit trop à découvert leurs projets. Il est certain que  toute la majesté du Peuple Romain ne se trouvoit que dans les Comices par Centuries, qui seuls étoient complets; attendu que dans les Comices par Curies manquoient les Tribus rustiques, & dans les Comices par Tribus le Sénat & les Patriciens.\n\nQuant à la maniere de recueillir les suffrages, elle étoit chez les premiers Romains aussi simple que leurs mœurs, quoique moins simple encore qu’à Sparte. Chacun donnoit son suffrage à haute voix, un Greffier les écrivoit à mésure; pluralité de voix dans chaque Tribu déterminoit le suffrage de la Tribu, pluralité des voix entre les Tribus déterminoit le suffrage du peuple, & ainsi des Curies & des Centuries. Cet usage étoit bon tant que l’honnêteté régnoit entre les Citoyens & que chacun avoit honte de donner publiquement son suffrage à un avis injuste ou à un sujet indigne; mais quand le peuple se corrompit & qu’on acheta les voix, il convint qu’elles se donnassent en secret pour contenir les acheteurs par la défiance, & fournir aux fripons le moyen de n’être pas des traitres.\n\nJe sais que Ciceron blâme ce changement & lui attribue en partie la ruine de la République. Mais quoi que je sente le poids que doit avoir ici l’autorité de Ciceron, je ne puis être de son avis. Je pense, au contraire, que pour n’avoir pas fait assez de changemens semblables on accélera la perte de l’Etat. Comme le régime des gens sains n’est pas propre aux malades, il ne faut pas vouloir gouverner un peuple corrompu par les mêmes Loix qui conviennent à un bon peuple. Rien ne prouve mieux cette maxime que la durée de la République de Venise, dont le simulacre existe encore, uniquement parce que ses loix ne conviennent qu’à de méchans hommes.\n\nOn distribua donc aux Citoyens des tabletes par lesquelles chacun pouvoit voter sans qu’on sût quel étoit son avis. On établit aussi de nouvelles formalités pour le recueillement des tablettes, le compte des voix, la comparaison des nombres &c. Ce qui n’empêcha pas que la fidélité des Officiers chargés de ces fonctions ne fut souvent suspectée. On fit enfin, pour empêcher la brigue & le trafic des suffrages, des Edits dont la multitude montre l’inutilité.\n\nVers les derniers tems, on étoit souvent contraint de recourir à des expédiens extraordinaires pour suppléer à l’insuffisance des loix. Tantôt on supposoit des prodiges; mais ce moyen qui pouvoit en imposer au peuple n’en imposoit pas à ceux qui le gouvernoient; tantôt on convoquoit brusquement une assemblée avant que les Candidats eussent eu le tems de faire leurs brigues; tantôt on consumoit toute une séance à parler quand on voyoit le peuple gagné prêt à prendre un mauvais parti: Mais enfin l’ambition éluda tout; & ce qu’il y a d’incroyable, c’est qu’au milieu de tant d’abus, ce peuple immense, à la faveur de ses anciens réglemens, ne laissoit pas d’élire les Magistrats, de passer les loix, de juger les causes, d’expédier les affaires particulieres & publiques, presque avec autant de facilité qu’eut pu faire le Sénat lui-même.\n\n### Book IV, Chapter 5\n\nDu Tribunat.\n\nQuand on ne peut établir une exacte proportion entre les parties constitutives de l’Etat, ou que des causes indestructibles en alterent sans cesse les rapports, alors on institue une magistrature particuliere qui ne fait point corps avec les autres, qui replace chaque terme dans son vrai rapport, & qui fait une liaison ou un moyen terme soit entre le Prince & le Peuple, soit entre le Prince & le Souverain, soit à la fois des deux côtés s’il est nécessaire.\n\nCe corps, que j’appellerai Tribunat, est le conservateur des loix & du pouvoir législatif. Il sert quelquefois à protéger le Souverain contre le Gouvernement, comme faisoient à Rome les Tribuns du peuple, quelquefois à soutenir le Gouvernement contre le Peuple, comme fait maintenant à Venise le conseil des Dix, & quelquefois à maintenir l’équilibre de part & d’autre, comme faisoient les Ephores à Sparte.\n\nLe Tribunat n’est point une partie constitutive de la Cité, & ne doit avoir aucune portion de la puissance législative ni de l’exécutive, mais c’est en cela même que la sienne est plus grande: car ne pouvant rien faire il peut tout empêcher. Il est plus sacré & plus révéré comme défenseur des Loix, que le Prince qui les exécute & que le Souverain qui les donne. C’est ce qu’on vit bien clairement à Rome quand ces fiers Patriciens, qui mépriserent toujours le peuple entier, furent forcés de fléchir devant un simple  officier du peuple, qui n’avoit ni auspices ni juridiction.\n\nLe tribunat sagement tempéré est le plus ferme appui d’une bonne constitution; mais pour peu de force qu’il ait de trop il renverse tout: A l’égard de la foiblesse, elle n’est pas dans sa nature, & pourvu qu’il soit quelque chose, il n’est jamais moins qu’il ne faut.\n\nIl degenere en tirannie quand il usurpe la puissance exécutive dont il n’est que le modérateur, & qu’il veut dispenser des loix qu’il ne doit que protéger. L’énorme pouvoir des Ephores qui fut sans danger tant que Sparte conserva ses mœurs, en accélera la corruption commencée. Le sang d’Agis égorgé par ces tirans fut vengé par son successeur: le crime & le châtiment des Ephores hâterent également la perte de la  République, & après Cléomene Sparte ne fut plus rien. Rome périt encore par la même voye, & le pouvoir excessif des Tribuns usurpé par degrés servit enfin, à l’aide des loix faites pour la liberté, de sauvegarde aux Empereurs qui la détruisirent. Quant au Conseil des Dix à Venise; c’est un Tribunal de sang, horrible également aux Patriciens & au Peuple, & qui, loin de protéger hautement les loix, ne sert plus, après leur avilissement, qu’à porter dans les ténebres des coups qu’on n’ose appercevoir.\n\nLe Tribunat s’affoiblit comme le Gouvernement par la multiplication de ses membres. Quand les Tribuns du peuple romain, d’abord au nombre de deux, puis de cinq, voulurent doubler ce nombre, le Sénat les laissa faire, bien sûr de contenir les uns par les autres; ce qui ne manqua pas d’arriver.\n\nLe meilleur moyen de prevenir les usurpations d’un si redoutable corps, moyen dont nul Gouvernement ne s’est avisé jusqu’ici, seroit de ne pas rendre ce corps permanent, mais de regler les intervalles durant lesquels il resteroit supprimé. Ces intervalles qui ne doivent pas être assez grands pour laisser aux abus le tems de s’affermir, peuvent être fixés par la loi, de maniere qu’il soit aisé de les abréger au besoin par des commissions extraordinaires.\n\nCe moyen me paroit sans inconvénient, parce que, comme je l’ai dit, le Tribunat ne faisant point partie de la constitution peut être ôté sans qu’elle en souffre; & il me paroit efficace, parce qu’un magistrat nouvellement rétabli ne part point du pouvoir qu’avoit son prédecesseur, mais de celui que la loi lui donne.\n\n### Book IV, Chapter 6\n\nDe la Dictature.\n\nL’inflexibilité des loix, qui les empêche de se plier aux événemens, peut en certains cas les rendre pernicieuses, & causer par elles la perte de l’Etat dans sa crise. L’ordre & la lenteur des formes demandent un espace de tems que les circonstances refusent quelquefois. Il peut se présenter mille cas auxquels le Législateur n’a point pourvu, & c’est une prévoyance très-nécessaire de sentir qu’on ne peut tout prévoir.\n\nIl ne faut donc pas vouloir affermir les institutions politiques jusqu’à s’ôter le pouvoir d’en suspendre l’effet. Sparte elle-même a laissé dormir ses loix.\n\nMais il n’y a que les plus grands dangers qui puissent balancer celui d’altérer l’ordre public, & l’on ne doit jamais arrêter le pouvoir sacré des loix que quand il s’agit du salut de la patrie. Dans ces cas rares & manifestes on pourvoit à la sûreté publique par un acte particulier qui en remet la charge au plus digne. Cette commission peut se donner de deux manieres selon l’espece du danger.\n\nSi pour y remédier il suffit d’augmenter l’activité du gouvernement, on le concentre dans un ou deux de ses membres; Ainsi ce n’est pas l’autorité des loix qu’on altere mais seulement la forme de leur administration. Que si le péril est tel que l’appareil des loix soit un obstacle à s’en garantir, alors on nomme un chef suprême qui fasse taire toutes les loix & suspende un moment l’autorité Souveraine; en pareil cas la volonté générale n’est pas douteuse, & il est évident que la premiere intention du peuple est que l’Etat ne périsse pas. De cette maniere la suspension de l’autorité législative ne l’abolit point; le magistrat qui la fait taire ne peut la faire parler, il la domine sans pouvoir la représenter; il peut tout faire, excepté des loix.\n\nLe premier moyen s’employoit par le Sénat Romain quand il chargeoit les Consuls par une formule consacrée de pourvoir au salut de la République; le second avoit lieu quand un des deux Consuls nommoit un Dictateur; usage dont Albe avoit donné l’exemple à Rome.\n\nDans les commencemens de la République on eut très souvent recours à la  Dictature, parce que l’Etat n’avoit pas encore une assiette assez fixe pour pouvoir se soutenir par la seule force de sa constitution. Les mœurs rendant alors superflues bien des précautions qui eussent été nécessaires dans un autre tems, on ne craignoit ni qu’un Dictateur abusât de son autorité, ni qu’il tentât de la garder au delà du terme. Il sembloit, au contraire, qu’un si grand pouvoir fut à charge à celui qui en étoit revêtu, tant il se hâtoit de s’en défaire; comme si c’eut été un poste trop pénible & trop périlleux de tenir la place des loix!\n\nAussi n’est-ce pas le danger de l’abus mais celui de l’avilissement qui me fait blâmer l’usage indiscret de cette suprême magistrature dans les premiers tems. Car tandis qu’on la prodigoit à des Elections, à des Dédicaces, à des choses de pure formalité, il étoit à craindre qu’elle ne devînt moins redoutable au besoin, & qu’on ne s’accoutumât à regarder comme un vain titre celui qu’on n’employoit qu’à de vaines cérémonies.\n\nVers la fin de la République, les Romains, devenus plus circonspects, ménagerent la Dictature avec aussi peu de raison qu’ils l’avoient prodiguée autrefois. Il étoit aisé de voir que leur crainte étoit mal fondée, que la foiblesse de la capitale faisoit alors sa sûreté contre les Magistrats qu’elle avoit dans son sein, qu’un Dictateur pouvoit en certains cas défendre la liberté publique sans jamais y pouvoir attenter, & que les fers de Rome ne seroient point forgés dans Rome même, mais dans ses armées: le peu de résistance que firent Marius à Sylla, & Pompée à César, montra bien ce qu’on pouvoit attendre de l’autorité du dedans contre la force du dehors.\n\nCette erreur leur fit faire de grandes fautes. Telle, par exemple, fut celle de n’avoir pas nommé un Dictateur dans l’affaire de Catilina; car comme il n’étoit question que du dedans de la ville, & tout au plus, de quelque province d’Italie, avec l’autorité sans bornes que les Loix donnoient au Dictateur il eut facilement dissipé la conjuration, qui ne fut étouffée que par un concours d’heureux hazards que jamais la prudence humaine ne devoit attendre.\n\nAu lieu de cela, le Sénat se contenta de remettre tout son pouvoir aux Consuls; d’où il arriva que Ciceron, pour agir efficacement, fut contraint de passer ce pouvoir dans un point capital, & que, si les premiers transports de joye firent approuver sa conduite, ce fut avec justice que dans la suite on lui demanda compte du sang des Citoyens versé contre les loix; reproche qu’on n’eut pu faire à un Dictateur. Mais l’éloquence du Consul entraîna tout; & lui-même, quoique Romain, aimant mieux sa gloire que sa patrie, ne cherchoit pas tant le moyen le plus légitime & le plus sûr de sauver l’Etat, que celui d’avoir tout l’honneur de cette affaire. Aussi fut-il honoré justement comme libérateur de Rome, & justement puni comme infracteur des loix. Quelque brillant qu’ait été son rappel, il est certain que ce fut une grace.\n\nAu reste, de quelque maniere que cette importante commission soit conférée, il importe d’en fixer la durée à un terme très court qui jamais ne puisse être prolongé; dans les crises qui la font établir l’Etat est bientôt détruit ou sauvé, &, passé le besoin pressant, la Dictature devient tirannique ou vaine. A Rome les Dictateurs ne l’étant que pour six mois, la plupart abdiquerent avant ce terme. Si le terme eut été plus long, peut-être eussent-ils été tentés de le prolonger encore, comme firent les Décemvirs celui d’une année. Le Dictateur n’avoit que le tems de pourvoir au besoin qui l’avoit fait élire, il n’avoit pas celui de songer à d’autres projets.\n\n### Book IV, Chapter 7\n\nDe la Censure.\n\nDe meme que la déclaration de la volonté générale se fait par la loi, la déclaration du jugement public se fait par la censure; l’opinion publique est l’espece de loi dont le Censeur est le Ministre, & qu’il ne fait qu’appliquer aux cas particuliers, à l’exemple du Prince.\n\nLoin donc que le tribunal censorial soit l’arbitre de l’opinion du peuple, il n’en est que le déclarateur, & sitôt qu’il s’en écarte, ses décisions sont vaines & sans effet.\n\nIl est inutile de distinguer les mœurs d’une nation des objets de son estime; car tout cela tient au même principe & se  confond nécessairement. Chez tous les peuples du monde, ce n’est point la nature mais l’opinion qui décide du choix de leurs plaisirs. Redressez les opinions des hommes & leurs mœurs s’épureront d’elles mêmes. On aime toujours ce qui est beau ou ce qu’on trouve tel, mais c’est sur ce jugement qu’on se trompe; c’est donc ce jugement qu’il s’agit de regler. Qui juge des mœurs juge de l’honneur, & qui juge de l’honneur prend sa loi de l’opinion.\n\nLes opinions d’un peuple naissent de sa constitution; quoique la loi ne regle pas les mœurs, c’est la législation qui les fait naitre; quand la législation s’affoiblit les mœurs dégénerent, mais alors le jugement des Censeurs ne fera pas ce que la force des loix n’aura pas fait.\n\nIl suit de-là que la Censure peut être utile pour conserver les mœurs, jamais pour les rétablir. Etablissez des Censeurs durant la vigueur des Loix; sitôt qu’elles l’ont perdue, tout est désespéré; rien de légitime n’a plus de force lorsque les loix n’en ont plus.\n\nLa Censure maintient les mœurs en empêchant les opinions de se corrompre, en conservant leur droiture par de sages applications, quelquefois même en les fixant lorsqu’elles sont encore incertaines. L’usage des seconds dans les duels, porté jusqu’à la fureur dans le Royaume de France, y fut aboli par ces seuls mots d’un Edit du Roi; quant à ceux qui ont la lâcheté d’appeller des Seconds. Ce jugement prevenant celui du public le détermina tout d’un coup. Mais quand les mêmes Edits voulurent prononcer que c’étoit aussi une lâcheté de se battre en duel; ce qui est très-vrai, mais contraire à l’opinion commune; le public se moqua de cette décision sur laquelle son jugement étoit déjà porté.\n\nJ’ai dit ailleurs que l’opinion publique n’étant point soumise à la contrainte, il n’en faloit aucun vestige dans le tribunal établi pour la représenter. On ne peut trop admirer avec quel art ce ressort, entierement perdu chez les modernes, étoit mis en œuvre chez les Romains & mieux chez les Lacédémoniens.\n\nUn homme de mauvaises mœurs ayant ouvert un bon avis dans le conseil de Sparte, les Ephores sans en tenir compte firent proposer le même avis par un Citoyen vertueux. Quel honneur pour l’un, quelle note pour l’autre, sans avoir donné ni louange ni blâme à aucun des deux! Certains ivrognes de Samos souillerent le Tribunal des Ephores: le lendemain par Edit public il fut permis aux Samiens d’être des vilains. Un vrai châtiment eut été moins severe qu’une pareille impunité? Quand Sparte a prononcé sur ce qui est ou n’est pas honnête, la Grèce n’appelle pas de ses jugemens.\n\n### Book IV, Chapter 8\n\nDe la Religion Civile.\n\nLes hommes n’eurent point d’abord d’autres Rois que les Dieux, ni d’autre Gouvernement que le Théocratique. Ils firent le raisonnement de Caligula, & alors ils raisonnoient juste. Il faut une longue altération de sentimens & d’idées pour qu’on puisse se résoudre à prendre son semblable pour maitre, & se flater qu’on s’en trouvera bien.\n\nDe cela seul qu’on mettroit Dieu à la tête de chaque société politique, il s’ensuivit qu’il y eut autant de Dieux que de peuples. Deux peuples étrangers l’un à l’autre, & presque toujours ennemis, ne purent longtems reconnoitre un même maitre; Deux armées se livrant bataille ne sauroient obéir au même chef. Ainsi des divisions nationales resulta le polythéisme, & delà l’intolérance théologique & civile qui naturellement est la même, comme il sera dit ci-après.\n\nLa fantaisie qu’eurent les Grecs de retrouver leurs Dieux chez les peuples barbares, vint de celle qu’ils avoient aussi de se regarder comme les Souverains naturels de ces peuples. Mais c’est de nos jours une érudition bien ridicule que celle qui roule sur l’identité des Dieux de diverses nations; comme si Moloch, Saturne, & Chronos pouvoient être le même Dieu; comme si le Baal des Phéniciens, le Zeus des Grecs & le Jupiter des Latins pouvoient être le même; comme s’il pouvoit rester quelque chose commune à des Etres chimériques portans des noms différens!\n\nQue si l’on demande comment dans le paganisme où chaque État avoit son culte & ses Dieux il n’y avoit point de guerres de Religion? Je réponds que c’étoit par cela-même que chaque État ayant son culte propre aussi bien que son Gouvernement, ne distingoit point ses Dieux de ses loix. La guerre politique étoit aussi Théologique: les départemens des Dieux étoient, pour ainsi dire, fixés par les bornes des Nations. Le Dieu d’un peuple n’avoit aucun droit sur les autres peuples. Les Dieux des Payens n’étoient point des Dieux jaloux; ils partageoient entre eux l’empire du monde: Moyse même & le Peuple Hébreu se prétoient quelquefois à cette idée en parlant du Dieu d’Israël. Ils regardoient, il est vrai, comme nuls les Dieux des Cananéens, peuples proscrits, voués à la destruction, & dont ils devoient occuper la place; mais voyez comment ils parloient des divinités des peuples voisins qu’il leur étoit défendu d’attaquer! La possession de ce qui appartient à Chamos votre Dieu, disoit Jephté aux Ammonites, ne vous est-elle pas légitimement due? Nous possédons au même titre les terres que notre Dieu vainqueur s’est acquises. C’étoit là, ce me semble, une parité bien reconnue entre les droits de Chamos & ceux du Dieu d’Israël.\n\nMais quand les Juifs, soumis aux Rois de Babilone & dans la suite aux Rois de Sirie, voulurent s’obstiner à ne reconnoitre  aucun autre Dieu que le leur, ce refus, regardé comme une rebellion contre le vainqueur, leur attira les persécutions qu’on lit dans leur histoire, & dont on ne voit aucun autre exemple avant le Christianisme.\n\nChaque Religion étant donc uniquement attachée aux loix de l’Etat qui la prescrivoit, il n’y avoit point d’autre maniere de convertir un peuple que de l’asservir, ni d’autres missionnaires que les conquérans, & l’obligation de changer de culte étant la loi des vaincus, il faloit commencer par vaincre avant d’en parler. Loin que les hommes combattissent pour les Dieux, c’étoient, comme dans Homere, les Dieux qui combattoient pour les hommes; chacun demandoit au sien la victoire, & la payoit par de nouveaux autels. Les Romains avant de prendre une place, sommoient ses Dieux de l’abandonner, & quand ils laissoient aux Tarentins leurs Dieux irrités, c’est qu’ils regardoient alors ces Dieux comme soumis aux leurs & forcés de leur faire hommage: Ils laissoient aux vaincus leurs Dieux comme ils leur laissoient leurs loix. Une couronne au Jupiter du capitole étoit souvent le seul tribut qu’ils imposoient.\n\nEnfin les Romains ayant étendu avec leur empire leur culte & leurs Dieux, & ayant souvent eux-mêmes adopté ceux des vaincus en accordant aux uns & aux autres le droit de Cité, les peuples de ce vaste empire se trouverent insensiblement avoir des multitudes de Dieux & de cultes, à peu près les mêmes par-tout; & voilà comment le  paganisme ne fut enfin dans le monde connu qu’une seule & même Religion.\n\nCe fut dans ces circonstances que Jésus vint établir sur la terre un royaume Spirituel; ce qui, séparant le sistême théologique du sistême politique, fit que l’Etat cessa d’être un, & causa les divisions intestines qui n’ont jamais cessé d’agiter les peuples chrétiens. Or cette idée nouvelle d’un royaume de l’autre monde n’ayant pu jamais entrer dans la tête des payens, ils regarderent toujours les Chrétiens comme de vrais rebelles qui, sous une hypocrite soumission, ne cherchoient que le moment de se rendre indépendans & maitres, & d’usurper adroitement l’autorité qu’ils feignoient de respecter dans leur foiblesse. Telle fut la cause des persécutions.\n\nCe que les payens avoient craint est arrivé; alors tout a changé de face, les humbles Chrétiens ont changé de langage, & bientôt on a vu ce prétendu royaume de l’autre monde devenir sous un chef visible le plus violent despotisme dans celui-ci.\n\nCependant comme il y a toujours eu un Prince & des loix civiles, il a résulté de cette double puissance un perpétuel conflict de jurisdiction qui a rendu toute bonne politie impossible dans les États chrétiens, & l’on n’a jamais pu venir à bout de savoir auquel du maitre ou du prêtre on étoit obligé d’obéir.\n\nPlusieurs peuples cependant, même dans l’Europe ou à son voisinage, ont voulu conserver ou rétablir l’ancien sistême, mais sans succès; l’esprit du christianisme a tout gagné. Le culte sacré est toujours resté ou redevenu indépendant du Souverain, & sans liaison nécessaire avec le corps de l’État.  Mahomet eut des vues très saines, il lia bien son sistême politique, & tant que la forme de son Gouvernement subsista sous les Caliphes ses successeurs, ce Gouvernement fut exactement un, & bon en cela. Mais les Arabes devenus florissans, lettrés, polis, mous & lâches, furent subjugués par des barbares; alors la division entre les deux puissances recommença; quoiqu’elle soit moins apparente chez les mahométans que chez les Chrétiens, elle y est pourtant, sur-tout dans la secte d’Ali, & il y a des États, tels que la Perse, où elle ne cesse de se faire sentir.\n\nParmi nous, les Rois d’Angleterre se sont établis chefs de l’Eglise, autant en ont fait les Czars; mais par ce titre ils s’en sont moins rendus les maitres que les Ministres; ils ont moins acquis le droit de la changer que le pouvoir de la maintenir; Ils n’y sont pas  législateurs, ils n’y sont que Princes. Par tout où le Clergé fait un corps il est maitre & législateur dans sa patrie. Il y a donc deux puissances, deux Souverains, en Angleterre & en Russie, tout comme ailleurs.\n\nDe tous les Auteurs Chrétiens le philosophe Hobbes est le seul qui ait bien vû le mal & le remede, qui ait osé proposer de réunir les deux têtes de l’aigle, & de tout ramener à l’unité politique, sans laquelle jamais État ni Gouvernement ne sera bien  constitué. Mais il a dû voir que l’esprit dominateur du Christianisme étoit incompatible avec son sistême, & que l’intérêt du Prêtre seroit toujours plus fort que celui de l’Etat. Ce n’est pas tant ce qu’il y a d’horrible & de faux dans sa politique que ce qu’il y a de juste & de vrai qui l’a rendue odieuse.\n\nJe crois qu’en développant sous ce point de vue les faits historiques on réfuteroit aisément les sentimens opposés de Baile & de Warburton, dont l’un prétend que nulle Religion n’est utile au corps politique, & dont l’autre soutient au contraire que le Christianisme en est le plus ferme appui. On  prouveroit au premier que jamais État ne fut fondé que la Religion ne lui servit de base, & au second que la loi Chrétienne est au fond plus nuisible qu’utile à la forte constitution de l’État. Pour achever de me faire entendre, il ne faut que donner un peu plus de précision aux idées trop vagues de Religion rélatives à mon sujet.\n\nLa Religion considérée par rapport à la société, qui est ou générale ou particuliere, peut aussi se diviser en deux especes, savoir, la Religion de l’homme & celle du Citoyen. La premiere, sans Temples, sans autels, sans rites, bornée au culte purement intérieur du Dieu Suprême & aux devoirs éternels de la morale, est la pure & simple Religion de l’Evangile, le vrai Théïsme, & ce qu’on peut appeller le droit divin naturel. L’autre, inscritte dans un seul pays, lui  donne ses Dieux, ses Patrons propres & tutelaires: elle a ses dogmes, ses rites, son culte extérieur prescrit par des loix; hors la seule Nation qui la suit, tout est pour elle infidele, étranger, barbare; elle n’étend les devoirs & les droits de l’homme qu’aussi loin que ses autels. Telles furent toutes les Religions des premiers peuples, auxquelles on peut donner le nom de droit divin civil ou positif.\n\nIl y a une troisieme sorte de Religion plus bizarre, qui donnant aux hommes deux législations, deux chefs, deux patries, les soumet à des devoirs contradictoires & les empêche de pouvoir être à la fois dévots & Citoyens. Telle est la Religion des Lamas, telle est celle des Japonais, tel est le christianisme Romain. On peut appeller celui-ci la religion du Prêtre. Il en résulte une sorte du droit mixte & insociable qui n’a point de nom.\n\nA considerer politiquement ces trois sortes de religions, elles ont toutes leurs défauts. La troisieme est si évidemment mauvaise que c’est perdre le tems de s’amuser à le démontrer. Tout ce qui rompt l’unité sociale ne vaut rien: Toutes les institutions qui mettent l’homme en contradiction avec lui-même ne valent rien.\n\nLa seconde est bonne en ce qu’elle réunit le culte divin & l’amour des loix, & que faisant de la patrie l’objet de l’adoration des Citoyens, elle leur apprend que servir l’Etat c’est en servir le Dieu tutelaire. C’est une espece de Théocratie, dans laquelle on ne doit point avoir d’autre pontife que le Prince, ni d’autres prêtres que les magistrats. Alors mourir pour son pays c’est aller au martire, violer les loix c’est être impie, & soumettre un coupable à l’exécration publique c’est le dévouer au courroux des Dieux; sacer estod.\n\nMais elle est mauvaise en ce qu’étant fondée sur l’erreur & sur le mensonge elle trompe les hommes, les rend crédules superstitieux, & noye le vrai culte de la divinité dans un vain cérémonial. Elle est mauvaise encore quand, devenant exclusive & tirannique, elle rend un peuple sanguinaire & intolérant; en sorte qu’il ne respire que meurtre & massacre, & croit faire une action sainte en tuant quiconque n’admet pas ses Dieux. Cela met un tel peuple dans un état naturel de guerre avec tous les autres, très nuisible à sa propre sûreté.\n\nReste donc la Religion de l’homme ou le Christianisme, non pas celui d’aujourd’hui, mais celui de l’Evangile, qui en est tout-à-fait différent. Par cette Religion sainte,  sublime, véritable, les hommes, enfans du même Dieu, se reconnoissent tous pour freres, & la société qui les unit ne se dissout pas même à la mort.\n\nMais cette Religion n’ayant nulle rélation particuliere avec le corps politique laisse aux loix la seule force qu’elles tirent d’elles-mêmes sans leur en ajouter aucune autre, & par-là un des grands liens de la société particuliere reste sans effet. Bien plus; loin d’attacher les cœurs des Citoyens à l’Etat, elle les en détache comme de toutes les choses de la terre: je ne connois rien de plus contraire à l’esprit social.\n\nOn nous dit qu’un peuple de vrais Chrétiens formeroit la plus parfaite société que l’on puisse imaginer. Je ne vois à cette supposition qu’une grande difficulté; c’est qu’une société de vrais chrétiens ne seroit plus une société d’hommes.\n\nJe dis même que cette société supposée ne seroit avec toute sa perfection ni la plus forte ni la plus durable: A force d’être parfaite, elle manqueroit de liaison; son vice destructeur seroit dans sa perfection même.\n\nChacun rempliroit son devoir; le peuple seroit soumis aux loix, les chefs seroient justes & modérés, les magistrats integres incorruptibles, les soldats mépriseroient la mort, il n’y auroit ni vanité ni luxe; tout cela est fort bien, mais voyons plus loin.\n\nLe Christianisme est une religion toute spirituelle, occupée uniquement des choses du Ciel: la patrie du Chrétien n’est pas de ce monde. Il fait son devoir, il est vrai, mais il le fait avec une profonde indifférence sur le bon ou mauvais succès de ses soins. Pourvu qu’il n’ait rien à se reprocher, peu lui importe que tout aille bien ou mal ici bas. Si l’Etat est florissant, à peine ose-t-il jouïr de la félicité publique, il craint de s’enorgueillir de la gloire de son pays; si l’Etat dépérit, il bénit la main de Dieu qui s’appésantit sur son peuple.\n\nPour que la société fut paisible & que l’harmonie se maintint, il faudroit que tous les Citoyens sans exception fussent également bons Chrétiens: Mais si malheureusement il s’y trouve un seul ambitieux, un seul hypocrite, un Catilina, par exemple, un Cromwel, celui-là très certainement aura bon marché de ses pieux compatriotes. La charité chrétienne ne permet pas aisément de penser mal de son prochain. Dès qu’il aura trouvé par quelque ruse l’art de leur en imposer & de s’emparer d’une partie de l’autorité publique, voilà un homme constitué en dignité; Dieu veut qu’on le respecte; bientôt voilà une puissance; Dieu veut qu’on lui obéisse; le dépositaire de cette puissance en abuse-t-il? C’est la verge dont Dieu punit ses enfans. On se feroit conscience de chasser l’usurpateur; il faudroit troubler le repos public, user de violence, verser du sang; tout cela s’accorde mal avec la douceur du Chrétien; & après tout, qu’importe qu’on soit libre ou serf dans cette vallée de miseres? l’essenciel est d’aller en paradis, & la résignation n’est qu’un moyen de plus pour cela.\n\nSurvient-il quelque guerre étrangère? Les Citoyens marchent sans peine au combat; nul d’entre eux ne songe à fuir; ils font leur devoir, mais sans passion pour la victoire; ils savent plutôt mourir que vaincre. Qu’ils soient vainqueurs ou vaincus, qu’importe? La providence ne sait-elle pas mieux qu’eux ce qu’il leur faut? Qu’on imagine quel parti un ennemi fier impétueux passionné peut tirer de leur stoïcisme! Mettez vis-à-vis d’eux ces peuples généreux que dévoroit l’ardent amour de la gloire & de la patrie, supposez votre république chrétienne vis-à-vis de Sparte ou de Rome; les pieux chrétiens seront battus, écrasés, détruits avant d’avoir eu le tems de se reconnoitre, ou ne devront leur salut qu’au mépris que leur ennemi concevra pour eux. C’étoit un beau serment à mon gré que celui des soldats de Fabius; ils ne jurerent pas de mourir ou de vaincre, ils jurerent de revenir vainqueurs, & tinrent leur serment: Jamais des Chrétiens n’en eussent fait un pareil; ils auroient cru tenter Dieu.\n\nMais je me trompe en disant une République Chrétienne; chacun de ces deux mots exclud l’autre. Le Christianisme ne prêche que servitude & dépendance. Son esprit est trop favorable à la tirannie pour qu’elle n’en profite pas toujours. Les vrais Chrétiens sont faits pour être esclaves; ils le savent & ne s’en émeuvent gueres; cette courte vie a trop peu de prix à leurs yeux.\n\nLes troupes chrétiennes sont excellentes, nous dit-on. Je le nie. Qu’on m’en montre de telles? Quant-à-moi, je ne connois point de Troupes chrétiennes. On me citera les croisades. Sans disputer sur la valeur des Croisés, je remarquerai que, bien loin d’être des Chrétiens, c’étoient des soldats du prêtre, c’étoient des Citoyens de l’Eglise; ils se battoient pour son pays Spirituel, qu’elle avoit rendu temporel on ne sait comment. A le bien prendre, ceci rentre sous le paganisme; comme l’Evangile n’établit point une Religion nationale, toute guerre sacrée est impossible parmi les Chrétiens.\n\nSous les Empereurs payens les soldats Chrétiens étoient braves; tous les Auteurs Chrétiens l’assûrent, & je le crois: c’étoit une émulation d’honneur contre les Troupes payennes. Dès que les Empereurs furent chrétiens cette émulation ne subsista plus, & quand la croix eut chassé l’aigle, toute la valeur romaine disparut.\n\nMais laissant à part les considérations politiques, revenons au droit, & fixons les principes sur ce point important. Le droit que le pacte social donne au Souverain sur les sujets ne passe point, comme je l’ai dit, les bornes de l’utilité publique. Les sujets ne doivent donc compte au Souverain de leurs opinions qu’autant que ces opinions importent à la communauté. Or il importe bien à l’Etat que chaque Citoyen ait une Religion qui lui fasse aimer ses devoirs; mais les dogmes de cette Religion n’intéressent ni l’Etat ni ses membres qu’autant que ces dogmes se rapportent à la morale, & aux devoirs que celui qui la professe est tenu de remplir envers autrui. Chacun peut avoir au surplus telles opinions qu’il lui plait, sans qu’il appartienne au Souverain d’en connoitre: Car comme il n’a point de compétence dans l’autre monde, quel que soit le sort des sujets dans la vie à venir ce n’est pas son affaire, pourvu qu’ils soient bons citoyens dans celle-ci.\n\nIl y a donc une profession de foi purement civile dont il appartient au Souverain de fixer les articles, non pas précisément comme dogmes de Religion, mais comme sentimens de sociabilité, sans lesquels il est impossible d’être bon Citoyen ni sujet fidele. Sans pouvoir obliger personne à les croire, il peut bannir de l’Etat quiconque ne les croit pas; il peut le bannir, non comme impie, mais comme insociable, comme incapable d’aimer sincerement les loix la justice, & d’immoler au besoin sa vie à son devoir. Que si quelqu’un, après avoir reconnu publiquement ces mêmes dogmes, se conduit  comme ne les croyant pas, qu’il soit puni de mort; il a commis le plus grand des crimes, il a menti devant les loix.\n\nLes dogmes de la Religion civile doivent être simples, en petit nombre, énoncés avec précision sans explications ni commentaires. L’existence de la Divinité puissante, intelligente, bienfaisante, prévoyante & pourvoyante, la vie à venir, le bonheur des justes, le châtiment des méchans, la sainteté du Contract social & des Loix; voilà les dogmes positifs. Quant aux dogmes négatifs, je les borne à un seul; c’est l’intolérance: elle rentre dans les cultes que nous avons excluds.\n\nCeux qui distinguent l’intolérance civile & l’intolérance théologique se trompent, à mon avis. Ces deux intolérances sont inséparables. Il est impossible de vivre en paix avec des gens qu’on croit dannés; les aimer seroit haïr Dieu qui les punit; il faut absolument qu’on les ramene ou qu’on les tourmente. Par tout où l’intolérance théologique est admise, il est impossible qu’elle n’ait pas quelque effet civil\n, & sitot qu’elle en a, le Souverain n’est plus Souverain, même au temporel; dès lors les Prêtres sont les vrais maitres; les Rois ne sont que leurs officiers.\n\nMaintenant qu’il n’y a plus & qu’il ne peut plus y avoir de Religion nationale exclusive, on doit tolérer toutes celles qui tolerent les autres, autant que leurs dogmes n’ont rien de contraire aux devoirs du Citoyen. Mais quiconque ose dire, hors de l’Eglise point de Salut, doit être chassé de l’Etat; à moins que l’Etat ne soit l’Eglise, & que le Prince ne soit le Pontife. Un tel dogme n’est bon que dans un Gouvernement Théocratique, dans tout autre il est\n\npernicieux. La raison sur laquelle on dit qu’Henri IV. embrassa la Religion romaine la devroit faire quiter à tout honnête homme, & sur-tout à tout Prince qui sauroit raisonner.\n\n### Book IV, Chapter 9\n\nConclusion.\n\nAPrès avoir posé les vrais principes du droit politique & tâché de fonder l’Etat sur sa base, il resteroit à l’appuyer par ses rélations externes; ce qui comprendroit le droit des gens, le commerce, le droit de la guerre & les conquêtes, le droit public, les ligues les négociations les traités &c. Mais tout cela forme un nouvel objet trop vaste pour ma courte vue; j’aurois dû la fixer toujours plus près de moi.\n\n### Book IV, Appendix\n\n(…)\navec des gens qu’on croit dannés; les aimer seroit haïr Dieu qui les punit; il faut absolument qu’on les ramene ou qu’on les tourmente. Par tout où l’intolérance théologique est admise, il est impossible qu’elle n’ait pas quelque effet civil, & sitot qu’elle en a, le Souverain n’est plus Souverain, même au temporel; dès lors les Prêtres sont les vrais maitres; les Rois ne sont que leurs officiers.\n\nMaintenant qu’il n’y a plus & qu’il ne peut plus y avoir de Religion nationale exclusive, on doit tolérer toutes celles qui tolerent les autres, autant que leurs dogmes n’ont rien de contraire aux devoirs du Citoyen. Mais quiconque ose dire, hors de l’Eglise point de Salut, doit être chassé de l’Etat; à moins que l’Etat ne soit l’Eglise, & que le Prince ne soit le Pontife. Un tel dogme n’est bon que dans un\nGouvernement Théocratique, dans tout autre il est pernicieux. La raison sur laquelle on dit qu’Henri IV. embrassa la Religion romaine la devroit faire quiter à tout honnête homme, & sur-tout à tout Prince qui sauroit raisonner.\n\n CHAPITRE IX.\n\nConclusion.\n\nAPrès avoir posé les vrais principes du droit politique & tâché de fonder l’Etat sur sa base, il resteroit à l’appuyer par ses rélations externes; ce qui comprendroit le droit des gens, le commerce, le droit de la guerre & les conquêtes, le droit public, les ligues les négociations les traités &c. Mais tout cela forme un nouvel objet trop vaste pour ma courte vue; j’aurois dû la fixer toujours plus près de moi.\n\nFIN.\n\nCATALOGUE DE LIVRES imprimez chez REY,\nLibraire à Amsterdam.\n\nOEuvres diverses de Mr. J. J. Rousleau, 2 vol. grand in-douze\ncontenant. Discours Si le rétablissement des Sciences\n& des Arts a contribué à épurer les Mœurs, avec trois\nréponses du même auteur à diverses critiques. Narcisse. Lettre\nsur la Musique Françoise. Le Devin de Village. Discours\nsur l’Economie Politique. Extrait du projet de Paix perpétuelle\nde Mr. L’Abbé de saint Pierre. Discours sur L’origine\n& les fondemens de l’Inégalité parmi les Hommes. Lettre\ncontre les Spectacles. Lettre de Mr. D’Alembert en réponse\nà la Précédente, avec privilege de LL. HH. PP.\n\nJulie ou la Nouvelle Heloïse, 6 vol. grand indouze, édition original, avec privilege.\n\nPreface ou Entretien sur les Romans entre l’éditeur, à un homme de Lettre.\n\nRecueil d’Estempes pour la Nouvelle Héloïse, avec les sujets\ndes mêmes Estempes, tels qu’ils ont été donnez par l’éditeur.\n\nBible (la Sainte) ou le Vieux & le Nouveau Testament, avec\nun Commentaire Litteral composé de notes choisies tirée de\ndivers auteurs Anglois & autres &c. 4. Contenant les 5 livres\nde Moïse, les livres de Josué, les Juges & Ruth, les\ndeux livres de Samuël, 5 tomes en 9 parties, 1761.\n\nBibliotheque de Campagne ou Amusemens de l’Esprit & du\nCœur, 12. 12 vol.\n\nCabinet des Fées de Mad. d’Aunoy, 12. 14 partie avec fig.\n\nCampagnes des. Marechaux de Villars, Martin, Tallard, Villeroy,\nNoaille, Coigny en Allemagne, composé sur les originaux,\n12. 20 vol.\n\nEssai sur l’Histoire Generale & sur les Mœurs & l’Esprit des\nNations depuis Charlemagne, avec le Siecle de Louis XIV.\npar Voltaire, 8. 7 vol.\n\nHistoire Critique des Manichéens & du Manichéisme, 4 2 vol.\n\nJournal des Sçavans depuis son commencement, 1665. jusques\nen 1753, en 170 vol. avec fig. in-douze.\n\n—— dito Combiné avec les Mémoires de Trevoux Janvier\n1754. jusques à présent. 68 vol.\n\nMémoires du Card. de Retz, 8. 4 vol.\n\n—— pour servir à l’histoire de la vie & des ouvrages de\nMr. de Fontenelle & La Motte par Mr. L’Abbé Trublet, 1 vol.\n\n—— sur les Défrichemens par le Marquis de Turbilly, 8.\n1 vol. 1761.\n\nOeuvres de Théatre de Nivelle de la Chaussée, 2 vol. petit in-douze,\n1760.\n\n—— de Mathematiques du P. Pardie, 3 vol. fig.\n\n—— de François Rabelais, 4. 3 vol. fig. 1741.\n\n—— de Louis Racine, 12. 6 vol. 1750.\n\nPrincipes du Droit Naturel de la Nature & des Gens de Wolff,\npar Formey, 3 vol.\n\nTestament (nouveau) mis en Catéchisme par Mr. Polier, Professeur\nà Lausanne, 8. 6 vol. 1756.","download_url":"https://mouseia.org/api/works/contrat/original.txt"},"translations":[{"id":"trn_contrat_mouseia","translator":"Mouseia","kind":"curated","note":"Mouseia’s complete machine-assisted Musean translation, made directly from the complete French text of the 1762 edition, all four books and the appendix for fidelity, the author’s force and cadence, and modern clarity.","text":"### Book I, Chapter 1\n\nI want to ask whether there can be, in the civil order, any rule of administration that is legitimate and secure, taking men as they are and laws as they can be. Throughout this inquiry I shall try to bring together what right permits and what interest prescribes, so that justice and utility do not stand divided.\n\nI enter upon the matter without proving the importance of my subject. I shall be asked whether I am a prince or a legislator, that I should write on politics. I answer that I am neither, and that this is why I write on politics. Were I a prince or a legislator, I would not waste my time saying what ought to be done; I would do it, or I would keep silent.\n\nBorn a citizen of a free state and a member of the sovereign, however slight the influence my voice may have in public affairs, my right to vote in them is enough to impose on me the duty to understand them. Happy am I, whenever I reflect on governments, to find in my inquiries fresh reasons to love the government of my country!\n\nChapter I.\n\nSubject of This First Book.\n\nMan is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. One man thinks himself the master of others, yet remains more a slave than they are. How did this change come about? I do not know. What can make it legitimate? I believe I can resolve that question.\n\nIf I considered only force and the effect that follows from it, I would say: so long as a people is compelled to obey and does obey, it does well; as soon as it can shake off the yoke and does so, it does better still. For in recovering its freedom by the same right that took it away, either it is justified in taking it back, or there was no justification for taking it away. But the social order is a sacred right, the foundation of all other rights. This right, however, does not come from nature; it is therefore founded on conventions. The question is what those conventions are. Before I come to that, I must establish what I have just asserted.\n\n### Book I, Chapter 2\n\nOf the First Societies.\n\nThe oldest of all societies, and the only natural one, is the family. Even children remain bound to their father only as long as they need him for their preservation. As soon as that need ends, the natural bond dissolves. The children, released from the obedience they owed their father, and the father, released from the care he owed his children, all return equally to independence. If they continue to live together, they do so no longer by nature but by choice; even the family is maintained only by convention.\n\nThis common freedom follows from human nature. Man's first law is to watch over his own preservation; his first cares are those he owes himself. And as soon as he reaches the age of reason, he alone becomes the judge of the means suited to preserving himself, and thereby his own master.\n\nThe family, then, is, if you will, the first model of political societies: the leader is the image of the father, the people the image of the children; and all, born equal and free, surrender their freedom only for their own benefit. The sole difference is that in the family the father's love for his children repays him for the care he gives them, whereas in the state the pleasure of commanding takes the place of a love the leader does not feel for his peoples.\n\nGrotius denies that all human power is established for the benefit of the governed. He cites slavery as an example. His most consistent method of reasoning is always to establish right from fact. One could employ a more coherent method, but none more favorable to tyrants.\n\nThus, according to Grotius, it is doubtful whether humankind belongs to a hundred men, or those hundred men belong to humankind; throughout his book he seems to incline toward the first opinion. Hobbes holds it too. Here, then, is the human species divided into herds of cattle, each with its chief, who keeps it in order to devour it.\n\nAs a shepherd is of a nature superior to that of his flock, so the shepherds of men, their leaders, are of a nature superior to that of their peoples. Thus, according to Philo, reasoned Emperor Caligula, drawing the fairly sound conclusion from this analogy that either kings were gods or peoples were beasts.\n\nCaligula's reasoning comes back to that of Hobbes and Grotius. Before any of them, Aristotle had also said that men are not naturally equal, but that some are born for slavery and others for dominion.\n\nAristotle was right, but he mistook effect for cause. Every man born into slavery is born for slavery; nothing is more certain. Slaves lose everything in their chains, even the desire to escape them: they love their servitude as the companions of Ulysses loved their degradation into beasts. If, then, there are slaves by nature, it is because there have been slaves against nature. Force made the first slaves; their cowardice perpetuated them.\n\nI have said nothing of King Adam, nor of Emperor Noah, father of three great monarchs who divided the universe among themselves, as did the children of Saturn, in whom some have thought to recognize them. I hope I shall be thanked for this restraint; for, descending directly from one of these princes, perhaps even from the eldest branch, how do I know that a verification of titles would not reveal me as the legitimate king of humankind? In any case, no one can deny that Adam was sovereign of the world, as Robinson was of his island, for as long as he was its sole inhabitant. And the convenience of that empire lay in the fact that the monarch, secure upon his throne, had no rebellion, wars, or conspirators to fear.\n\n### Book I, Chapter 3\n\nOf the Right of the Strongest.\n\nThe strongest is never strong enough to remain master forever unless he turns his strength into right and obedience into duty. Hence the right of the strongest: apparently an ironic expression, yet actually established as a principle. But will no one ever explain this word to us? Force is a physical power; I cannot see what moral quality can arise from its effects. To yield to force is an act of necessity, not of will; at most it is an act of prudence. In what sense could it be a duty?\n\nLet us suppose for a moment that this alleged right exists. I say that nothing follows but an inexplicable jumble. For as soon as force makes right, the effect changes with the cause: every force that overcomes the first succeeds to its right. As soon as one can disobey with impunity, one can do so legitimately; and since the strongest is always right, the only question is how to become the strongest. Now what sort of right perishes when force ceases? If one must obey under compulsion, there is no need to obey out of duty; and if one is no longer forced to obey, one is no longer obliged. Clearly, then, this word right adds nothing to force; here it means nothing at all.\n\nObey the powers. If this means, yield to force, the precept is sound but superfluous; I answer that it will never be violated. All power comes from God, I admit; but so does every illness. Does that mean it is forbidden to call a doctor? Suppose a robber surprises me at the edge of a wood: not only must I hand over my purse under compulsion, but if I could hide it, would I be bound in conscience to give it to him? For the pistol he holds is also a power.\n\nLet us agree, then, that force does not make right, and that we are obliged to obey only legitimate powers. Thus my original question always returns.\n\n### Book I, Chapter 4\n\nOf Slavery.\n\nSince no man has natural authority over his fellow man, and since force creates no right, conventions remain the basis of all legitimate authority among men.\n\nIf an individual, says Grotius, can alienate his freedom and make himself the slave of a master, why could not an entire people alienate its freedom and make itself subject to a king? There are many ambiguous words here that call for explanation, but let us confine ourselves to alienate. To alienate is to give or to sell. Now a man who makes himself another man's slave does not give himself away; he sells himself, at least for his subsistence. But for what does a people sell itself? Far from providing his subjects with their subsistence, a king draws his own only from them; and according to Rabelais, a king does not live on little. Do subjects, then, give away their persons on condition that their goods be taken as well? I cannot see what they have left to preserve.\n\nIt will be said that the despot secures civil peace for his subjects. So be it; but what do they gain if the wars brought upon them by his ambition, his insatiable greed, and the oppression of his ministers devastate them more than their own quarrels would? What do they gain if that peace itself is one of their miseries? One lives peacefully in a dungeon too; is that enough to make it a pleasant place? The Greeks shut in the Cyclops' cave lived peacefully there, awaiting their turn to be devoured.\n\nTo say that a man gives himself away for nothing is to say something absurd and inconceivable; such an act is illegitimate and void, if only because the man who performs it is not in his right mind. To say the same thing of an entire people is to imagine a people of madmen: madness creates no right.\n\nEven if each person could alienate himself, he cannot alienate his children. They are born human and free; their freedom belongs to them, and no one but they has the right to dispose of it. Before they reach the age of reason, their father may stipulate conditions in their name for their preservation and well-being, but he may not give them away irrevocably and without conditions; such a gift is contrary to the ends of nature and exceeds the rights of fatherhood. For arbitrary government to be legitimate, therefore, the people would have to be free in each generation to accept or reject it; but then the government would no longer be arbitrary.\n\nTo renounce one's freedom is to renounce one's humanity, the rights of humankind, and even one's duties. There can be no compensation for someone who renounces everything. Such a renunciation is incompatible with human nature; to strip the will of all freedom is to strip its actions of all moral worth. Finally, a convention that stipulates absolute authority on one side and boundless obedience on the other is empty and contradictory. Is it not clear that one owes nothing to a person who has the right to demand everything from one, and does not this condition alone, without equivalent or exchange, invalidate the act? For what right could my slave have against me, since all he has belongs to me, and since his right is mine, this right of mine against myself is a phrase without meaning?\n\nGrotius and others derive another origin for the supposed right of slavery from war. The victor, they say, has the right to kill the vanquished; the vanquished can therefore redeem his life at the cost of his freedom, a convention all the more legitimate because it benefits both parties.\n\nBut plainly this supposed right to kill the vanquished in no way follows from the state of war. Simply because men living in their original independence have no sufficiently lasting relationship among themselves to constitute either a state of peace or a state of war, they are not enemies by nature. It is relations between things, not between men, that constitute war. And because a state of war can arise not from merely personal relations but only from relations of property, private war, or war between one man and another, cannot exist either in the state of nature, where there is no settled property, or in the social state, where everything falls under the authority of law.\n\nIndividual fights, duels, and chance encounters are acts that do not constitute a state of war. As for private wars, authorized by the ordinances of Louis IX, king of France, and suspended by the Peace of God, they are abuses of feudal government, a system as absurd as any that ever existed, contrary to the principles of natural right and to every sound polity.\n\nWar, then, is not a relation between man and man but between state and state, in which individuals are enemies only incidentally: not as men, nor even as citizens, but as soldiers; not as members of their country, but as its defenders. In short, a state can have only other states as enemies, not men, for no true relation can be established between things of different kinds.\n\nThis principle accords with the established maxims of every age and the constant practice of all civilized peoples. Declarations of war serve less as warnings to powers than to their subjects. A foreigner, whether king, private individual, or people, who robs, kills, or detains subjects without declaring war on their prince is not an enemy but a brigand. Even in open war, a just prince does indeed seize everything belonging to the public in enemy territory, but respects the persons and property of private individuals; he respects the rights on which his own are founded. Since the aim of war is the destruction of the enemy state, one has the right to kill its defenders while they bear arms. But as soon as they lay down their arms and surrender, ceasing to be enemies or instruments of the enemy, they become simply men again, and one has no further right over their lives. Sometimes a state can be killed without killing a single one of its members. War, therefore, confers no right that is not necessary to its end. These are not the principles of Grotius; they rest not on the authority of poets but on reason, and follow from the nature of things.\n\nAs for the right of conquest, it has no foundation but the law of the strongest. If war does not give the victor the right to massacre conquered peoples, the right he does not have cannot establish a right to enslave them. One has the right to kill an enemy only when one cannot make him a slave; the right to make him a slave does not, then, arise from the right to kill him. It is thus an unjust bargain to make him purchase with his freedom a life over which one has no right. 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, does one not plainly fall into a vicious circle?\n\nEven supposing this terrible right to kill everyone, I say that a slave taken in war, or a conquered people, owes his master nothing at all except obedience so far as he is forced to obey. In taking the equivalent of his life, the victor has shown him no mercy: instead of killing him to no purpose, he has killed him to some advantage. Far, then, from acquiring any authority over him beyond force, the state of war continues between them as before; their very relationship is its effect, and the exercise of the right of war implies no treaty of peace. They have made a convention, perhaps; but this convention, far from ending the state of war, presupposes its continuance.\n\nThus, however one looks at the matter, the right of slavery is void, not only because it is illegitimate but because it is absurd and means nothing. These words, slave and right, contradict and exclude each other. Whether between one man and another or between a man and a people, this speech will always be equally senseless: \"I make with you a convention that places every burden on you and every benefit with me, that I shall observe as long as I please, and that you shall observe as long as I please.\"\n\n### Book I, Chapter 5\n\nThat We Must Always Go Back to a First Convention.\n\nEven if I granted everything I have refuted so far, the advocates of despotism would be no further ahead. There will always be a great difference between subjugating a multitude and governing a society. Let scattered men be enslaved one after another by a single man, however many they may be: I see only a master and slaves, not a people and its leader. Call it an aggregation, if you like, but not an association; there is neither a public good nor a body politic. Even if this man had enslaved half the world, he would still be no more than an individual; his interest, distinct from that of others, would still be only a private interest. Should he perish, the empire he leaves behind would remain scattered and unconnected, as an oak crumbles into a heap of ashes after fire has consumed it.\n\nA people, says Grotius, may give itself to a king. According to Grotius, then, a people is a people before it gives itself to a king. This gift itself is a civil act; it presupposes a public deliberation. Before examining the act by which a people chooses a king, then, we would do well to examine the act by which a people becomes a people. For that act, necessarily prior to the other, is the true foundation of society.\n\nIndeed, if there were no prior convention, where—unless the election were unanimous—would the minority's obligation to submit to the majority's choice come from? And by what right do a hundred men who want a master vote on behalf of ten who do not? The rule of majority voting is itself established by convention and presupposes unanimity on at least one occasion.\n\n### Book I, Chapter 6\n\nOf the Social Pact.\n\nI suppose that men have reached the point where the obstacles to their preservation in the state of nature, by their resistance, outweigh the forces each individual can employ to maintain himself in that state. The original state can then no longer endure, and humankind would perish unless it changed its way of life.\n\nNow, since men cannot create new forces but can only unite and direct existing ones, the only means they have left to preserve themselves is to combine into a sum of forces capable of overcoming the resistance, set those forces in motion by a single impulse, and make them act in concert.\n\nThis sum of forces can arise only through the cooperation of several people. But each man's strength and freedom are the primary instruments of his preservation; how can he commit them without harming himself and neglecting the care he owes himself? This difficulty, applied to my subject, can be stated as follows:\n\n\"Find a form of association that defends and protects the person and goods of each associate with the full common force, and in which each, though joining with all, nevertheless obeys only himself and remains as free as before.\" This is the fundamental problem to which the social pact provides the solution.\n\nThe clauses of this pact are so precisely determined by the nature of the act that the slightest modification would render them vain and ineffective. Thus, although they may never have been formally stated, they are everywhere the same, everywhere tacitly admitted and recognized—until the social pact is violated, when each person recovers his original rights and takes back his natural freedom, losing the conventional freedom for which he gave it up.\n\nProperly understood, all these clauses come down to one: the total alienation of each associate, with all his rights, to the whole community. For, first, since each gives himself entirely, the condition is the same for all; and since it is the same for all, no one has an interest in making it burdensome to others.\n\nMoreover, because this alienation is made without reservation, the union is as perfect as it can be, and no associate has anything left to claim. For if individuals retained certain rights, there would be no common superior able to judge between them and the public; each, being his own judge on some point, would soon claim to be so on every point. The state of nature would persist, and the association would necessarily become tyrannical or futile.\n\nFinally, each person who gives himself to all gives himself to no one; and since there is no associate over whom one does not acquire the same right one yields to him over oneself, one gains the equivalent of everything one loses, and greater strength to preserve what one has.\n\nIf, then, we strip away from the social pact what is not essential to it, we shall find it reduced to these terms: Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will; and as a body we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole.\n\nAt once, in place of the separate person of each contracting party, this act of association produces a moral and collective body made up of as many members as the assembly has votes; from the same act it receives its unity, its common self, its life, and its will. This public person, formed in this way by the union of all the others, was once called the City, and is now called the Republic or body politic. Its members call it the State when it is passive, the Sovereign when it is active, and a Power when comparing it with others like it. As for the associates, collectively they take the name of people, and individually are called Citizens as participants in sovereign authority, and Subjects as subject to the laws of the State. But these terms are often confused and used in place of one another; it is enough to know how to distinguish them when they are used in their precise senses.\n\n### Book I, Chapter 7\n\nOf the Sovereign.\n\nWe see from this formula that the act of association contains a reciprocal commitment between the public and individuals, and that each individual, contracting, so to speak, with himself, is bound in a double capacity: as a member of the Sovereign toward individuals, and as a member of the State toward the Sovereign. But we cannot apply here the maxim of civil law that no one is bound by commitments made to himself, for there is a great difference between undertaking an obligation toward oneself and undertaking one toward a whole of which one is a part.\n\nWe should also note that a public deliberation can bind all subjects toward the Sovereign, because of the two different capacities in which each of them is considered, but cannot, for the opposite reason, bind the Sovereign toward itself. Consequently, it is contrary to the nature of the body politic for the Sovereign to impose upon itself a law it cannot break. Since it can consider itself only in one and the same capacity, it is then in the position of an individual contracting with himself: hence there is not, and cannot be, any kind of fundamental law binding upon the body of the people, not even the social pact. This does not mean that this body cannot perfectly well commit itself toward others in matters that do not infringe the pact; for in relation to foreigners it becomes a single being, an individual.\n\nBut the body politic, or Sovereign, derives its very existence from the sanctity of the pact, and can never bind itself, even toward others, to anything that infringes this original act, such as alienating a part of itself or submitting to another Sovereign. To violate the act by which it exists would be to annihilate itself; and what is nothing can produce nothing.\n\nAs soon as this multitude is thus united into a body, one cannot injure one of its members without attacking the body, still less injure the body without its members feeling the harm. Thus duty and interest equally oblige the two contracting parties to help one another; and these same men must seek to bring together, in their double capacity, all the advantages that follow from it.\n\nNow, since the Sovereign is formed solely of the individuals who compose it, it neither has nor can have any interest contrary to theirs. Sovereign power therefore needs no guarantor against its subjects, since it is impossible for the body to wish to harm all its members, and we shall see later that it cannot harm any one of them in particular. The Sovereign, simply by being what it is, is always what it ought to be.\n\nBut the case of the subjects in relation to the Sovereign is different: despite their common interest, nothing would guarantee their commitments to it if it could not find means to ensure their fidelity.\n\nIndeed, each individual may, as a man, have a private will contrary to or different from the general will he has as a Citizen. His private interest may speak to him quite differently from the common interest. His independent existence, absolute by nature, may lead him to regard what he owes the common cause as a gratuitous contribution, whose loss would harm others less than its payment would burden him. Regarding the moral person that constitutes the State as a mere abstraction, because it is not a man, he would enjoy the rights of a citizen without wishing to fulfill the duties of a subject—an injustice which, if allowed to spread, would bring ruin to the body politic.\n\nIn order, then, that the social pact should not be an empty formula, it tacitly contains this commitment, which alone can give force to the others: 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 every Citizen to his Country, secures him against all personal dependence. It is the secret and the working principle of the political machine, and alone makes civil commitments legitimate; without it, they would be absurd, tyrannical, and open to the most enormous abuses.\n\n### Book I, Chapter 8\n\nOf the Civil State.\n\nThe passage from the state of nature to the civil state brings about a remarkable change in man, substituting justice for instinct in his conduct and giving his actions the moral quality they previously lacked. Only then, when the voice of duty succeeds physical impulse and right succeeds appetite, does man, who until then had looked only to himself, find himself compelled to act on other principles and to consult his reason before listening to his inclinations. Although in this state he deprives himself of several advantages he derives from nature, he gains others so great in return—his faculties are exercised and developed, his ideas broadened, his feelings ennobled, his whole soul raised to such a height—that if abuses of this new condition did not often degrade him below the one he left, he should forever bless the happy moment that drew him from it for good and made an intelligent being and a man out of a stupid, limited animal.\n\nLet us reduce this whole balance to terms easily compared. What man loses through the social pact is his natural freedom and an unlimited right to everything that tempts him and lies within his reach; what he gains is civil freedom and ownership of everything he possesses. To avoid mistakes in weighing these exchanges, we must carefully distinguish natural freedom, bounded only by the individual's strength, from civil freedom, limited by the general will; and possession, which is merely the effect of force or the right of the first occupant, from property, which can be founded only on a positive title.\n\nTo what has gone before, one might add moral freedom to the gains of the civil state; this alone makes man truly his own master. For the impulse of appetite alone is slavery, and obedience to a law one has prescribed for oneself is freedom. But I have already said more than enough on this point, and the philosophical meaning of the word freedom does not belong to my subject here.\n\n### Book I, Chapter 9\n\nOf Real Property.\n\nEach member of the community gives himself to it at the moment it is formed, as he then stands, himself and all his powers, including the goods he possesses. This does not mean that by this act possession changes its nature when it changes hands and becomes property in the hands of the Sovereign. But since the forces of the City are incomparably greater than those of an individual, public possession is in fact stronger and more irrevocable, though not more legitimate, at least in the eyes of foreigners. For in relation to its members the State is master of all their goods through the social pact, which within the State is the foundation of all rights; but in relation to other Powers it holds them only by the right of the first occupant, which it derives from individuals.\n\nThe right of the first occupant, though more real than the right of the strongest, becomes a true right only after the establishment of property rights. Every man has a natural right to everything he needs, but the positive act that makes him the owner of some good excludes him from everything else. Once his share has been allotted, he must confine himself to it, and has no further right to what is held in common. This is why the right of the first occupant, so weak in the state of nature, commands the respect of every civilized man. What one respects in this right is less what belongs to another than what does not belong to oneself.\n\nIn general, to justify the right of the first occupant over any piece of land, the following conditions are necessary. First, the land must not yet be inhabited by anyone; second, one must occupy only as much as one needs for subsistence; third, one must take possession not through an empty ceremony, but through labor and cultivation, the only mark of property that, in the absence of legal titles, others should respect.\n\nIndeed, in granting the right of the first occupant to need and labor, are we not extending it as far as it can go? Can this right be left without limits? Will setting foot on common ground be enough to claim immediate mastery over it? Will having the force to drive others from it for a moment be enough to deprive them of the right ever to return? How can a man or a people seize an immense territory and deny it to all humankind except by an act of punishable usurpation, since it deprives the rest of mankind of the dwelling place and food that nature gives them in common? When Nuñez Balbao stood on the shore and took possession of the South Sea and the whole of southern America in the name of the crown of Castile, was that enough to dispossess all its inhabitants and exclude all the princes of the world? On that basis, such ceremonies were multiplied to little purpose, and the Catholic King had only to take possession of the whole universe at once from his study, later subtracting from his empire what the other princes already possessed.\n\nWe can understand how the lands of individuals, joined together and lying side by side, become public territory, and how the right of sovereignty, extending from subjects to the land they occupy, becomes at once a right over things and over persons. This places possessors in greater dependence and makes their very strength a guarantee of their fidelity. The ancient monarchs do not seem to have appreciated this advantage: calling themselves only Kings of the Persians, the Scythians, and the Macedonians, they seemed to see themselves as leaders of men rather than masters of the country. Today's monarchs more astutely call themselves Kings of France, Spain, England, and so on. Holding the land in this way, they are quite sure of holding its inhabitants.\n\nWhat is striking about this alienation is that, far from stripping individuals of their goods when it accepts them, the community merely secures their legitimate possession, turns usurpation into a true right, and enjoyment into property. Possessors are then regarded as custodians of the public good; their rights are respected by every member of the State and upheld by all its forces against foreigners. By a cession advantageous to the public and still more to themselves, they have, so to speak, acquired everything they gave. This paradox is easily explained by the distinction between the rights the sovereign and the owner have over the same land, as we shall see later.\n\nIt may also happen that men begin to unite before they possess anything, then take possession of enough land for all and enjoy it in common, or divide it among themselves, either equally or in proportions fixed by the Sovereign. However this acquisition takes place, each individual's right over his own land is always subordinate to the community's right over all of it; otherwise the social bond would have no stability, nor the exercise of Sovereignty any real force.\n\nI shall end this chapter and this book with a remark that must serve as the basis of every social system: far from destroying natural equality, the fundamental pact replaces whatever physical inequality nature may have established among men with a moral and legitimate equality; and though they may be unequal in strength or intelligence, they all become equal by convention and by right.\n\nEnd of the First Book.\n\n### Book II, Chapter 1\n\nThat Sovereignty Is Inalienable\n\nThe first and most important consequence of the principles established above is that the general will alone can direct the forces of the State toward the end for which it was founded: the common good. For if the opposition of private interests made the establishment of societies necessary, the agreement of those same interests made it possible. What these different interests have in common forms the social bond; and if there were no point on which all interests agreed, no society could exist. It is solely in accordance with this common interest that society must be governed.\n\nI say, then, that sovereignty, being nothing but the exercise of the general will, can never be alienated, and that the sovereign, being nothing but a collective being, can be represented only by itself. Power can certainly be transmitted, but not the will.\n\nIndeed, while it is not impossible for a private will to agree with the general will on some point, it is at least impossible for this agreement to be lasting and constant: the private will naturally tends toward preferences, the general will toward equality. Still less is it possible to have any guarantee of such agreement, even if it were always to exist; it would be the work not of design but of chance. The Sovereign may well say, \"At this moment I want what a certain man wants, or at least what he says he wants\"; but it cannot say, \"What this man wants tomorrow, I shall want as well.\" For it is absurd for the will to shackle itself for the future, and no will can consent to anything contrary to the good of the being whose will it is. If, then, the people simply promises to obey, it dissolves itself by that act and loses its character as a people. The moment there is a master, there is no longer a Sovereign, and from that moment the body politic is destroyed.\n\nThis is not to say that the orders of leaders cannot count as expressions of the general will so long as the Sovereign, free to oppose them, does not do so. In such a case, the universal silence should be taken as the people's consent. This will be explained at greater length.\n\n### Book II, Chapter 2\n\nThat Sovereignty Is Indivisible.\n\nFor the same reason that sovereignty is inalienable, it is indivisible. For the will is general or it is not; it belongs to the body of the people, or merely to a part. In the first case, this declared will is an act of sovereignty and makes law; in the second, it is only a private will, or an act of magistracy: at most, a decree.\n\nBut our political theorists, unable to divide sovereignty in its principle, divide it in its object. They divide it into force and will, legislative power and executive power, rights of taxation, justice, and war, domestic administration and the power to negotiate with foreigners. At times they confuse all these parts, at times they separate them. They make the Sovereign into a fantastic being assembled from disparate pieces, as if they were composing a man out of several bodies, one with eyes, another with arms, another with feet, and nothing more. Japanese charlatans, it is said, dismember a child before the spectators' eyes, then toss all its limbs into the air one after another and make the child fall back down alive and whole. Such, more or less, are the conjuring tricks of our political theorists: after dismembering the social body with an illusion worthy of a fairground, they somehow put the pieces back together.\n\nThis error comes from failing to form a precise idea of sovereign authority and mistaking its emanations for parts of that authority. Thus, for example, declaring war and making peace have been considered acts of sovereignty, which they are not, since neither act is a law, but only an application of law: a particular act that determines the case to which the law applies, as will become clear once the meaning of the word law has been fixed.\n\nFollowing the other divisions in the same way, we would find that whenever sovereignty seems to be divided, we are mistaken: the rights taken for parts of sovereignty are all subordinate to it, and always presuppose supreme wills of which these rights are only the execution.\n\nIt is impossible to say how much obscurity this lack of precision has brought to the judgments of authors on matters of political right, when they have tried to determine the respective rights of kings and peoples on the basis of the principles they had established. Anyone can see in chapters III and IV of the first book of Grotius how this learned man and his translator Barbeyrac entangle themselves in their sophistries, afraid of saying too much or too little for their purposes and of offending the interests they wished to reconcile. Grotius, a refugee in France, discontented with his own country and eager to court Louis XIII, to whom his book is dedicated, spares no effort to strip peoples of all their rights and invest kings with them as skillfully as possible. This would certainly have suited Barbeyrac as well, for he dedicated his translation to King George I of England. But unfortunately the expulsion of James II, which he calls an abdication, forced him to keep his guard up, to bend and equivocate so as not to make William an usurper. Had these two writers adopted the true principles, every difficulty would have vanished, and they would always have been consistent; but they would have told the sad truth and courted only the people. Truth, however, does not lead to wealth, and the people give neither embassies, nor professorships, nor pensions.\n\n### Book II, Chapter 3\n\nWhether the General Will Can Err.\n\nIt follows from what precedes that the general will is always right and always tends toward the public good; but it does not follow that the people's deliberations are always equally right. We always want what is good for us, but we do not always see it. The people are never corrupted, but often deceived; and only then do they appear to will what is bad.\n\nThere is often a great difference between the will of all and the general will. The latter looks only to the common interest; the former looks to private interest and is merely a sum of private wills. But take away from these same wills the pluses and minuses that cancel one another, and the general will remains as the sum of the differences.\n\nIf, when a sufficiently informed people deliberated, the Citizens had no communication with one another, the great number of small differences would always produce the general will, and the deliberation would always be sound. But when factions form, when smaller associations arise at the expense of the greater one, the will of each association becomes general in relation to its members and private in relation to the State. One can then say that there are no longer as many voters as there are men, but only as many as there are associations. The differences grow fewer and yield a less general result. Finally, when one of these associations becomes so large that it outweighs all the others, the result is no longer a sum of small differences but a single difference; then there is no longer a general will, and the opinion that prevails is merely a private opinion.\n\nIt is therefore important, if the general will is to be properly expressed, that there be no partial society within the State and that each Citizen give his opinion only for himself. Such was the unique and sublime institution of the great Lycurgus. But if there are partial societies, their number must be multiplied and inequality among them prevented, as Solon, Numa, and Servius did. These are the only sound precautions to ensure that the general will is always enlightened and that the people are not deceived.\n\n### Book II, Chapter 4\n\nOf the Limits of Sovereign Power.\n\nIf the State, or City, is only a moral person whose life consists in the union of its members, and if its most important concern is its own preservation, it needs a universal, compelling force to move and dispose each part in the way best suited to the whole. Just as nature gives each man absolute power over all his limbs, the social pact gives the body politic absolute power over all its members; and it is this same power which, directed by the general will, bears the name of sovereignty, as I have said.\n\nBut besides the public person, we must consider the private persons who compose it, whose lives and freedom are naturally independent of it. We must therefore carefully distinguish the respective rights of Citizens and of the Sovereign, the duties the former must discharge as subjects, and the natural right they should enjoy as men.\n\nIt is agreed that all a person alienates through the social pact of his power, his goods, and his freedom is only that part of them whose use matters to the community. But we must also agree that the Sovereign alone judges what matters to it.\n\nEvery service a citizen can render the State he owes it as soon as the Sovereign asks for it. Yet the Sovereign, on its side, cannot burden subjects with any chain useless to the community; it cannot even wish to do so. For under the law of reason, as under the law of nature, nothing happens without cause.\n\nThe commitments that 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 as well. Why is the general will always right, and why does everyone consistently will the happiness of each person, if not because there is no one who does not include himself in the word each, and think of himself when voting for all? This proves that equality of right and the notion of justice it produces arise from the preference each person gives himself and thus from human nature; that for the general will to be truly general, it must be so in its object as well as in its essence; that it must come from all and apply to all; and that it loses its natural rectitude when directed toward some particular, determinate object, because when judging a matter foreign to ourselves we have no true principle of equity to guide us.\n\nIndeed, as soon as the issue is a particular fact or right on a point not regulated by a prior, general convention, the matter becomes contentious. It is a lawsuit in which the individuals concerned are one party and the public the other, but in which I see neither the law to be followed nor the judge who ought to decide. It would be absurd then to wish to rely on an express decision of the general will, which could only be the conclusion of one of the parties and which, to the other, would consequently be a foreign, private will, inclined on this occasion toward injustice and liable to error. Thus, just as a private will cannot represent the general will, the general will in turn changes its nature when its object is particular, and cannot, as a general will, pronounce judgment either on a man or on a fact. When the people of Athens, for example, appointed or dismissed their leaders, awarded honors to one, imposed penalties on another, and by a multitude of particular decrees exercised all acts of Government without distinction, the people then no longer had a general will in the proper sense. They no longer acted as Sovereign but as magistrate. This will appear contrary to common ideas, but I must be allowed time to set out my own.\n\nFrom this we should understand that what makes the will general is not so much the number of votes as the common interest uniting them. For in this arrangement each necessarily submits to the conditions he imposes on others: a remarkable accord between interest and justice that gives common deliberations a character of equity which disappears whenever any particular matter is debated, for want of a common interest to unite and identify the rule of the judge with that of the party.\n\nWhichever way we trace our steps back to the principle, we always reach the same conclusion: the social pact establishes such equality among citizens that they all undertake commitments on the same conditions and must all enjoy the same rights. Thus, by the nature of the pact, every act of sovereignty—that is, every authentic act of the general will—binds or benefits all Citizens equally, so that the Sovereign knows only the body of the nation and distinguishes none of those who compose it. What, then, is an act of sovereignty properly speaking? It is not a convention between superior and inferior, but a convention between the body and each of its members: a legitimate convention, because it rests on the social pact; equitable, because it is common to all; useful, because it can have no object but the general good; and secure, because it is guaranteed by the public force and supreme power. So long as subjects are bound only by such conventions, they obey no one but their own will. To ask how far the respective rights of the Sovereign and Citizens extend is to ask how far the latter can commit themselves to themselves, each toward all and all toward each.\n\nWe see from this that Sovereign power, however absolute, sacred, and inviolable it may be, neither does nor can exceed the limits of general conventions, and that every man may dispose fully of whatever goods and freedom these conventions have left him. The Sovereign is therefore never entitled to burden one subject more than another, for the matter then becomes particular, and its power no longer has authority over it.\n\nOnce these distinctions are admitted, it is so far from true that individuals genuinely renounce anything in the social pact that the effect of the pact makes their condition actually preferable to their former one. Instead of alienating their possessions, they have made an advantageous exchange: an uncertain, precarious way of life for a better and more secure one; natural independence for freedom; the power to harm others for their own safety; and their strength, which others could overcome, for a right made invincible by social union. Even their lives, which they have devoted to the State, are continually protected by it; and when they risk those lives in its defense, what are they doing but giving back what they received from it? What are they doing that they would not do more often, and at greater peril, in the state of nature, when, in unavoidable conflicts, they would defend at the risk of their lives what enables them to preserve those lives? All must fight for their country when needed, it is true; but neither must anyone ever fight for himself. Do we not still gain by running, for the sake of what makes us safe, some of the risks we would have to run for ourselves as soon as that safety was taken away?\n\n### Book II, Chapter 5\n\nOn the Right of Life and Death.\n\nIt is asked how individuals, having no right to dispose of their own lives, can transfer to the sovereign that same right which they do not possess. This question seems difficult to resolve only because it is wrongly posed. Every man has the right to risk his life to preserve it. Has anyone ever said that a man who leaps from a window to escape a fire is guilty of suicide? Has that crime ever been charged even against a man who perishes in a storm whose danger he knew when he embarked?\n\nThe social pact has the preservation of its contracting parties as its end. Whoever wills the end also wills the means, and these means cannot be separated from certain risks, even certain losses. Whoever wishes to preserve his life at the expense of others must also give it up for them when necessary. Now the citizen is no longer the judge of the danger to which the law requires him to expose himself, and when the prince has told him, “It is expedient for the State that you die,” he must die; for it is only on this condition that he has lived in safety until then, and his life is no longer merely a gift of nature but a conditional gift of the State.\n\nThe death penalty imposed on criminals may be viewed in much the same light: one consents to die if one becomes a murderer so as not to be the victim of one. In this pact, far from disposing of one's own life, one thinks only of securing it, and there is no reason to presume that any of the contracting parties then intends to get himself hanged.\n\nMoreover, every wrongdoer who attacks social right becomes, through his crimes, a rebel and traitor to his country. By violating its laws he ceases to be a member of it, and even wages war against it. The preservation of the State is then incompatible with his own; one of the two must perish, and when the guilty man is put to death, it is less as a citizen than as an enemy. The proceedings and the judgment are the proof and declaration that he has broken the social pact and consequently is no longer a member of the State. Since he has acknowledged himself to be such a member, at least by residing there, he must be cut off from it by exile as a violator of the pact, or by death as a public enemy; for such an enemy is not a corporate person but a man, and then the right of war allows the victor to kill the vanquished.\n\nBut, it will be said, the condemnation of a criminal is a particular act. Agreed; and so this condemnation does not belong to the sovereign. It is a right that the sovereign can confer without being able to exercise it itself. All my ideas are connected, but I cannot set them all out at once.\n\nBesides, the frequency of executions is always a sign of weakness or indolence in the government. There is no villain who could not be made useful for something. One has a right to put to death, even as an example, only a person who cannot be kept alive without danger.\n\nAs for the right to grant a pardon, or to exempt a guilty person from a penalty established by law and pronounced by the judge, it belongs only to the one who stands above the judge and the law, that is, the sovereign. Even here its right is far from clear, and occasions for exercising it are very rare. In a well-governed State punishments are few, not because pardons are plentiful, but because criminals are few: when the State declines, the multitude of crimes secures their impunity. Under the Roman Republic neither the Senate nor the Consuls ever attempted to grant a pardon; even the people did not do so, although they sometimes revoked their own judgment. Frequent pardons announce that crimes will soon have no need of them, and everyone can see where that leads. But I feel my heart protest and restrain my pen; let us leave these questions for the just man who has never transgressed, and who has never himself had need of pardon.\n\n### Book II, Chapter 6\n\nOn Law.\n\nThrough the social pact we have given the body politic existence and life; now legislation must give it motion and will. For the original act by which this body is formed and united has not yet determined anything it must do to preserve itself.\n\nWhat is good and in accord with order is so by the nature of things and independently of human conventions. All justice comes from God; God alone is its source. But if we knew how to receive it from so great a height, we should need neither government nor laws. There is, no doubt, a universal justice emanating from reason alone; but for this justice to be accepted among us it must be reciprocal. Considered in human terms, without a natural sanction the laws of justice are vain among men: they bring good to the wicked and harm to the just, when the just man observes them toward everyone and no one observes them toward him. Conventions and laws are therefore needed to unite rights with duties and restore justice to its proper object. In the state of nature, where all things are held in common, I owe nothing to those to whom I have promised nothing; I recognize as belonging to another only what is of no use to me. It is otherwise in the civil state, where all rights are fixed by law.\n\nWhat, then, is a law after all? So long as people are content to attach only metaphysical ideas to this word, they will go on arguing without understanding one another; and even when they have said what a law of nature is, they will know no better what a law of the State is.\n\nI have already said that there is no general will concerning a particular object. That particular object lies either within the State or outside it. If it lies outside the State, a will foreign to it is not general in relation to it; and if this object lies within the State, it is part of the State. A relation then arises between the whole and its part which makes them two separate beings: the part is one, and the whole less that same part is the other. But the whole less one part is not the whole; as long as this relation persists there is no longer a whole but two unequal parts. It follows that the will of either is no more general in relation to the other.\n\nBut when the whole people legislates for the whole people, it considers only itself; if a relation then arises, it is between the entire object viewed from one perspective and the entire object viewed from another, without any division of the whole. The matter legislated upon is then as general as the will that legislates. This is the act that I call a law.\n\nWhen I say that the object of laws is always general, I mean that law considers subjects as a body and actions in the abstract, never a man as an individual or an action as a particular case. Thus the law may indeed decree that there shall be privileges, but it cannot grant them to anyone by name; the law may establish several classes of citizens, and even designate the qualifications for entry into these classes, but it cannot name this person or that for admission; it may establish a royal government and hereditary succession, but it cannot elect a king or designate a royal family. In a word, no function relating to an individual object belongs to the legislative power.\n\nFrom this conception one sees at once that it is no longer necessary to ask who has the right to make laws, since they are acts of the general will; or whether the prince is above the laws, since he is a member of the State; or whether a law can be unjust, since no one is unjust to himself; or how one can be free and subject to the laws, since they are only records of our own wills.\n\nOne sees, furthermore, that since law combines the universality of the will with that of its object, whatever any man, whoever he may be, commands on his own authority is not a law; even what the sovereign commands concerning a particular object is not a law but a decree, not an act of sovereignty but of magistracy.\n\nI therefore call any State governed by laws a republic, whatever the form of its administration may be: for only then does the public interest govern, and the public thing become something real. Every legitimate government is republican: I shall explain later what government is.\n\nLaws, properly speaking, are only the conditions of civil association. The people subject to the laws must be their author; only those who associate may settle the conditions of society. But how will they settle them? By common agreement, in a sudden flash of inspiration? Has the body politic an organ for expressing its will? Who will give it the foresight needed to formulate its acts and publish them in advance, or how will it pronounce them when the need arises? How could a blind multitude, which often does not know what it wants because it seldom knows what is good for it, carry out by itself an enterprise as great and difficult as a system of legislation? Of itself the people always wills the good, but of itself it does not always see it. The general will is always right, but the judgment that guides it is not always enlightened. It must be made to see things as they are, sometimes as they ought to appear to it; it must be shown the good path it seeks, guarded against the seduction of particular wills, brought to see distant places and times as if near, and taught to weigh the allure of present and palpable advantages against the danger of remote and hidden evils. Individuals see the good they reject; the public wills the good it does not see. All alike need guides: the former must be compelled to bring their wills into accord with their reason; the latter must be taught to recognize what it wants. Then public enlightenment brings about a union of understanding and will in the social body, from this the harmonious cooperation of its parts, and finally the greatest strength of the whole. This is the source of the need for a legislator.\n\n### Book II, Chapter 7\n\nOn the Legislator.\n\nTo discover the best rules of society suited to nations would require a superior intelligence, one that saw all the passions of men yet felt none of them; one that had no connection with our nature yet knew it thoroughly; whose happiness was independent of us yet which willingly devoted itself to ours; and, finally, one that, looking forward to distant glory as time unfolded, could labor in one century and enjoy the fruits in another. Gods would be needed to give laws to men.\n\nThe same reasoning that Caligula applied to the matter of fact, Plato applied to the matter of right in defining the civic or royal man whom he seeks in his book on kingship. But if it is true that a great prince is a rare man, what must a great legislator be? The former has only to follow the model that the latter must propose. The one is the engineer who invents the machine; the other is merely the workman who assembles it and sets it running. At the birth of societies, says Montesquieu, the leaders of republics establish the institutions, and thereafter the institutions form the leaders of republics.\n\nWhoever dares undertake to institute a people must feel capable of changing human nature, so to speak; of transforming each individual, who in himself is a complete and solitary whole, into part of a greater whole from which that individual receives, in a sense, his life and being; of altering man's constitution in order to strengthen it; of replacing the physical and independent existence we all received from nature with a partial and moral existence. In a word, he must take from man his own powers and give him others that are foreign to him and that he cannot use without the help of others. The more thoroughly those natural powers have died and been extinguished, and the greater and more lasting the acquired powers have become, the more solid and perfect the institution will be. Thus, if each citizen is nothing and can do nothing except through all the others, and if the strength acquired by the whole equals or surpasses the sum of the natural powers of all its individual members, legislation may be said to have reached the highest perfection attainable.\n\nThe legislator is in every respect an extraordinary man in the State. If he must be so by his genius, he is no less so by his office. It is neither a magistracy nor a sovereignty. This office, which establishes the republic, forms no part of its constitution: it is a distinct and superior function that has nothing in common with human rule. For if the man who commands men must not command the laws, the man who commands the laws must not command men either; otherwise his laws, serving his passions, would often do no more than perpetuate his injustices, and he could never prevent particular interests from corrupting the sanctity of his work.\n\nWhen Lycurgus gave laws to his country, he began by abdicating the kingship. It was the custom of most Greek cities to entrust the establishment of their laws to foreigners. The modern republics of Italy often imitated this practice; Geneva did the same and benefited from it. At the height of its glory Rome saw all the crimes of tyranny reborn within its walls, and saw itself on the brink of ruin because it had united legislative authority and sovereign power in the same hands.\n\nYet even the Decemvirs never presumed to enact any law by their sole authority. “Nothing that we propose to you,” they told the people, “can become law without your consent. Romans, be yourselves the authors of the laws that are to make you happy.”\n\nThe person who drafts the laws, therefore, has or ought to have no legislative right, and even the people cannot, should they wish to, divest themselves of this inalienable right; for according to the fundamental pact, only the general will binds individuals, and one can never be sure that a particular will accords with the general will until it has been submitted to the free votes of the people. I have said this already, but it is worth repeating.\n\nThus in the work of legislation we find, together, two things that seem incompatible: an enterprise beyond human strength, and, for carrying it out, an authority that amounts to nothing.\n\nAnother difficulty deserves attention. Wise men who wish to speak to ordinary people in their own language rather than the people's cannot make themselves understood. There are a thousand kinds of ideas impossible to translate into the language of the people. Views too general and objects too remote are equally beyond their reach. Each individual, favoring no plan of government except one that serves his particular interest, finds it hard to perceive the advantages he will gain from the continual privations imposed by good laws. For a people newly born to embrace the sound principles of politics and follow the fundamental rules of reason of state, the effect would have to become the cause: the social spirit that should be the work of the institution would have to preside over the institution itself, and men would have to be, before the laws, what the laws should make them. Since the legislator can employ neither force nor reasoning, he must therefore turn to an authority of another order, which can draw men along without violence and persuade without convincing.\n\nThis is what has always compelled the founders of nations to invoke the intervention of heaven and to honor the gods with their own wisdom, so that peoples, submitting to the laws of the State as to those of nature and recognizing the same power in the formation of man and of the city, might obey freely and bear without resistance the yoke of public happiness.\n\nThat sublime reason which rises beyond the grasp of ordinary men is the reason whose decisions the legislator places in the mouths of the immortals, so as to sway by divine authority those whom human prudence could not move. But not every man can make the gods speak, or be believed when he announces himself as their interpreter. The great soul of the legislator is the true miracle that must prove his mission. Any man can engrave tablets of stone, buy an oracle, pretend to secret dealings with a divinity, train a bird to speak into his ear, or find other crude means of deceiving the people. A man who knows no more than this might even gather a band of fools by chance, but he will never found an empire, and his extravagant work will soon perish with him. Empty tricks forge a passing bond; wisdom alone can make it last. The Jewish law, which still endures, and that of the child of Ishmael, which has governed half the world for ten centuries, still proclaim today the great men who dictated them; and while proud philosophy or blind partisanship sees in them only successful impostors, the true statesman admires in their institutions the great and powerful genius that presides over lasting foundations.\n\nWe must not conclude from all this, with Warburton, that politics and religion have a common object among us, but rather that, at the origin of nations, one serves as an instrument of the other.\n\n### Book II, Chapter 8\n\nOn the People.\n\nJust as an architect, before erecting a great building, examines and probes the ground to see whether it can bear the weight, the wise founder does not begin by drafting good laws themselves, but first examines whether the people for whom he intends them are fit to bear them. This is why Plato refused to give laws to the Arcadians and the Cyrenians, knowing that these two peoples were wealthy and could not endure equality. This is why good laws and bad men were found in Crete: Minos had disciplined a people already burdened with vices.\n\nA thousand nations have flourished on earth that could never have endured good laws, and even those that could have endured them had only a very short period in their entire existence when they could do so. Peoples, like men, are pliant only in their youth; they become incorrigible as they grow old. Once customs are established and prejudices have taken root, trying to reform them is a dangerous and futile enterprise. The people cannot even bear to have their ailments touched in order to cure them, like those foolish and fainthearted patients who shudder at the sight of a doctor.\n\nThis does not mean that, just as some illnesses unsettle men's minds and rob them of the memory of the past, there are not sometimes violent epochs in the lives of States when revolutions do to peoples what certain crises do to individuals, when horror of the past takes the place of forgetfulness, and when the State, consumed by civil wars, is reborn, as it were, from its ashes and recovers the vigor of youth as it emerges from the arms of death. Such was Sparta in the time of Lycurgus, such was Rome after the Tarquins, and such among us were Holland and Switzerland after the expulsion of the tyrants.\n\nBut these events are rare; they are exceptions whose explanation always lies in the particular constitution of the State concerned. Nor can they happen twice to the same people: it can make itself free while it is still barbarous, but can no longer do so once the mainspring of civic life has worn out. Then disturbances may destroy it without revolutions being able to restore it; as soon as its chains are broken, it falls apart and ceases to exist. From that point onward it needs a master, not a liberator. Free peoples, remember this maxim: liberty may be won, but it is never recovered.\n\nNations, like men, have a time of maturity that must be awaited before they are subjected to laws; but the maturity of a people is not always easy to recognize, and if the moment is anticipated, the work is spoiled. One people can be disciplined from birth, another cannot after ten centuries. The Russians will never be truly civilized, because they were civilized too soon. Peter had the genius of imitation; he did not have true genius, which creates and makes everything from nothing. Some of the things he did were good, most were ill-timed. He saw that his people were barbarous; he did not see that they were not ready for civic order. He wanted to civilize them when he needed only to make them fit for war. He wanted from the outset to make Germans and Englishmen when he needed to begin by making Russians. He prevented his subjects from ever becoming what they could be by persuading them that they were what they are not. So a French tutor trains his pupil to shine for a moment in childhood and then never amount to anything. The Russian Empire will wish to subjugate Europe and will itself be subjugated. The Tartars, its subjects or its neighbors, will become its masters and ours. This revolution seems to me inevitable. All the Kings of Europe are working together to hasten it.\n\n### Book II, Chapter 9\n\nContinued.\n\nJust as nature has set limits to the stature of a well-formed man, beyond which she produces only giants or dwarfs, so, with regard to the best constitution of a State, there are bounds to the extent it can have, so that it is neither too large to be well governed nor too small to maintain itself. Every body politic has a maximum of strength beyond which it cannot pass, and from which it often recedes by growing larger. The farther the social bond extends, the looser it becomes; and in general a small State is proportionately stronger than a large one.\n\nA thousand reasons demonstrate this maxim. First, administration grows more arduous across great distances, as a weight grows heavier at the end of a longer lever. It also becomes more costly as the levels multiply: each city has its own administration, paid for by the people; each district another, also paid for by the people; then each province, then the great governments, the satrapies, the viceroyalties, which must always be paid more lavishly as one climbs higher, and always at the expense of the unfortunate people. Finally comes the supreme administration, which crushes everything. So many burdens continually exhaust the subjects; far from being better governed by all these different orders, they are much worse governed than if there were only a single one above them. Meanwhile scarcely any resources remain for extraordinary circumstances, and when these must be met, the State is always on the brink of ruin.\n\nNor is that all. Not only has the government less vigor and speed to enforce the laws, prevent oppression, correct abuses, and forestall seditious undertakings that may arise in distant places, but the people have less affection for leaders they never see, for a homeland that appears to them as vast as the world, and for fellow citizens most of whom are strangers to them. The same laws cannot suit so many different provinces, with different customs, living under opposite climates and unable to bear the same form of government. Different laws breed nothing but trouble and confusion among peoples who live under the same leaders and in constant contact, who move or marry among one another and, subject to other customs, never know whether their inheritance is securely their own. Talents lie buried, virtues unrecognized, vices unpunished, among this multitude of people unknown to one another whom the seat of supreme administration draws together in one place. Leaders overwhelmed with business see nothing for themselves; clerks govern the State. Finally, the measures needed to maintain the general authority, which so many distant officials wish to evade or exploit, consume all public attention. None remains for the happiness of the people, barely any for their defense in time of need; and thus a body too large for its constitution sags and perishes, crushed beneath its own weight.\n\nOn the other hand, the State must give itself a certain foundation for solidity, to withstand the shocks it will inevitably encounter and the efforts it will be compelled to make to sustain itself. For all peoples have a kind of centrifugal force by which they continually act against one another and tend to expand at their neighbors' expense, like Descartes's vortices. Thus the weak risk being swallowed up before long, and hardly anyone can preserve itself except by entering with all the others into a sort of equilibrium, making the pressure approximately equal everywhere.\n\nIt is clear, then, that there are reasons to expand and reasons to contract, and finding the balance between them most conducive to the preservation of the State is no small part of the statesman's skill. In general, the former reasons, being merely external and relative, should be subordinated to the latter, which are internal and absolute. A sound and strong constitution is the first thing to seek, and more trust should be placed in the vigor born of good government than in the resources supplied by a vast territory.\n\nThere have been States, however, so constituted that the necessity of conquest entered into their very constitution, and that to maintain themselves they were forced to expand without ceasing. Perhaps they took great pride in this happy necessity, which nevertheless showed them, along with the limit of their greatness, the inevitable moment of their fall.\n\n### Book II, Chapter 10\n\nContinued.\n\nA body politic can be measured in two ways: by the extent of its territory and by the number of its people; between these two measures there is a fitting relation that gives the State its true size. It is men who make the State, and land that feeds men. This relation therefore requires that the land be enough to maintain its inhabitants, and that there be as many inhabitants as the land can feed. In this proportion lies the maximum strength of a given population. For if there is too much land, defending it is burdensome, its cultivation inadequate, its produce superfluous; this is the immediate cause of defensive wars. If there is not enough, the State depends upon its neighbors for what it lacks; this is the immediate cause of offensive wars. Any people whose situation leaves it only the choice between trade and war is weak in itself; it depends on its neighbors, it depends on events, and its existence is always uncertain and brief. It conquers and changes its situation, or it is conquered and becomes nothing. It can preserve its freedom only by being exceedingly small or exceedingly great.\n\nNo fixed ratio can be calculated between the extent of the land and the number of men able to live from it, given the differences in the qualities of the soil, its degrees of fertility, the nature of its produce, and the influence of climates, as well as the differences observed in the constitutions of the men who inhabit them: some consume little in a fertile country, others much on poor soil. Consideration must also be given to women's greater or lesser fertility, to how favorable the country may be to population growth, and to how much the legislator may hope to contribute to that growth through his institutions. Thus he must base his judgment not on what he sees but on what he foresees, and attend not so much to the present state of the population as to the size it should naturally reach. Finally, there are a thousand cases in which the particular circumstances of a place require or permit the inclusion of more land than seems necessary. Thus one will extend a great way into mountainous country, where natural products, namely woods and pastures, require less labor, where experience teaches that women are more fertile than on the plains, and where a great stretch of sloping ground offers only a small horizontal area, the only one that counts for vegetation. By contrast, one can occupy a smaller area along the seashore, even among almost barren rocks and sands, because fishing can make up for a great part of what the land does not produce, men must gather more closely to repel pirates, and, moreover, colonies make it easier to relieve the country of its surplus inhabitants.\n\nTo these conditions for instituting a people one more must be added, one that cannot replace any other, yet without which they are all useless: the enjoyment of abundance and peace. For the time when a State is put in order is, like the time when a battalion is formed, the moment when the body is least capable of resistance and easiest to destroy. It would resist better in utter disorder than in a moment of ferment, when each is occupied with his place rather than with the danger. Let war, famine, or sedition arise at this critical time, and the State is inevitably overthrown.\n\nNot that many governments have not been established amid such storms; but then these governments themselves destroy the State. Usurpers always bring about or choose such times of trouble to pass, under cover of public fear, destructive laws that the people would never adopt in a calm frame of mind. The choice of the moment for instituting a people is one of the surest marks by which the work of the legislator can be distinguished from that of the tyrant.\n\nWhat people, then, is suited to legislation? One already bound by some union of origin, interest, or convention, but not yet subjected to the true yoke of laws; one without deeply rooted customs or superstitions; one that need not fear being overwhelmed by a sudden invasion and that, without entering into its neighbors' quarrels, can resist each of them alone or enlist one to repel another; one in which each member can be known to all and no man must be made to carry a burden greater than any man can bear; one that can do without other peoples and that every other people can do without; one that is neither rich nor poor and can provide for itself; finally, one that combines the stability of an old people with the pliancy of a new one. What makes the work of legislation difficult is less what must be established than what must be destroyed; and what makes success so rare is the impossibility of finding the simplicity of nature joined to the needs of society. All these conditions, it is true, are seldom found together. Hence one sees few well-constituted States.\n\nThere is still one country in Europe capable of receiving legislation: the island of Corsica. The courage and steadfastness with which this brave people has regained and defended its freedom richly deserve a wise man to teach it how to preserve that freedom. I have some presentiment that this little island will one day astonish Europe.\n\n### Book II, Chapter 11\n\nOn the Various Systems of Legislation.\n\nIf we seek to determine precisely what constitutes the greatest good of all, which ought to be the end of every system of legislation, we shall find that it comes down to these two principal objects: liberty and equality. Liberty, because every instance of dependence on a particular person takes strength away from the body of the State; equality, because liberty cannot endure without it.\n\nI have already said what civil liberty is. As for equality, we must not take this word to mean that the degrees of power and wealth should be absolutely the same, but rather that power should stop short of all violence and never be exercised except by virtue of office and law; and, as for wealth, that no citizen should be so rich as to be able to buy another, and none so poor as to be forced to sell himself. This presupposes, on the side of the great, moderation in possessions and influence, and on the side of the common people, moderation in greed and covetousness.\n\nThis equality, they say, is a speculative chimera that cannot exist in practice. But if abuse is inevitable, does it follow that we should not at least regulate it? It is precisely because the force of circumstances always tends to destroy equality that the force of legislation must always tend to uphold it.\n\nBut these general objects of every good institution must be adapted in each country to the relations arising both from its local situation and from the character of its inhabitants; it is on the basis of these relations that each people must be assigned a particular system of institutions, the best perhaps not in itself but for the State for which it is intended. For example, is the soil poor and barren, or the country too cramped for its inhabitants? Turn to industry and the crafts, whose products you will exchange for the provisions you lack. On the other hand, do you occupy rich plains and fertile hillsides? On good land, do you lack inhabitants? Devote all your efforts to agriculture, which multiplies men, and drive out the crafts, which would only finish depopulating the country by crowding its few inhabitants into a handful of places. Do you occupy long and accessible shores? Cover the sea with ships, cultivate trade and navigation; your existence will be brilliant and brief. Does the sea wash only almost inaccessible rocks along your coast? Remain uncivilized and fish-eating; you will live more peacefully, perhaps better, and certainly more happily. In a word, besides the principles common to all, each people has within itself some cause that gives those principles a particular direction and makes its legislation its own alone. Thus religion was once the principal object of the Hebrews, and more recently of the Arabs; letters were the object of the Athenians; commerce of Carthage and Tyre; seamanship of Rhodes; war of Sparta; and virtue of Rome. The author of The Spirit of the Laws has shown in countless examples the art by which the legislator directs institutions toward each of these objects.\n\nWhat makes the constitution of a State truly solid and lasting is that circumstances are so well accommodated that natural relations and laws always converge on the same points, and the latter do no more, so to speak, than secure, accompany, and correct the former. But if the legislator mistakes his object and chooses a principle different from that born of the nature of things, if one tends toward servitude and the other toward liberty, one toward wealth and the other toward population, one toward peace and the other toward conquest, we shall see the laws imperceptibly weaken, the constitution deteriorate, and the State remain in turmoil until it is destroyed or transformed and invincible nature has reclaimed its dominion.\n\n### Book II, Chapter 12\n\nDivision of the Laws.\n\nTo put the whole in order, or give the public body the best possible form, there are several relations to consider. First, the action of the entire body upon itself, that is, the relation of the whole to the whole, or of the sovereign to the State; this relation is composed of the relations between the intermediate terms, as we shall see below.\n\nThe laws governing this relation bear the name of political laws, and are also called fundamental laws, with some reason if they are wise. For if there is only one good way of ordering each State, the people who have found it should hold to it; but if the established order is bad, why should laws that prevent it from becoming good be considered fundamental? Besides, in any case, a people is always master of changing its laws, even the best of them; for if it pleases the people to do itself harm, who has the right to prevent it?\n\nThe second relation is that of the members to one another or to the entire body; this relation must be as slight as possible in the first respect and as great as possible in the second, so that each citizen is perfectly independent of all the others and deeply dependent on the city. Both are always accomplished by the same means, for only the strength of the State makes its members free. From this second relation arise civil laws.\n\nA third kind of relation may be considered, between man and law, namely that of disobedience to punishment. This gives rise to the establishment of criminal laws, which are at bottom less a distinct kind of law than the sanction of all the others.\n\nTo these three kinds of laws a fourth is joined, the most important of all. It is engraved neither on marble nor on bronze, but in the hearts of citizens; it forms the true constitution of the State; it gains new strength every day; when the other laws grow old or die out, it revives or replaces them, preserves a people in the spirit of its founding, and imperceptibly substitutes the force of habit for that of authority. I speak of morals, customs, and above all opinion: a part unknown to our political thinkers, but on which the success of all the others depends. This is the part with which the great legislator secretly concerns himself, while appearing to confine himself to particular regulations that are only the arch's temporary framework; customs, slower to arise, ultimately form its immovable keystone.\n\nAmong these different classes, political laws, which constitute the form of government, are the only ones relevant to my subject.\n\nEnd of the Second Book.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 1\n\nBefore speaking of the various forms of government, let us try to fix the precise meaning of this word, which has not yet been very well explained.\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\nOn Government in General.\n\nI warn the reader that this chapter must be read deliberately, and that I do not know how to be clear to anyone unwilling to pay attention.\n\nEvery free action has two causes that work together to produce it: one moral, namely the will that determines the act; the other physical, namely the power that executes it. When I walk toward an object, I must first wish to go there and, second, my feet must carry me. Let a paralyzed man wish to run and an agile man have no wish to: both will stay where they are. The body politic has the same moving forces; here too we distinguish strength and will, the latter under the name of legislative power, the former under the name of executive power. Nothing is or should be done within it without their cooperation.\n\nWe have seen that legislative power belongs to the people, and can belong only to them. It is easy to see, on the other hand, from the principles established above, that executive power cannot belong to the people as a whole in their capacity as legislator or sovereign; for this power consists only in particular acts, which lie outside the province of law and consequently of the sovereign, whose every act can only be a law.\n\nThe public force therefore needs an agent of its own to bring it together and set it to work according to the directions of the general will, to serve as the means of communication between the State and the sovereign, to perform in the public person something like the function performed in man by the union of soul and body. This is the reason for government in the State, wrongly confused with the sovereign, of which it is only the minister.\n\nWhat, then, is government? An intermediate body established between the subjects and the sovereign for their mutual communication, charged with executing the laws and maintaining liberty, both civil and political.\n\nThe members of this body are called magistrates or kings, that is, governors, and the body as a whole bears the name of prince. Thus those who maintain that the act by which a people submits to leaders is not a contract are quite right. It is nothing more than a commission, an office in which they, as mere officers of the sovereign, exercise in its name the power it has entrusted to them, and which it may limit, modify, and reclaim at its pleasure; for to alienate such a right would be incompatible with the nature of the social body and contrary to the purpose of association.\n\nI therefore call government, or supreme administration, the legitimate exercise of executive power, and prince or magistrate the man or body charged with this administration.\n\nIt is in government that we find the intermediate forces whose relations compose the relation of the whole to the whole, or of the sovereign to the State. This last relation can be represented by that between the extremes of a continued proportion, of which government is the mean proportional. Government receives from the sovereign the commands it passes on to the people; and for the State to be properly balanced, all things considered, the product or power of the government taken in itself must equal the product or power of the citizens, who are sovereigns on one side and subjects on the other.\n\nMoreover, none of these three terms can be altered without immediately breaking the proportion. If the sovereign wishes to govern, or the magistrate to make laws, or the subjects refuse to obey, disorder succeeds order, force and will no longer act in concert, and the State, dissolved, thus falls into despotism or anarchy. Finally, just as there is only one mean proportional between any given terms, so there is only one good government possible in any given State. But as a thousand events can change the relations within a people, not only may different governments be good for different peoples, but different governments may be good for the same people at different times.\n\nTo try to give some idea of the various relations that can prevail between these two extremes, I shall take the number of the people as an example, since this relation is easier to express.\n\nSuppose that the State is composed of ten thousand citizens. The sovereign can be considered only collectively and as a body; but each private person, in his capacity as subject, is considered individually. Thus the sovereign stands to the subject as ten thousand stands to one: that is, each member of the State has as his share only the ten-thousandth part of sovereign authority, although he is wholly subject to it. Let the people be composed of a hundred thousand men: the condition of the subjects does not change, and each bears the full force of the laws equally, while his vote, reduced to a hundred-thousandth part, has ten times less influence in framing them. The subject thus always remaining one, the ratio of the sovereign increases with the number of citizens. It follows that the larger the State grows, the more liberty diminishes.\n\nWhen I say that the ratio increases, I mean that it moves farther from equality. Thus the greater the ratio in the mathematicians' sense, the less relation there is in the ordinary sense; in the first, relation considered as quantity is measured by its exponent, while in the second, considered as identity, it is judged by similarity.\n\nNow the less particular wills accord with the general will, that is, customs with laws, the more the power of restraint must increase. Therefore government, to be good, must be relatively stronger as the people grow more numerous.\n\nOn the other hand, as the enlargement of the State gives those entrusted with public authority more temptations and means to abuse their power, the greater the strength government must have to restrain the people, the greater the strength the sovereign must have in turn to restrain the government. I am not speaking here of absolute strength, but of the relative strength of the various parts of the State.\n\nIt follows from this double relation that the continued proportion between the sovereign, the prince, and the people is no arbitrary notion but a necessary consequence of the nature of the body politic. It also follows that since one of the extremes, namely the people as subject, is fixed and represented by unity, whenever the compound ratio increases or diminishes, the simple ratio increases or diminishes in like manner, and consequently the middle term changes. This shows that there is no one unique and absolute constitution of government, but that there may be as many governments differing in kind as there are States differing in size.\n\nIf anyone, turning this system to ridicule, were to say that according to me finding this mean proportional and forming the body of government requires nothing more than taking the square root of the number of the people, I would reply that I take this number only as an example; that the relations I speak of are measured not merely by the number of men but, more generally, by the quantity of action, which depends on a multitude of causes; and that, moreover, if for a moment I borrow the terms of geometry to express myself more briefly, I am nevertheless well aware that geometrical precision has no place in moral quantities.\n\nGovernment is on a small scale what the body politic that contains it is on a large one. It is a corporate person endowed with certain faculties, active like the sovereign, passive like the State, and capable of being broken down into further similar relations. Consequently a new proportion arises, then another within it according to the order of the courts, until we arrive at an indivisible middle term, that is, a single leader or supreme magistrate, whom we may picture in the middle of this progression as unity between the series of fractions and the series of whole numbers.\n\nWithout entangling ourselves in this multiplication of terms, let us be content to regard government as a new body within the State, distinct from the people and the sovereign and intermediate between them.\n\nThere is this essential difference between the two bodies: the State exists through itself, while government exists only through the sovereign. Thus the ruling will of the prince is, or ought to be, nothing but the general will or law; its strength is nothing but the public force concentrated within it. As soon as it tries to perform on its own some absolute and independent act, the bond uniting the whole begins to loosen. If the prince should ultimately have a particular will more active than that of the sovereign, and should use the public force in its hands to obey that particular will, so that there were, as it were, two sovereigns, one by right and the other in fact, the social union would vanish at once and the body politic would be dissolved.\n\nNevertheless, for the body of government to have a real life and existence distinguishing it from the body of the State, for all its members to act in concert and fulfill the end for which it was established, it needs a self of its own, a sensibility common to its members, and a strength and will of its own tending toward its preservation. This separate existence presupposes assemblies, councils, a power to deliberate and decide, rights, titles, and privileges belonging exclusively to the prince and making the magistrate's position more honorable in proportion as it is more arduous. The difficulties lie in ordering this subordinate whole within the whole so that, while strengthening its own constitution, it does not alter the general one; so that it always distinguishes its own particular strength, intended for its own preservation, from the public force intended for the preservation of the State; and, in a word, so that it is always ready to sacrifice government to the people rather than the people to government.\n\nBesides, although the artificial body of government is the work of another artificial body and in a sense has only a borrowed and subordinate life, that does not prevent it from acting with greater or lesser vigor or speed, or enjoying, so to speak, more or less robust health. Finally, without departing directly from the end for which it was established, it may stray farther or less far from it, depending on the way it is constituted.\n\nFrom all these differences arise the various relations government must have with the body of the State, according to the accidental and particular relations that modify the State itself. For the government best in itself will often become the worst if its relations are not altered to suit the defects of the body politic to which it belongs.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 2\n\nOn the Principle That Determines the Different Forms of Government\n\nTo explain the general cause of these differences, we must distinguish here between the prince and the government, as I distinguished earlier between the state and the sovereign.\n\nThe body of magistrates may comprise a greater or smaller number of members. We have said that the ratio of the sovereign to its subjects grows as the people grows more numerous; and by an evident analogy we may say the same of the government in relation to its magistrates.\n\nNow the government's total force, being always that of the state, does not vary. It follows that the more of this force it uses upon its own members, the less it has left to act upon the people as a whole.\n\nThus the more numerous the magistrates, the weaker the government. Since this principle is fundamental, let us take pains to make it clearer.\n\nWe can distinguish in the person of a magistrate three essentially different wills. First, the individual's own will, which seeks only his particular advantage; second, the common will of the magistrates, directed solely to the advantage of the prince, and which may be called the corporate will: general in relation to the government, but particular in relation to the state of which the government forms a part; third, the will of the people, or sovereign will, which is general both in relation to the state considered as a whole and in relation to the government considered as part of that whole.\n\nUnder perfect legislation, the particular or individual will must count for nothing, the corporate will proper to the government must be strictly subordinate, and consequently the general or sovereign will must always prevail and be the sole rule for all the others.\n\nIn the natural order, on the contrary, these different wills become more active as they become more concentrated. Thus the general will is always the weakest, the corporate will comes second, and the particular will first of all: so that within the government each member is first himself, then a magistrate, then a citizen. This gradation is directly opposed to what the social order requires.\n\nWith that established, suppose the whole government is placed in the hands of a single man. The particular will and the corporate will are now perfectly united, and the latter consequently attains the highest intensity it can have. Since the use of force depends on the intensity of the will, while the absolute force of the government does not vary, it follows that government by one is the most active of all.\n\nConversely, let us unite the government with legislative authority; let us make the sovereign the prince, and every citizen a magistrate. Then the corporate will, merged with the general will, will have no more activity than the latter and will leave the particular will in full strength. Thus the government, still possessing the same absolute force, will be at its minimum of relative force or activity.\n\nThese relations are beyond dispute, and further considerations confirm them. We see, for example, that each magistrate is more active in his body than each citizen is in his, and that the particular will therefore has much more influence on acts of government than on acts of the sovereign. For nearly every magistrate has some function of government to perform, whereas the individual citizen has no function of sovereignty. Besides, the more extensive a state becomes, the more its real force increases, although not in proportion to its extent. But with the state remaining the same, the magistrates may multiply as much as they please without giving the government any greater real force, since that force belongs to the state and its measure remains unchanged. Thus the relative force or activity of the government diminishes without any possible increase in its absolute or real force.\n\nIt is equally certain that business proceeds more slowly as more people are charged with it; that in allowing too much to prudence we allow too little to fortune; that opportunities slip away; and that prolonged deliberation often costs us the fruit of deliberation itself.\n\nI have just proved that the government weakens as its magistrates multiply; and I proved earlier that the more numerous the people, the greater the restraining force must be. It follows that the ratio of magistrates to government must be the inverse of the ratio of subjects to sovereign: that is, as the state grows larger, the government must grow more concentrated, so that the number of its chiefs diminishes in proportion as the people increases.\n\nFor the rest, I am speaking here only of the government's relative force, not of its rectitude. For, conversely, the more numerous the magistrates, the closer the corporate will comes to the general will, whereas under a single magistrate that same corporate will, as I have said, is merely a particular will. What may be gained on one side is thus lost on the other; and the legislator's art lies in finding the point where the force and the will of the government, always in inverse proportion, combine in the relation most advantageous to the state.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 3\n\nThe Division of Governments\n\nWe saw in the preceding chapter why the different kinds or forms of government are distinguished by the number of members composing them. It remains to see how this division is made.\n\nThe sovereign may, in the first place, entrust the government to the whole people or to the greater part of the people, so that there are more citizens who are magistrates than citizens who are private individuals. This form of government is called democracy.\n\nOr it may confine the government to the hands of a small number, so that there are more ordinary citizens than magistrates; this form is called aristocracy.\n\nFinally, it may concentrate the entire government in the hands of a single magistrate, from whom all the others derive their power. This third form is the most common and is called monarchy, or royal government.\n\nIt should be noted that all these forms, or at least the first two, admit of degrees and have a fairly wide range. Democracy may embrace the whole people or narrow itself to half. Aristocracy, in turn, may narrow from half the people to an indefinitely small number. Even kingship admits of some division. Sparta consistently had two kings under its constitution, and the Roman Empire saw as many as eight emperors at once, without anyone being able to say that the empire was divided. Thus there is a point where each form of government merges with the next; and we see that under just three names, government can in reality take as many different forms as the state has citizens.\n\nMore than that: since any one of these governments may in certain respects be subdivided into further parts, one administered in one fashion and another in another, these three forms can combine to produce a multitude of mixed forms, each of which can be multiplied by every simple form.\n\nPeople have always argued at length over the best form of government without considering that each is best in some circumstances and worst in others.\n\nIf, among different states, the number of supreme magistrates should stand in inverse proportion to the number of citizens, it follows that, in general, democratic government suits small states, aristocratic government those of middling size, and monarchical government large ones. This rule follows directly from the principle. But how can one count the multitude of circumstances that may furnish exceptions?\n\n### Book III, Chapter 4\n\nOn Democracy\n\nThe maker of a law knows better than anyone how it should be carried out and interpreted. It seems, then, that there could be no better constitution than one in which executive power is joined to legislative power. But this very thing makes such a government inadequate in certain respects: things that ought to be kept distinct are not, and the prince and the sovereign, being one and the same person, form, so to speak, a government without government.\n\nIt is not good for the maker of the laws to execute them, or for the body of the people to turn its attention from general aims to particular objects. Nothing is more dangerous than the influence of private interests in public affairs, and the government's abuse of the laws is a lesser evil than the corruption of the legislator, the inevitable consequence of particular interests. Once the state is altered in its very substance, all reform becomes impossible. A people that would never abuse government would not abuse independence either; a people that would always govern well would have no need to be governed.\n\nTaking the word in its strict sense, a true democracy has never existed and never will. It is contrary to the natural order for the many to govern and the few to be governed. We cannot imagine the people remaining constantly assembled to attend to public affairs; and we readily see that they cannot set up committees for this purpose without changing the form of administration.\n\nIndeed, I believe I can lay down as a principle that when the functions of government are divided among several tribunals, the least numerous sooner or later acquire the greatest authority, if only because the ease with which they dispatch business naturally brings it to them.\n\nBesides, how many difficult conditions must such a government bring together! First, a very small state where the people can easily assemble and each citizen can readily know all the others; second, great simplicity of manners to forestall a multitude of affairs and thorny disputes; then a large measure of equality in rank and fortune, without which equality of rights and authority cannot long endure; and finally little or no luxury. For luxury is either the effect of wealth or makes wealth necessary; it corrupts rich and poor alike, one through possession and the other through covetousness; it sells the fatherland to softness and vanity; it strips the state of all its citizens, making them slaves to one another and all of them slaves to opinion.\n\nThis is why a celebrated author made virtue the principle of the republic, for none of these conditions could endure without virtue. But for want of the necessary distinctions, that fine mind often lacked precision, sometimes clarity, and failed to see that sovereign authority is everywhere the same, and that the same principle must hold in every well-constituted state, though in greater or lesser measure according to its form of government.\n\nLet us add that no government is so exposed to civil wars and internal upheavals as democratic or popular government, because none has so strong and constant a tendency to change its form, or demands more vigilance and courage to preserve it. Above all under this constitution, the citizen must arm himself with strength and steadfastness, and say every day of his life in his heart what a virtuous Palatine said in the Diet of Poland: “I prefer a dangerous freedom to a peaceful servitude.”\n\nIf there were a people of gods, they would govern themselves democratically. So perfect a government is not suited to human beings.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 5\n\nOn Aristocracy\n\nHere we have two very distinct corporate persons, namely the government and the sovereign, and consequently two general wills: one with respect to all citizens, the other only with respect to the members of the administration. Thus, although the government may regulate its internal affairs as it pleases, it can never speak to the people except in the name of the sovereign—that is, in the name of the people themselves. This must never be forgotten.\n\nThe earliest societies governed themselves aristocratically. The heads of families deliberated together on public affairs; the young readily yielded to the authority of experience. Hence the names of priests, elders, senate, gerontes. The Indigenous peoples of North America still govern themselves this way today, and are very well governed.\n\nBut as inequality established by convention prevailed over natural inequality, wealth or power came to be preferred to age, and aristocracy became elective. Finally, power passed down with a father's property to his children, making families patrician and government hereditary; and senators of twenty years of age appeared.\n\nThere are, then, three kinds of aristocracy: natural, elective, and hereditary. The first is suited only to simple peoples; the third is the worst of all governments. The second is the best: it is aristocracy properly so called.\n\nBesides the advantage of separating the two powers, it has that of choosing its members. For in popular government all citizens are born magistrates, whereas this form confines the office to a small number, who become magistrates only through election. In this way integrity, enlightenment, experience, and every other reason for public preference and esteem become so many fresh guarantees of wise government.\n\nMoreover, assemblies can be held more conveniently, affairs are better discussed and dispatched with greater order and speed, and the state's standing abroad is better upheld by venerable senators than by an unknown or despised multitude.\n\nIn a word, it is the best and most natural order for the wisest to govern the multitude, when we are sure they will govern for its benefit and not their own. We must not multiply the machinery to no purpose, or employ twenty thousand people to do what a hundred chosen people can do better. But we must note that corporate interest begins here to direct the public force less closely according to the rule of the general will, and that another inevitable tendency takes from the laws a portion of executive power.\n\nAs to particular circumstances, the state must not be so small nor the people so simple and upright that the execution of the laws follows immediately from the public will, as in a sound democracy. Nor must the nation be so large that its leaders, scattered in order to govern it, can each play the sovereign in his own district and begin by making themselves independent, only to become masters in the end.\n\nBut if aristocracy demands somewhat fewer virtues than popular government, it also demands others peculiar to itself, such as moderation among the rich and contentment among the poor. For strict equality would seem out of place here; it was not observed even in Sparta.\n\nFor the rest, if this form permits a certain inequality of fortune, it is only so that, in general, public affairs may be entrusted to those who can best devote all their time to them, not so that the rich should always be preferred, as Aristotle claims. On the contrary, it matters that an opposite choice should sometimes teach the people that human merit offers grounds for preference more important than wealth.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 6\n\nOn Monarchy\n\nUntil now we have considered the prince as a corporate and collective person, united by the force of the laws and holding the executive power of the state in trust. We must now consider this power gathered into the hands of a natural person, a real man who alone has the right to exercise it according to the laws. This is what we call a monarch or king.\n\nQuite contrary to other administrations, where a collective being represents an individual, here an individual represents a collective being. Thus the moral unity that constitutes the prince is at the same time a physical unity, in which all the faculties that the law brings together elsewhere with so much effort are united by nature.\n\nSo the will of the people, the will of the prince, the public force of the state, and the particular force of the government all answer to the same impulse; all the springs of the machine are in the same hand; everything moves toward the same end; there are no opposing movements to cancel each other out; and one cannot imagine any constitution in which less effort produces greater action. Archimedes seated quietly on the shore and effortlessly drawing a great ship afloat brings to my mind a skillful monarch governing vast states from his study, setting everything in motion while seeming himself motionless.\n\nBut if no government has greater vigor, neither does any give the particular will greater sway or allow it more easily to dominate the rest. Everything moves toward the same end, it is true; but that end is not the public good, and the very force of the administration turns continually against the state.\n\nKings want absolute power, and people call out to them from afar that the surest way to gain it is to make their peoples love them. This maxim is very fine, and in some respects very true. Unfortunately it will always be laughed at in courts. Power that comes from the people's love is no doubt the greatest; but it is precarious and conditional, and princes will never be content with it. The best kings want to be free to do wrong if they please, without ceasing to be masters. A political preacher may tell them in vain that, since the strength of the people is their own, their greatest interest lies in a flourishing, populous, formidable people: they know perfectly well that this is not true. Their personal interest is, first of all, that the people should be weak and wretched and never able to resist them. I admit that, assuming the subjects always remain perfectly submissive, it would then be in the prince's interest for the people to be powerful, so that their power, being his, would make him formidable to his neighbors. But since this interest is secondary and subordinate, and the two assumptions are incompatible, it is natural for princes always to prefer the maxim that serves them most immediately. This is what Samuel impressed upon the Hebrews; this is what Machiavelli made plain. By pretending to give lessons to kings, he gave great lessons to peoples. Machiavelli's The Prince is the book of republicans.\n\nWe found from the general relations that monarchy is suited only to large states, and examining it in itself brings us to the same conclusion. The more numerous the public administration, the smaller the ratio of prince to subjects and the nearer it comes to equality, so that in democracy this ratio is one, or equality itself. The same ratio increases as the government becomes more concentrated, reaching its maximum when government is in the hands of one man. Then the distance between prince and people is too great, and the state lacks cohesion. To create it, intermediate ranks are needed: princes, great lords, and nobles to fill them. But none of this suits a small state, which all these levels would ruin.\n\nYet if a large state is hard to govern well, it is much harder for one man to govern it well, and everyone knows what happens when the king appoints deputies.\n\nOne essential and inevitable defect, which will always set monarchical government below republican government, is that in the latter the public voice almost never raises to the highest offices anyone but enlightened and capable men, who fill them with honor. In monarchies, by contrast, those who rise are most often petty meddlers, petty rogues, petty schemers, whose petty talents may win them high office at court but only expose their ineptitude to the public once they get there. The people make far fewer mistakes in their choice than the prince, and a man of true merit is almost as rare in a ministry as a fool at the head of a republican government. Thus, when by some happy chance one of these men born to govern takes the helm in a monarchy nearly ruined by hordes of polished managers, everyone is amazed at the resources he discovers, and his arrival marks an epoch in that country.\n\nFor a monarchical state to be well governed, its size or extent would have to be measured against the abilities of the man who governs it. It is easier to conquer than to rule. With a long enough lever one can move the world with a finger; but to support it takes the shoulders of Hercules. The least enlargement of a state almost always makes its prince too small. If, conversely, the state happens to be too small for its chief, which is very rare, it is still ill governed, because the chief, always pursuing the grandeur of his designs, forgets the interests of the peoples and makes them no less unhappy by misusing his surplus talents than a limited chief does for want of the talents he lacks. A kingdom would have, so to speak, to expand or contract with every reign according to the prince's capacities; whereas the talents of a senate, being more stable in measure, allow the state to keep fixed boundaries without any loss in the quality of its administration.\n\nThe most conspicuous drawback of rule by one is the lack of that continuous succession which forms an unbroken connection in the other two forms. When one king dies, another is needed; elections leave dangerous intervals and are turbulent. Unless the citizens possess a disinterestedness and integrity scarcely compatible with this government, canvassing and corruption intervene. It is hard for a man to whom the state has sold itself not to sell it in his turn, and not to recoup from the weak the money the powerful have extorted from him. Sooner or later everything becomes saleable under such an administration, and the peace enjoyed under kings is worse than the turmoil of interregnums.\n\nWhat has been done to prevent these evils? Crowns have been made hereditary within certain families, and a line of succession established to prevent any dispute at the death of kings. That is, the drawbacks of regencies have been substituted for those of elections; an apparent calm has been preferred to wise administration; people have chosen to risk children, monsters, and imbeciles as their chiefs rather than dispute the choice of good kings. They have failed to consider that by exposing themselves to the risks of this alternative they place almost every chance against themselves. There was great sense in the young Dionysius's reply when his father reproached him for a shameful action and said, “Did I set you that example?” “Ah,” answered the son, “your father was not a king!”\n\nEverything conspires to rob a man raised to command others of justice and reason. Great pains, we are told, are taken to teach young princes the art of reigning; this education does not seem to profit them. It would be better to begin by teaching them the art of obeying. The greatest kings celebrated by history were not raised to reign. No science is possessed less securely than after one has studied it too much; and this one is learned better through obedience than command. “For the most useful and shortest way to discern good from evil is to ask yourself what you would or would not have wished under another prince.”\n\nOne consequence of this lack of continuity is the inconstancy of royal government. Following one plan and then another according to the character of the reigning prince or of those who reign for him, it cannot long keep a fixed object or a consistent course. This variation leaves the state forever drifting from maxim to maxim, from project to project; it does not occur in other governments, where the prince remains always the same. Thus we see that, in general, while there is more cunning in a court, there is more wisdom in a senate; republics pursue their ends with more constant and sustained designs, whereas every change in the ministry brings a change in the state, since the maxim common to all ministers and almost all kings is to do in every matter the opposite of their predecessor.\n\nThe same inconsistency also resolves a fallacy very familiar to advocates of monarchy. They not only compare civil government to domestic government and the prince to the head of a household—an error already refuted—but also freely endow that magistrate with all the virtues he would need and always assume that the prince is what he ought to be. With this assumption royal government is plainly preferable to every other: it is unquestionably the strongest, and to be the best it lacks only a corporate will more closely aligned with the general will.\n\nBut if, according to Plato, a king by nature is such a rare character, how often will nature and fortune join to crown him? And if a royal education necessarily corrupts its recipients, what can we expect from a succession of men raised to reign? It is willful self-deception to confuse royal government with the government of a good king. To see what this government is in itself, we must consider it under limited or wicked princes, for they will either come to the throne that way or be made so by it.\n\nThese difficulties have not escaped our authors, but they are untroubled by them. The remedy, they say, is to obey without a murmur. God sends bad kings in his wrath, and they must be borne as punishments from Heaven. Such words are edifying, no doubt; but I wonder whether they would not be more fitting in a pulpit than in a book on politics. What should we say of a doctor who promises miracles but whose whole art consists of exhorting his patient to patience? We know well enough that a bad government must be endured once we have it; the question is how to find a good one.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 7\n\nOn Mixed Governments\n\nStrictly speaking, there is no simple government. A single chief must have subordinate magistrates; a popular government must have a chief. Thus, in the distribution of executive power, there is always a progression from the greater number to the smaller, with this difference: at times the greater number depends on the smaller, and at times the smaller on the greater.\n\nSometimes the division is equal: either the constituent parts are mutually dependent, as in the government of England, or the authority of each part is independent but incomplete, as in Poland. The latter form is bad because the government lacks unity and the state lacks cohesion.\n\nWhich is better, a simple government or a mixed one? This question is much debated among political thinkers, and it calls for the same answer I gave earlier concerning every form of government.\n\nSimple government is best in itself, for the very reason that it is simple. But when executive power is not sufficiently dependent on legislative power—that is, when the ratio of prince to sovereign is greater than that of people to prince—this disproportion must be remedied by dividing the government. For then all its parts retain undiminished authority over the subjects, while their division makes them, taken together, less strong against the sovereign.\n\nThe same disadvantage may also be forestalled by establishing intermediate magistrates who, while leaving the government whole, serve only to balance the two powers and preserve their respective rights. In that case the government is not mixed but moderated.\n\nSimilar means can remedy the opposite disadvantage; when the government is too lax, tribunals can be established to concentrate it. This is done in every democracy. In the first case government is divided to weaken it, and in the second to strengthen it; for the greatest strength and the greatest weakness are both found in simple governments, while mixed forms provide a middle degree of strength.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 8\n\nThat No Form of Government Suits Every Country\n\nFreedom is not a fruit of every climate, and so is not within every people's reach. The more one reflects on this principle established by Montesquieu, the more one feels its truth. The more one contests it, the more occasions one provides to establish it by fresh proofs.\n\nIn every government in the world, the public person consumes and produces nothing. Where, then, does what it consumes come from? From the labor of its members. The surplus of individuals supplies the needs of the public. It follows that the civil state can subsist only so long as human labor yields more than its workers need.\n\nNow this surplus is not the same in every country of the world. In many it is considerable, in others moderate, in others nil, in still others negative. This relation depends on the fertility of the climate, the kind of labor the soil requires, the nature of its produce, the strength of its inhabitants, the greater or lesser consumption they need, and several other similar factors of which it is composed.\n\nOn the other hand, governments are not all of the same nature: some are more voracious than others. These differences rest on a further principle: the farther public contributions travel from their source, the more burdensome they become. The burden must be measured not by the amount of taxation, but by the journey the taxes make before returning to the hands from which they came. When this circulation is swift and well established, whether people pay much or little is immaterial: the people are always prosperous and the finances always sound. Conversely, however little the people give, when that little never comes back to them, continually giving soon exhausts them: the state is never rich, and the people are always destitute.\n\nIt follows that the greater the distance between the people and the government, the more burdensome taxes become. Thus under democracy the people bear the lightest burden, under aristocracy a heavier one, and under monarchy the heaviest of all. Monarchy, then, suits only wealthy nations; aristocracy, states of moderate wealth as well as moderate size; and democracy, small and poor states.\n\nIndeed, the more one reflects on this, the clearer the difference between free states and monarchies appears: in the former everything is used for the common benefit; in the latter public and private forces oppose one another, and each grows as the other weakens. Finally, instead of governing subjects to make them happy, despotism makes them miserable in order to govern them.\n\nThus in each climate there are natural causes by which one may determine the form of government toward which the climate's force draws it, and even say what kind of inhabitants it ought to have. Barren and ungrateful places where the yield is not worth the labor must remain uncultivated and deserted, or inhabited only by peoples living in the wild. Places where human labor yields exactly what is needed must be inhabited by peoples without a civil polity; any political order there would be impossible. Places where the surplus of produce over labor is moderate suit free peoples; those where rich and fertile land yields much for little labor call for monarchy, to consume through the prince's luxury the excess surplus of the subjects, for it is better that this excess be absorbed by the government than squandered by individuals. There are exceptions, I know; but these very exceptions confirm the rule, since sooner or later they produce revolutions that restore things to the order of nature.\n\nLet us always distinguish general laws from particular causes that may modify their effect. Even if the entire south were covered with republics and the entire north with despotic states, it would remain true that the effect of climate makes despotism suited to hot countries, barbarism to cold countries, and a sound political order to regions between them. I also see that, once the principle is granted, its application may be disputed: one may say that some cold countries are very fertile, and some southern countries very barren. But this is a difficulty only for those who do not examine the matter in all its relations. We must reckon, as I have already said, with labor, strength, consumption, and so on.\n\nSuppose two equal plots of land, one yielding five and the other ten. If the inhabitants of the first consume four and those of the second nine, the surplus of the first yield will be 1/5 and that of the second 1/10. Since the ratio of these two surpluses is the inverse of the ratio of the yields, the plot yielding only five will provide twice the surplus of the plot yielding ten.\n\nBut this is not a question of a twofold yield, and I doubt anyone would dare claim in general that cold countries are even as fertile as hot ones. Nevertheless, let us assume this equality; let us, if you will, weigh England against Sicily and Poland against Egypt. Farther south we have Africa and the Indies; farther north we have nothing at all. Even with an equal yield, what a difference in cultivation! In Sicily one need only scratch the soil; in England, how much care it takes to plow it! Where more hands are needed to produce the same yield, the surplus must necessarily be smaller.\n\nConsider besides that the same number of people consumes much less in hot countries. The climate requires temperance for good health: Europeans who try to live there as they do at home all perish of dysentery and indigestion. “Compared with Asians,” says Chardin, “we are carnivorous beasts, wolves. Some attribute the sobriety of the Persians to their country's being less cultivated; I believe, on the contrary, that their country has less food because its inhabitants need less. If their frugality,” he continues, “were a result of scarcity in the country, only the poor would eat little, whereas everyone generally does; and people would eat more or less in each province according to the fertility of the land, whereas the same sobriety prevails throughout the kingdom. They praise their way of life highly, saying one need only look at their complexion to see how much better it is than that of Christians. The Persians do indeed have an even complexion and skin that is fair, fine, and smooth, whereas the complexion of their subjects the Armenians, who live in the European manner, is coarse and blotchy, and their bodies are heavy and fat.”\n\nThe nearer one comes to the equator, the less people need to live on. They eat scarcely any meat; rice, corn, couscous, millet, and cassava are their ordinary foods. In the Indies there are millions of people whose food costs less than a sol a day. Even in Europe we see marked differences of appetite between northern and southern peoples. A Spaniard can live eight days on a German's dinner. In countries where people are more voracious, luxury turns toward things to be consumed. In England it appears on a table laden with meat; in Italy one is treated to sugar and flowers.\n\nLuxury in clothing shows similar differences. In climates where changes of season are swift and violent, people have better and simpler clothes; where dress is only for adornment, they seek show more than utility, and clothes themselves become a luxury. In Naples you will see men strolling every day along the Pausilipo in gold-embroidered jackets and no stockings. It is the same with buildings: everything is given over to magnificence when one has nothing to fear from the weather. In Paris and London people want warm and comfortable lodgings. In Madrid they have splendid drawing rooms, but no windows that close, and they sleep in rat holes.\n\nFood is much more substantial and succulent in hot countries; this is a third difference that cannot fail to influence the second. Why are so many vegetables eaten in Italy? Because there they are good, nourishing, and excellent in flavor. In France, where they are nourished only by water, they provide no nourishment and scarcely count for anything at table. Yet they take no less land and cost at least as much labor to grow. Experience has shown that the grain of Barbary, inferior in other respects to that of France, yields far more flour, while French grain in turn yields more than northern grain. From this we may infer that a similar progression is generally observed in the same direction from the equator to the pole. Is it not a clear disadvantage to have a smaller quantity of food from an equal yield?\n\nTo all these considerations I may add one that follows from and reinforces them: hot countries need fewer inhabitants than cold countries and could support more. This produces a double surplus, always to the advantage of despotism. The greater the area occupied by the same number of inhabitants, the more difficult revolts become: people cannot concert their plans either quickly or secretly, and the government can always readily discover their designs and cut off communication. But the closer a populous people lives together, the less the government can usurp the sovereign's power: leaders deliberate as securely in their rooms as the prince does in his council, and crowds gather in the squares as quickly as troops in their barracks. The advantage of tyrannical government here, then, is its ability to act over great distances. With the points of support it establishes, its force increases over distance like that of levers. The people's force, on the contrary, works only when concentrated; spread out, it evaporates and is lost, like gunpowder scattered on the ground that ignites only grain by grain. The least populous countries are thus the most suited to tyranny: wild beasts reign only in deserts.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 9\n\nOn the Signs of a Good Government\n\nWhen, then, someone asks without qualification which government is best, the question is as indeterminate as it is impossible to answer; or, if one prefers, it has as many right answers as there are possible combinations of the absolute and relative circumstances of peoples.\n\nBut to ask by what sign we can tell whether a given people is well or badly governed is another matter, and that factual question could be answered.\n\nYet it is not answered, because everyone wants to answer it in his own way. Subjects praise public tranquility, citizens individual freedom; one prefers the security of possessions, another that of persons; one wants the best government to be the most severe, another maintains it is the mildest; this person wants crimes punished, that one wants them prevented; one thinks it splendid to be feared by neighbors, another would rather be unknown to them; one is satisfied when money circulates, another insists that the people have bread. Even if agreement were reached on these and similar points, would we be any further along? Moral qualities lack a precise measure: even if we agreed on the sign, how could we agree on its valuation?\n\nFor my part, I am always astonished that people fail to recognize so simple a sign, or have the bad faith not to acknowledge it. What is the purpose of political association? The preservation and prosperity of its members. And what is the surest sign that they survive and prosper? Their number and population. Do not, then, look elsewhere for this much-disputed sign. All other things being equal, the government under which citizens increase and multiply most, without foreign means, naturalizations, or colonies, is unfailingly the best; the one under which a people dwindles and wastes away is the worst. Calculators, the task is now yours: count, measure, compare.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 10\n\nOn the Abuse of Government and Its Tendency to Degenerate\n\nAs the particular will acts ceaselessly against the general will, so the government makes a continual effort against sovereignty. The greater this effort, the more the constitution deteriorates; and since no other corporate will here can resist and counterbalance the prince's will, sooner or later the prince must finally oppress the sovereign and break the social pact. This is the inherent and inevitable vice that, from the very birth of the body politic, works without respite to destroy it, just as old age and death finally destroy the human body.\n\nThere are two general ways in which a government degenerates: when it contracts, or when the state dissolves.\n\nGovernment contracts when it passes from the greater number to the smaller, that is, from democracy to aristocracy and from aristocracy to kingship. This is its natural inclination. If it moved backward from the smaller number to the greater, one might say that it relaxed; but this reverse progression is impossible.\n\nIndeed, a government never changes its form except when its worn-out spring leaves it too weak to preserve that form. If by spreading out it relaxed still further, its force would become altogether nil, and it would be even less able to endure. The spring must therefore be rewound and tightened as it gives way, or the state it supports will fall into ruin.\n\nThe dissolution of the state may occur in two ways.\n\nFirst, when the prince ceases to administer the state according to the laws and usurps sovereign power. Then a remarkable change takes place: not the government, but the state contracts. I mean that the larger state dissolves and another forms within it, composed solely of the members of the government, which is now nothing to the rest of the people but their master and tyrant. Thus the moment the government usurps sovereignty, the social pact is broken, and all ordinary citizens, restored by right to their natural freedom, are forced, but not obliged, to obey.\n\nThe same thing happens when members of the government each usurp separately the power they ought to exercise only as a body; this is no lesser breach of the laws and produces even greater disorder. Then there are, so to speak, as many princes as magistrates, and the state, no less divided than the government, perishes or changes form.\n\nWhen the state dissolves, abuse of government, whatever its nature, takes the common name of anarchy. To distinguish the cases: democracy degenerates into ochlocracy, aristocracy into oligarchy; I would add that kingship degenerates into tyranny, but this last word is ambiguous and needs explanation.\n\nIn ordinary usage, a tyrant is a king who governs by violence and without regard for justice or the laws. Strictly speaking, a tyrant is a private individual who arrogates royal authority to himself without any right to it. This is how the Greeks understood the word tyrant: they applied it without distinction to good and bad princes whose authority was illegitimate. Tyrant and usurper are thus perfectly synonymous.\n\nTo give different names to different things, I call the usurper of royal authority a tyrant and the usurper of sovereign power a despot. The tyrant intrudes, against the laws, to govern according to the laws; the despot sets himself above the laws themselves. Thus a tyrant may not be a despot, but a despot is always a tyrant.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 11\n\nOn the Death of the Body Politic\n\nSuch is the natural and inevitable tendency even of the best-constituted governments. If Sparta and Rome have perished, what state can hope to endure forever? If we wish to found an enduring institution, let us not dream of making it eternal. To succeed we must not attempt the impossible or flatter ourselves that we can give the work of human hands a solidity that human affairs do not allow.\n\nThe body politic, like the human body, begins to die from the moment of its birth and carries within itself the causes of its destruction. But each may have a constitution more or less robust, better or less well suited to preserve it for a longer or shorter time. The human constitution is the work of nature; that of the state is the work of art. Human beings cannot prolong their own lives at will, but they can prolong the life of the state as far as possible by giving it the best constitution it can have. Even the best-constituted state will come to an end, but later than another would, unless some unforeseen accident destroys it before its time.\n\nThe principle of political life lies in sovereign authority. Legislative power is the heart of the state; executive power is its brain, which imparts motion to all its parts. The brain may be paralyzed and the person still live. A man may lose his reason and live; but as soon as the heart has ceased to function, the creature is dead.\n\nIt is not through its laws that the state subsists, but through its legislative power. Yesterday's law does not bind today; yet tacit consent is presumed from silence, and the sovereign is understood continually to confirm the laws it does not repeal, since it can repeal them. Whatever it once declared it wanted, it continues to want unless it revokes it.\n\nWhy, then, is so much respect paid to ancient laws? For precisely this reason. We must believe that only the excellence of earlier acts of will could have preserved them so long; if the sovereign had not constantly recognized their benefit, it would have repealed them a thousand times. This is why, far from weakening, laws continually acquire fresh strength in every well-constituted state: the reverence for antiquity makes them more venerable each day. Wherever laws weaken as they age, on the contrary, it proves that there is no longer any legislative power, and that the state no longer lives.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 12\n\nHow Sovereign Authority Is Maintained\n\nSince the sovereign has no force other than legislative power, it acts only through laws; and since laws are merely authentic acts of the general will, the sovereign can act only when the people are assembled. The people assembled, someone will say! What a chimera! It is a chimera today, but it was not one two thousand years ago. Has human nature changed?\n\nThe limits of what is possible in moral affairs are less narrow than we think: it is our weaknesses, our vices, our prejudices that make them narrower. Base souls do not believe in great men; abject slaves smile mockingly at the word freedom.\n\nFrom what has been done, let us consider what can be done. I shall not speak of the ancient republics of Greece, but the Roman Republic was, it seems to me, a great state, and the city of Rome a great city. The last census recorded four hundred thousand citizens bearing arms in Rome, and the last count of the Empire more than four million citizens, not including subjects, foreigners, women, children, and slaves.\n\nWhat difficulties people would imagine in frequently assembling the immense population of that capital and its surroundings! Yet hardly a few weeks went by without the Roman people assembling, sometimes more than once. Not only did they exercise the rights of sovereignty, but some of those of government as well. They conducted certain affairs and judged certain cases, and all these people were in the public square almost as often as magistrates as they were as citizens.\n\nIf we go back to the earliest days of nations, we find that most ancient governments, even monarchies such as those of the Macedonians and the Franks, had similar councils. In any case, this one indisputable fact answers every difficulty: from what exists to what is possible the inference seems sound to me.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 13\n\nContinuation.\n\nIt is not enough that the assembled people should once have fixed the constitution of the state by giving its sanction to a body of laws; it is not enough that it should have established a perpetual government or provided once and for all for the election of magistrates. Besides the extraordinary assemblies that unforeseen circumstances may require, there must be fixed, periodic assemblies that nothing can abolish or postpone, so that on the appointed day the people are lawfully convened by the law itself, without any need for another formal summons.\n\nBut apart from these assemblies, whose date alone gives them legal standing, every assembly of the people not called by the magistrates appointed for that purpose, and in the prescribed forms, must be held illegitimate and everything done there null; for the very order to assemble must emanate from the law.\n\nAs for how often lawful assemblies should recur, this depends on so many considerations that no precise rules can be given. One can say only, in general, that the stronger the government, the more frequently the sovereign must appear.\n\nThis, I shall be told, may work for a single city; but what is to be done when the state contains several? Is sovereign authority to be divided, or must it be concentrated in one city and all the rest subjected to it?\n\nI answer that neither course should be taken. First, sovereign authority is simple and one, and cannot be divided without being destroyed. Second, a city, no more than a nation, can legitimately be subject to another, because the essence of the body politic lies in the union of obedience and freedom, and the words subject and sovereign name correlative aspects of the same thing, united in the single word citizen.\n\nI answer further that it is always an evil to unite several towns into a single city, and that anyone intent on such a union should not flatter himself that he can escape its natural disadvantages. One should not cite the abuses of large states against someone who wants only small ones; but how can small states be given strength enough to resist the great? As the Greek cities once resisted the Great King, and as, more recently, Holland and Switzerland resisted the house of Austria.\n\nYet if the state cannot be brought within proper bounds, one resource remains: allow it no capital, have the government sit in each city in turn, and assemble the estates of the country there in turn as well.\n\nPeople the territory evenly, extend the same rights throughout it, carry abundance and life everywhere: thus the state will become at once as strong and as well governed as it can be. Remember that the walls of cities are built only from the ruins of houses in the countryside. For every palace I see rise in the capital, I seem to see an entire country reduced to ruins.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 14\n\nContinuation.\n\nThe moment the people are lawfully assembled as the sovereign body, all jurisdiction of the government ceases, executive power is suspended, and the person of the humblest citizen is as sacred and inviolable as that of the highest magistrate; for where the represented is present, there is no longer a representative. Most of the tumults that arose at Rome in the comitia came from ignorance or neglect of this rule. The consuls were then merely presidents of the people, the tribunes mere speakers, and the Senate was nothing at all.\n\nThese intervals of suspension, when the prince recognizes, or ought to recognize, an actual superior, have always filled him with dread; and these assemblies of the people, the shield of the body politic and the curb upon government, have always been the horror of its chiefs. Thus they spare no effort, objection, obstacle, or promise to turn citizens away from them. When citizens are grasping, cowardly, fainthearted, more in love with repose than with liberty, they do not long withstand the government's repeated efforts; and thus, as the resisting force steadily grows, sovereign authority at last vanishes, and most cities fall and perish before their time.\n\nBut between sovereign authority and arbitrary government there sometimes arises an intermediate power, of which I must speak.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 15\n\nDeputies or Representatives.\n\nAs soon as public service ceases to be the citizens' principal concern, and they would rather serve with their purses than in person, the state is already close to ruin. Must they march to battle? They pay troops and stay at home. Must they attend the council? They appoint deputies and stay at home. By dint of laziness and money, they finally have soldiers to enslave the fatherland and representatives to sell it.\n\nIt is the bustle of commerce and the arts, the greedy pursuit of gain, softness and the love of convenience, that turn personal service into payments of money. One yields a portion of one's profit to increase it at one's ease. Give money, and soon you will have chains. Finance is a slave's word; it is unknown in the city. In a truly free state citizens do everything with their own hands and nothing with money: far from paying to be exempted from their duties, they would pay to perform them themselves. I am far from the common view; I believe compulsory labor less contrary to freedom than taxes.\n\nThe better constituted the state, the more public affairs outweigh private ones in the citizens' minds. There are even far fewer private affairs, because the sum of common happiness contributes a larger share to each individual's happiness, leaving him less to seek through private cares. In a well-ordered city everyone hastens to the assemblies; under a bad government no one likes to take a step to attend them, because no one takes an interest in what is done there, because it is foreseen that the general will surely will not prevail there, and because, finally, domestic concerns consume everything. Good laws lead to better laws; bad ones bring on worse. As soon as anyone says of the affairs of state, “What does it matter to me?” the state must be reckoned lost.\n\nThe cooling of love of country, the activity of private interest, the vastness of states, conquests, and the abuse of government have led to the device of deputies or representatives of the people in the nation's assemblies. This is what in certain countries they dare call the Third Estate. Thus the particular interest of two orders is placed first and second; the public interest comes only third.\n\nSovereignty cannot be represented for the same reason that it cannot be alienated: it consists essentially in the general will, and the will cannot be represented. It is either the same will or another; there is no middle course. The people's deputies, then, are not and cannot be its representatives; they are only its commissioners. They can decide nothing definitively. Any law that the people have not ratified in person is null; it is no law at all. The English people think themselves free; they are gravely mistaken. They are free only during the election of the members of Parliament; as soon as those members are elected, the people are enslaved, they are nothing. The use they make of their brief moments of freedom richly deserves its loss.\n\nThe idea of representatives is modern: it comes to us from feudal government, that unjust and absurd government in which the human species is degraded and the very name of man dishonored. In the ancient republics, and even in monarchies, the people never had representatives; the word was unknown. It is remarkable that in Rome, where the tribunes were so sacred, no one even imagined that they could usurp the people's functions, and that amid so great a multitude they never attempted to pass a single plebiscite on their own authority. Yet the trouble the crowd sometimes caused may be judged from what happened in the time of the Gracchi, when some citizens cast their votes from the rooftops.\n\nWhere right and liberty are everything, inconveniences count for nothing. Among that wise people everything was kept in its proper measure: it let its lictors do what its tribunes would never have dared to do; it did not fear that its lictors would seek to represent it.\n\nTo explain, however, how the tribunes sometimes represented the people, it is enough to understand how the government represents the sovereign. Since law is only the declaration of the general will, it is clear that the people cannot be represented in legislative power; but it can and must be represented in executive power, which is merely force applied to law. This shows that, if the matter is closely examined, very few nations will be found to have laws. In any case, it is certain that the tribunes, having no share in executive power, could never represent the Roman people by virtue of their office, but only by usurping the rights of the Senate.\n\nAmong the Greeks, whatever the people had to do, they did themselves; they were continually assembled in the public square. They lived in a mild climate, they were not greedy, slaves did their work, and their chief concern was liberty. Without the same advantages, how can you preserve the same rights? Your harsher climates give you greater needs; for six months of the year the public square is uninhabitable; your muffled languages cannot be heard in the open air; you devote yourselves more to gain than to liberty, and you fear slavery far less than poverty.\n\nWhat! Can liberty be maintained only with the support of servitude? Perhaps. The two extremes touch. Everything that is not in nature has its disadvantages, and civil society more than anything else. There are unhappy circumstances in which people can preserve their own liberty only at the expense of someone else's, and the citizen can be perfectly free only if the slave is utterly enslaved. Such was the condition of Sparta. As for you, modern peoples, you have no slaves, but you yourselves are slaves; you pay for their freedom with your own. You may boast of this preference as much as you like; I find in it more cowardice than humanity.\n\nI do not mean by any of this that we ought to have slaves, or that the right of slavery is legitimate, since I have proved the contrary. I state only why modern peoples who believe themselves free have representatives, and why ancient peoples had none. Be that as it may, the moment a people gives itself representatives, it is no longer free; it no longer exists.\n\nOn examining everything, I cannot see how it will henceforth be possible for the sovereign to retain the exercise of its rights among us unless the city is very small. But if it is very small, will it be conquered? No. I shall show later how the external power of a great people can be united with the easy administration and good order of a small state.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 16\n\nThat the Institution of Government Is Not a Contract.\n\nOnce legislative power has been firmly established, executive power must be established as well; for the latter acts only through particular acts and, not belonging to the essence of the former, is naturally separate from it. If it were possible for the sovereign, as sovereign, to possess executive power, right and fact would become so confused that one could no longer tell what was law and what was not; and the body politic, thus perverted, would soon fall prey to the very violence against which it was instituted.\n\nSince all citizens are equal by the social pact, what all must do all may prescribe; whereas no one has a right to demand that another do what he himself does not do. Now it is precisely this right, indispensable to the life and movement of the body politic, that the sovereign grants the prince in instituting the government.\n\nSeveral have maintained that the act establishing government was a contract between the people and the chiefs it chooses for itself, a contract stipulating between the two parties the conditions on which one undertakes to command and the other to obey. Everyone will agree, I am sure, that this is a strange way to make a contract! But let us see whether the opinion can be sustained.\n\nFirst, supreme authority can no more be modified than alienated; to limit it is to destroy it. It is absurd and contradictory for the sovereign to give itself a superior: to undertake to obey a master is to recover one's complete freedom.\n\nMoreover, it is evident that such a contract between the people and particular persons would be a particular act. It follows that this contract could be neither a law nor an act of sovereignty, and consequently would be illegitimate.\n\nWe can also see that the contracting parties would stand in relation to each other under the law of nature alone, with no guarantor of their reciprocal commitments, which is wholly incompatible with the civil state. Since whoever holds the power would always control its execution, one might as well call it a contract if one man said to another, “I give you all my property, on condition that you return to me as much of it as you please.”\n\nThere is only one contract in the state: the contract of association; and that alone excludes all others. No public contract can be imagined that would not violate the first.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 17\n\nOn the Institution of Government.\n\nHow, then, are we to conceive of the act by which government is instituted? I shall first observe that this act is complex, or composed of two others: the establishment of a law and the execution of that law.\n\nBy the first, the sovereign decrees that a body of government shall be established in one form or another; and clearly this act is a law.\n\nBy the second, the people appoint the chiefs who will be entrusted with the government thus established. Now, since this appointment is a particular act, it is not a second law, but only a consequence of the first and a function of government.\n\nThe difficulty is to understand how there can be an act of government before government exists, and how the people, who are only sovereign or subject, can in certain circumstances become prince or magistrate.\n\nHere again we discover one of those astonishing properties of the body politic by which it reconciles operations apparently at odds. This is accomplished by a sudden conversion of sovereignty into democracy: without any perceptible change, and solely through a new relation of all to all, the citizens, now become magistrates, pass from general acts to particular acts, and from law to its execution.\n\nThis change in relation is not a speculative subtlety without an example in practice. It occurs every day in the Parliament of England, where on certain occasions the lower house turns itself into a grand committee to discuss business more fully, and so becomes a mere committee, though the moment before it was a sovereign court. It then reports to itself, as the House of Commons, what it has just settled as the grand committee, and deliberates anew under one title on what it has already resolved under another.\n\nThis is the distinctive advantage of democratic government: it can in fact be established by a simple act of the general will. Afterward, this provisional government remains in place if that is the form adopted, or establishes, in the sovereign's name, the government prescribed by law; and thus everything proceeds according to rule. No government can be legitimately instituted in any other way without renouncing the principles established above.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 18\n\nHow to Prevent the Usurpations of Government.\n\nThese clarifications confirm what was said in chapter XVI: the act instituting government is not a contract but a law; the holders of executive power are not the people's masters but their officers; the people may appoint and dismiss them whenever it pleases; their task is not to contract but to obey; and in undertaking the duties the state imposes on them they merely fulfill their duty as citizens, without having any right whatever to bargain over the terms.\n\nThus, when the people institute a hereditary government, whether monarchical within a family or aristocratic within an order of citizens, they undertake no binding commitment. They give the administration a provisional form, until it pleases them to order otherwise.\n\nIt is true that such changes are always dangerous, and that an established government should never be touched unless it becomes incompatible with the public good; but this caution is a maxim of policy, not a rule of right, and the state is no more bound to leave civil authority in the hands of its chiefs than military authority in the hands of its generals.\n\nIt is also true that in such a case no care is too great in observing every formality required to distinguish a regular, lawful act from a seditious tumult, and the will of an entire people from the cries of a faction. Here above all one must concede to the objectionable case only what cannot be denied it under the strictest interpretation of right. It is from this very obligation that the prince gains a great advantage in retaining his power against the people, without anyone being able to say that he has usurped it. For by appearing merely to exercise his rights, he can easily extend them and, on the pretext of public peace, prevent assemblies intended to restore good order. Thus he uses a silence he himself prevents anyone from breaking, or irregularities he himself causes, to claim the assent of those silenced by fear and to punish those who dare to speak. In this way the decemvirs, first elected for one year and then continued for another, tried to retain their power forever by no longer allowing the comitia to assemble. And by this simple means every government in the world, once vested with public force, sooner or later usurps sovereign authority.\n\nThe periodic assemblies of which I spoke above are suited to preventing or delaying this calamity, especially when they need no formal summons; for the prince cannot then prevent them without openly declaring himself a violator of the laws and an enemy of the state.\n\nThese assemblies, whose sole purpose is to maintain the social pact, should always open with two motions that can never be suppressed and that are put separately to the vote.\n\nThe first: whether it pleases the sovereign to retain the present form of government.\n\nThe second: whether it pleases the people to leave its administration to those currently entrusted with it.\n\nI assume here what I believe I have demonstrated: that no fundamental law in the state is beyond repeal, not even the social pact itself; for if all the citizens assembled to dissolve that pact by common agreement, no one could doubt that it would be dissolved with complete legitimacy. Grotius even thinks that each person can renounce the state of which he is a member and recover his natural liberty and his goods by leaving the country. It would be absurd, then, if all the citizens together could not do what each can do separately.\n\nEnd of the Third Book.\n\n### Book IV, Chapter 1\n\nThat the General Will Is Indestructible.\n\nSo long as several men united consider themselves a single body, they have only a single will, directed toward their common preservation and general well-being. Then all the springs of the state are vigorous and simple, its principles clear and luminous; it has no tangled, conflicting interests. The common good is evident everywhere, and requires only good sense to be perceived. Peace, union, and equality are enemies of political subtleties. Upright and simple men are hard to deceive because of their simplicity; ingenious lures and pretexts make no impression on them; they are not even clever enough to be duped. When we see, among the happiest people in the world, bands of peasants settling the affairs of state beneath an oak and always acting wisely, can we help but despise the refinements of other nations, which make themselves illustrious and miserable with so much art and mystery?\n\nA state governed in this way needs very few laws, and as it becomes necessary to promulgate new ones, everyone sees the necessity. The first person to propose them only says what all have already felt; neither intrigue nor eloquence is needed to turn into law what each has already resolved to do as soon as he is certain the others will do likewise.\n\nWhat misleads the theorists is that, seeing only states badly constituted from the outset, they are struck by the impossibility of maintaining such an order in them. They laugh at the thought of all the nonsense a skillful trickster or persuasive speaker could make the people of Paris or London believe. They do not know that Cromwell would have been put in the stocks by the people of Bern, and the Duke of Beaufort brought to heel by the people of Geneva.\n\nBut when the social bond begins to slacken and the state to weaken; when private interests begin to make themselves felt and small societies to influence the larger one, the common interest is corrupted and meets opposition. Unanimity no longer reigns in the votes, the general will is no longer the will of all, contradictions and disputes arise, and the soundest proposal does not pass without contention.\n\nAt last, when the state, close to ruin, survives only as an empty, illusory form, when the social bond has broken in every heart, when the basest interest brazenly adorns itself with the sacred name of the public good, then the general will falls silent. All, guided by secret motives, vote no more as citizens than if the state had never existed; and under the false name of laws, unjust decrees are passed that aim solely at private interest.\n\nDoes it follow that the general will is destroyed or corrupted? No: it remains constant, unalterable, and pure; but it is subordinated to other wills that prevail over it. Each person, detaching his interest from the common interest, sees clearly that he cannot separate them entirely; but his share of the public harm seems nothing beside the exclusive benefit he hopes to seize for himself. Apart from that particular benefit, he wills the general good in his own interest as strongly as anyone else. Even when he sells his vote for money, he does not extinguish the general will within him; he evades it. His fault lies in changing the question and answering something other than what is asked of him. Instead of saying by his vote, “This is advantageous to the state,” he says, “It is advantageous to this man or that party that this or that proposal should pass.” Thus the rule of public order in assemblies is not so much to preserve the general will there as to ensure that it is always asked the question and always gives the answer.\n\nI could offer many reflections here on the simple right to vote in every act of sovereignty, a right of which nothing can deprive citizens; and on the right to speak, propose, divide a question, and debate, which the government always takes great care to reserve for its own members. But this important subject would require a treatise of its own, and I cannot say everything in this one.\n\n### Book IV, Chapter 2\n\nOn Voting.\n\nIt is clear from the preceding chapter that the manner in which public affairs are conducted can provide a fairly sure indication of the present state of morals and the health of the body politic. The more harmony prevails in assemblies—that is, the closer opinions come to unanimity—the more dominant the general will; but long debates, dissensions, and tumult announce the ascendancy of private interests and the decline of the state.\n\nThis seems less obvious when two or more orders enter into the state's constitution, as in Rome with the patricians and plebeians, whose quarrels often disturbed the comitia even in the republic's finest days. But the exception is more apparent than real: for then, through an inherent defect in the body politic, there are, so to speak, two states in one; what is untrue of the two together is true of each separately. Indeed, even in the most turbulent times, the people's plebiscites, when the Senate did not interfere, always passed peacefully and by a large majority of votes: the citizens having only one interest, the people had only one will.\n\nAt the other extreme of the circle, unanimity returns. This occurs when citizens, fallen into servitude, have neither freedom nor will. Then fear and flattery turn votes into acclamations: no one deliberates any longer; they worship or they curse. Such was the Senate's base manner of voting under the emperors. Sometimes it was done with ridiculous precautions: Tacitus observes that under Otho, the senators, while heaping curses on Vitellius, deliberately made a terrible din at the same time, so that if by chance he became master, he would not know what each of them had said.\n\nFrom these various considerations arise the principles by which the manner of counting votes and comparing opinions should be regulated, according to whether the general will is easier or harder to discern, and whether the state is more or less far gone in decline.\n\nOnly one law by its nature requires unanimous consent: the social pact. For civil association is the most voluntary act in the world; every man being born free and his own master, no one may, under any pretext whatever, subject him without his consent. To decide that the son of a slave is born a slave is to decide that he is not born a man.\n\nIf, then, there are opponents when the social pact is made, their opposition does not invalidate the contract; it merely prevents their inclusion in it. They are foreigners among citizens. Once the state is instituted, consent is signified by residence: to inhabit its territory is to submit to its sovereignty.\n\nApart from this original contract, the vote of the greater number always binds all the rest; this follows from the contract itself. But the question arises how a man can be free and yet forced to conform to wills that are not his own. How can opponents be free while subject to laws to which they have not consented?\n\nI answer that the question is wrongly put. The citizen consents to all the laws, even those passed against his wishes, and even those that punish him when he dares to break one. The constant will of all the members of the state is the general will; through it they are citizens and free. When a law is proposed in the people's assembly, what the people are asked is not exactly whether they approve or reject the proposal, but whether or not it conforms to the general will, which is their own. Each, in casting his vote, gives his opinion on this; and the count of the votes yields a declaration of the general will. Thus, when the opinion opposed to mine prevails, it proves nothing except that I was mistaken, and that what I thought was the general will was not. Had my private opinion prevailed, I would have done something other than what I wished; then I would not have been free.\n\nThis assumes, it is true, that all the marks of the general will are still found in the majority. When they cease to be found there, whatever course is taken, freedom is no more.\n\nIn showing earlier how private wills were substituted for the general will in public deliberations, I have sufficiently indicated practicable means of preventing this abuse; I shall speak of them again below. As to the proportion of votes needed to declare that will, I have also set out the principles on which it may be determined. A difference of one vote breaks a tie; a single opponent breaks unanimity. But between unanimity and a tie there are many unequal divisions, for each of which this number may be fixed according to the state and needs of the body politic.\n\nTwo general principles can serve to regulate these proportions. The first is that the more important and grave the deliberations, the closer the prevailing opinion should come to unanimity. The second is that the greater the urgency of the matter under discussion, the narrower the required margin between the opposing votes should be; in deliberations that must be concluded on the spot, a majority of one vote should suffice. The first of these principles seems more suitable to laws, and the second to matters of business. However that may be, it is their combination that establishes the best proportions for the majority required to decide.\n\n### Book IV, Chapter 3\n\nOn Elections.\n\nAs for the election of the prince and magistrates, which are, as I have said, complex acts, there are two ways to proceed: choice and lot. Both have been used in various republics, and even now a very complicated mixture of the two can be seen in the election of the Doge of Venice.\n\nVoting by lot, says Montesquieu, is in the nature of democracy. I agree; but why is that? Lot, he continues, is a way of electing that offends no one; it leaves every citizen a reasonable hope of serving his country. These are not reasons.\n\nIf we bear in mind that the election of chiefs is a function of government and not of sovereignty, we shall see why the use of lot is more in the nature of democracy, where administration is better the fewer its acts become.\n\nIn every true democracy magistracy is not an advantage but a burdensome duty, which cannot justly be imposed on one individual rather than another. Only the law can impose that duty on the person on whom the lot falls. For then, the condition being equal for all, and the choice depending on no human will, no particular application alters the universality of the law.\n\nIn an aristocracy the prince chooses the prince, the government perpetuates itself, and it is there that voting has its proper place.\n\nThe example of the election of the Doge of Venice confirms this distinction rather than overturning it: this mixed procedure suits a mixed government. For it is a mistake to take the government of Venice for a true aristocracy. If the people have no part in its government, the nobility there are themselves the people. A multitude of poor Barnabotes never came near any magistracy, and their nobility gives them nothing but the empty title of Excellence and the right to attend the Grand Council. This Grand Council being as numerous as our General Council in Geneva, its illustrious members have no more privileges than our ordinary citizens. Certainly, setting aside the extreme difference between the two republics, the citizenry of Geneva corresponds exactly to the Venetian patriciate, our natives and residents correspond to the townspeople and people of Venice, and our peasants correspond to its mainland subjects. In short, however one considers this republic, apart from its size, its government is no more aristocratic than ours. The whole difference is that, since we have no chief holding office for life, we have no comparable need for the lot.\n\nElections by lot would have few disadvantages in a true democracy where, everything being equal in morals and talents as well as in principles and fortune, the choice would become almost a matter of indifference. But I have already said that no true democracy exists.\n\nWhen choice and lot are combined, the first should fill positions calling for special talents, such as military posts; the second suits those for which good sense, justice, and integrity suffice, such as judicial offices, because in a well-constituted state these qualities are common to all citizens.\n\nNeither lot nor voting has any place in monarchical government. Since the monarch is by right sole prince and sole magistrate, the choice of his deputies belongs to him alone. When the Abbé de St. Pierre proposed multiplying the councils of the King of France and electing their members by ballot, he did not see that he was proposing to change the form of government.\n\nIt remains for me to speak of the way votes are cast and collected in the people's assembly; but perhaps the history of Roman practice in this matter will explain more vividly all the principles I could lay down. It is not unworthy of a discerning reader to see in some detail how public and private business was conducted in an assembly of two hundred thousand men.\n\n### Book IV, Chapter 4\n\nOn the Roman Comitia.\n\nWe have no reliable records of Rome’s earliest times; indeed, most of what is told about them seems likely to be fable. And in general, the most instructive part of a people’s annals—the history of its founding—is precisely what we most lack. Experience teaches us every day what causes the revolutions of empires; but since peoples are no longer being formed, we have little more than conjectures to explain how they were formed.\n\nEstablished customs at least attest that those customs had an origin. Among traditions reaching back to those origins, those supported by the greatest authorities and confirmed by the strongest reasons must pass for the most certain. These are the principles I have tried to follow in investigating how the freest and most powerful people on earth exercised its supreme power.\n\nAfter the founding of Rome, the nascent republic—that is, the founder’s army, composed of Albans, Sabines, and foreigners—was divided into three classes, which from this division took the name of tribes. Each of these tribes was subdivided into ten curiae, and each curia into decuries, headed by chiefs called curions and decurions.\n\nBesides this, a body of a hundred horsemen or knights, called a century, was drawn from each tribe. From this we see that these divisions, scarcely necessary in a village, were at first purely military. But it seems that an instinct for greatness led the little city of Rome to give itself in advance an organization suited to the capital of the world.\n\nThis first partition soon produced a difficulty. The Alban and Sabine tribes remained always at the same strength, while the tribe of foreigners grew constantly through the continual arrival of new members; thus the last soon surpassed the other two. Servius’s remedy for this dangerous abuse was to change the division: he abolished the one based on descent and substituted another based on the parts of the city occupied by each tribe. Instead of three tribes he made four, each occupying one of the hills of Rome and bearing its name. Thus, in remedying the present inequality, he also forestalled it for the future; and so that the division should be one of people and not merely of places, he forbade the inhabitants of one district to move into another, thereby preventing the different peoples from becoming intermixed.\n\nHe also doubled the three old cavalry centuries and added twelve more to them, but always under the old names: a simple and judicious means by which he completed the distinction between the body of knights and that of the people, without provoking the latter’s resentment.\n\nTo these four urban tribes Servius added fifteen more, called rural tribes because they were formed from the inhabitants of the countryside, divided into as many districts. Later an equal number of new ones were made, and the Roman people found itself divided at last into thirty-five tribes, a number at which they remained fixed until the end of the republic.\n\nThis distinction between the city tribes and the country tribes had an effect worth observing, for it has no other example, and Rome owed to it both the preservation of its morals and the growth of its empire. One might think that the urban tribes soon arrogated power and honors to themselves and promptly debased the rural tribes; precisely the opposite occurred. The early Romans’ taste for country life is well known. They owed this taste to their wise founder, who joined rural and military labor to freedom, and relegated to the city, so to speak, the arts, trades, intrigue, wealth, and slavery.\n\nThus, since all that was illustrious in Rome lived in the countryside and cultivated the land, people grew accustomed to looking there alone for the republic’s mainstays. Since this was the condition of the worthiest patricians, it was honored by everyone: the simple, laborious life of the villagers was preferred to the idle, indolent life of Rome’s townspeople, and a man who would have been no more than a wretched proletarian in the city became, as a farmer in the countryside, a respected citizen. Not without reason, said Varro, did our magnanimous ancestors establish in the villages a nursery for the hardy and valiant men who defended them in time of war and fed them in time of peace. Pliny says plainly that the country tribes were honored because of the men who made them up, whereas cowards whom people wished to degrade were transferred in disgrace to the city tribes. When the Sabine Appius Claudius came to settle in Rome, he was showered with honors and enrolled in a rural tribe that later took his family’s name. Finally, freedmen all entered the urban tribes, never the rural ones; and throughout the whole republic there is not a single instance of any of these freedmen attaining a magistracy, though they had become citizens.\n\nThis principle was excellent; but it was carried so far that it ultimately produced a change and certainly an abuse in the constitution.\n\nFirst, after long arrogating to themselves the right to transfer citizens arbitrarily from one tribe to another, the censors allowed most people to enroll in whichever tribe pleased them. This permission certainly did no good and deprived the censorship of one of its chief levers. Furthermore, as the great and powerful all enrolled in the country tribes, and freedmen who had become citizens remained with the common people in the city tribes, the tribes in general no longer had any locality or territory. All became so intermingled that their members could no longer be distinguished except by the registers, so that the idea conveyed by the word tribe passed from a real to a personal distinction—or rather, became almost a fiction.\n\nIt also came about that the city tribes, being nearer at hand, were often the stronger at the comitia, and sold the state to those who deigned to buy the votes of the rabble that composed them.\n\nAs for the curiae, the founder had established ten in each tribe; thus the whole Roman people, then contained within the city walls, comprised thirty curiae, each with its temples, gods, officers, priests, and festivals called compitalia, similar to the paganalia that the rural tribes had later.\n\nWhen Servius made his new partition, these thirty could not be distributed equally among his four tribes, so he chose not to disturb them, and the curiae, independent of the tribes, became another division of Rome’s inhabitants. But there was no question of curiae either in the rural tribes or among the people who composed them, because the tribes had become a purely civil institution, and another arrangement had been introduced for levying troops, making the military divisions of Romulus superfluous. Thus, although every citizen was enrolled in a tribe, far from every citizen was enrolled in a curia.\n\nServius made a third division as well, unrelated to the preceding two, which in its effects became the most important of all. He distributed the whole Roman people into six classes, distinguishing them neither by location nor by persons but by property: the first classes were filled with the rich, the last with the poor, and the middle classes with those of moderate means. These six classes were subdivided into 193 other bodies called centuries, and these bodies were so distributed that the first class alone contained more than half of them, while the last formed only a single one. Thus the class with the fewest people had the most centuries, and the whole last class counted for only one subdivision, although it alone contained more than half the inhabitants of Rome.\n\nTo make the people less aware of the consequences of this last arrangement, Servius took pains to give it a military appearance: he inserted two centuries of armorers in the second class and two of makers of instruments of war in the fourth. In each class except the last, he distinguished the young from the old—that is, those obliged to bear arms from those whose age exempted them under the laws. This distinction, more than the distinction by property, made it necessary to repeat the census, or enumeration, often. Finally, he required that the assembly meet on the Field of Mars, and that all those of an age to serve come there bearing their arms.\n\nThe reason he did not follow the same division into young and old in the last class is that the common people who composed it were not granted the honor of bearing arms for their country. One had to have a hearth in order to gain the right to defend it; and of the innumerable bands of paupers who adorn the armies of kings today, perhaps not one would have escaped disdainful expulsion from a Roman cohort when soldiers were the defenders of freedom.\n\nYet a further distinction was made in the last class between the proletarians and those called capite censi. The former, not reduced to utter nothingness, at least furnished the state with citizens, sometimes even with soldiers in urgent need. Those who possessed nothing at all and could be counted only by their heads were regarded as complete nonentities, and Marius was the first to deign to enlist them.\n\nWithout deciding here whether this third enumeration was good or bad in itself, I believe I may affirm that only the simple morals of the early Romans, their disinterestedness, their taste for agriculture, and their contempt for commerce and the fever of gain could have made it practicable. Among what modern people could devouring greed, restless ambition, intrigue, constant shifts of residence, and perpetual reversals of fortune allow such an institution to endure twenty years without overturning the whole state? We should indeed note that morals and the censorship, stronger than this institution, corrected its flaw at Rome, and that more than one rich man found himself relegated to the class of the poor for displaying his wealth too ostentatiously.\n\nFrom all this one can readily understand why almost all mention is of only five classes, though there were actually six. The sixth, supplying neither soldiers to the army nor voters on the Field of Mars, and being of almost no use in the republic, was seldom counted for anything.\n\nSuch were the different divisions of the Roman people. Let us now see what effect they produced in the assemblies. Assemblies lawfully convoked were called comitia; they were ordinarily held in Rome’s public square or on the Field of Mars, and were distinguished as comitia by curiae, comitia by centuries, and comitia by tribes, according to which of these three forms governed their organization: the comitia by curiae were established by Romulus, those by centuries by Servius, and those by tribes by the tribunes of the people. No law received sanction and no magistrate was elected except in the comitia; and since there was no citizen who was not enrolled in a curia, a century, or a tribe, it follows that no citizen was excluded from the right to vote, and that the Roman people were truly sovereign both in right and in fact.\n\nFor the comitia to be lawfully assembled and their proceedings to have the force of law, three conditions had to be met: first, the body or magistrate convoking them had to possess the requisite authority; second, the assembly had to take place on a day permitted by law; third, the auguries had to be favorable.\n\nThe reason for the first rule needs no explanation. The second was a matter of public order: it was not permitted to hold the comitia on holidays or market days, when country people coming to Rome on business had no time to spend the day in the public square. By the third, the senate kept a proud and restless people in check and opportunely tempered the ardor of seditious tribunes; but the latter found more than one way to escape this restraint.\n\nLaws and the election of leaders were not the only matters submitted to the judgment of the comitia. Since the Roman people had usurped the most important functions of government, one may say that the fate of Europe was settled in their assemblies. This variety of business gave rise to the different forms these assemblies took according to the matters on which they had to pronounce.\n\nTo judge these different forms it is enough to compare them. When Romulus established the curiae, his aim was to restrain the senate by the people and the people by the senate, while holding sway equally over all. By this form, therefore, he gave the people all the authority of numbers to counterbalance the power and wealth he left to the patricians. But in keeping with the spirit of monarchy he nonetheless gave the patricians a further advantage, through their clients’ influence over the majority of votes. This admirable institution of patrons and clients was a masterpiece of politics and humanity, without which the patriciate, so contrary to the spirit of the republic, could not have survived. Rome alone has had the honor of giving the world this fine example, from which no abuse ever arose, and which has nevertheless never been followed.\n\nSince this same form of the curiae survived under the kings until Servius, and the reign of the last Tarquin was not counted as legitimate, royal laws were generally distinguished by the name leges curiatæ.\n\nUnder the republic the curiae, still confined to the four urban tribes and now containing only the common people of Rome, could suit neither the senate, which headed the patricians, nor the tribunes, who, though plebeians, headed the well-to-do citizens. They therefore fell into disrepute, and their degradation went so far that their thirty assembled lictors performed the functions that the comitia by curiae ought to have performed.\n\nThe division by centuries was so favorable to aristocracy that at first one cannot see why the senate did not always prevail in the comitia bearing that name, which elected the consuls, the censors, and the other curule magistrates. Indeed, of the one hundred and ninety-three centuries making up the six classes of the entire Roman people, the first class contained ninety-eight; and since votes were counted only by centuries, this first class alone outnumbered all the others in votes. When all its centuries agreed, the collection of votes did not even continue: what the smallest number had decided passed for a decision of the multitude, and one may say that in the comitia by centuries affairs were settled by a majority of money far more than by a majority of voices.\n\nBut this extreme authority was tempered by two means. First, the tribunes were ordinarily in the class of the rich, as were always a great many plebeians; they counterbalanced the influence of the patricians in this first class.\n\nThe second means was this: instead of immediately having the centuries vote in their order, which would always have meant beginning with the first, one century was chosen by lot, and this one alone proceeded to the election. Afterward all the centuries, summoned on another day in order of rank, repeated the same election and ordinarily confirmed it. Thus the authority of example was taken away from rank and given to chance, in accordance with the principle of democracy.\n\nA further advantage followed from this custom: country citizens had time between the two elections to learn the merits of the provisionally named candidate, so that they might vote with knowledge of the facts. But on the pretext of speed the custom was ultimately abolished, and both elections were held on the same day.\n\nThe comitia by tribes were properly the council of the Roman people. They were convoked only by the tribunes; the tribunes were elected there and passed their plebiscites there. Not only did the senate have no place in them, it did not even have the right to attend. Forced to obey laws on which they had been unable to vote, the senators were in this respect less free than the lowest citizens. This injustice was altogether ill-conceived and would alone have sufficed to invalidate the decrees of a body to which not all its members were admitted. Even if all the patricians had attended these comitia by the right they possessed as citizens, they would then have become mere private individuals and had little influence on a form of voting in which votes were counted by head, and the humblest proletarian had as much weight as the foremost man in the senate.\n\nWe see, then, that besides the order these different divisions brought to the collection of the votes of so great a people, the divisions were not merely forms indifferent in themselves: each had effects corresponding to the aims for which it was preferred.\n\nWithout going into further detail, it follows from the preceding explanations that the comitia by tribes were most favorable to popular government, and the comitia by centuries to aristocracy. As for the comitia by curiae, in which the common people of Rome alone formed the majority, since they could only favor tyranny and evil designs, they were bound to fall into discredit; even the seditious refrained from using a means that exposed their projects too openly. It is certain that the full majesty of the Roman people was found only in the comitia by centuries, which alone were complete, since the rural tribes were absent from the comitia by curiae, and the senate and the patricians from the comitia by tribes.\n\nAs for the manner of collecting votes, among the early Romans it was as simple as their morals, though still less simple than at Sparta. Each man gave his vote aloud, and a clerk wrote the votes down as they came in; a majority of voices within each tribe determined the tribe’s vote, a majority of votes among the tribes determined the people’s vote, and so likewise with the curiae and centuries. This practice was good as long as honesty prevailed among citizens and each man was ashamed to vote publicly for an unjust proposal or an unworthy candidate. But when the people grew corrupt and votes were bought, it became fitting to cast them in secret, so as to restrain the buyers through distrust and give the rascals a way not to become traitors.\n\nI know that Cicero condemns this change and attributes to it, in part, the ruin of the republic. But though I feel how much weight Cicero’s authority must have here, I cannot agree with him. On the contrary, I think the state’s downfall was hastened because too few such changes were made. Just as the regimen of healthy people does not suit the sick, one must not try to govern a corrupt people by the same laws that suit a good people. Nothing proves this principle better than the duration of the republic of Venice, whose semblance still exists, solely because its laws suit only wicked men.\n\nCitizens, then, were given tablets by which each could vote without his opinion being known. New formalities were also established for collecting the tablets, counting the votes, comparing the totals, and so on. Yet this did not prevent frequent suspicion of the fidelity of the officers charged with these duties. Finally edicts were issued to prevent canvassing and the trafficking in votes; their very multitude shows their futility.\n\nToward the end, extraordinary expedients were often needed to make up for the insufficiency of the laws. Sometimes prodigies were invented; but this means, which could impose upon the people, could not impose upon those who governed them. Sometimes an assembly was suddenly called before candidates had time to conduct their canvassing; sometimes an entire session was spent in speaking when the people were seen to have been won over and were ready to take a bad course. But in the end ambition evaded everything; and what is incredible is that, amid so many abuses, this immense people, thanks to its ancient institutions, still managed to elect magistrates, pass laws, judge cases, and dispatch private and public business almost as easily as the senate itself could have done.\n\n### Book IV, Chapter 5\n\nOn the Tribunate.\n\nWhen no exact proportion can be established among the constituent parts of the state, or when indestructible causes continually alter their relations, a special magistracy is instituted that forms no body with the others, restores each term to its true relation, and provides a link or intermediate term between the prince and the people, or between the prince and the sovereign, or on both sides at once if necessary.\n\nThis body, which I shall call the tribunate, preserves the laws and the legislative power. At times it protects the sovereign against the government, as the people’s tribunes did at Rome; at times it supports the government against the people, as the Council of Ten now does at Venice; and at times it maintains the balance on both sides, as the ephors did at Sparta.\n\nThe tribunate is not a constituent part of the city and ought to have no share of either legislative or executive power; but precisely in this lies the greatness of its own power: for while it can do nothing, it can prevent everything. As defender of the laws it is more sacred and more revered than the prince who executes them or the sovereign who gives them. This was seen most clearly at Rome, when those proud patricians, who had always despised the entire people, were forced to bend before a mere officer of the people who had neither auspices nor jurisdiction.\n\nThe tribunate, wisely kept within bounds, is the strongest support of a good constitution; but give it even a little too much strength and it overturns everything. As for weakness, it is not in its nature: provided it has any power at all, it never has less than it needs.\n\nIt degenerates into tyranny when it usurps the executive power it is meant only to restrain, and seeks to dispense with the laws it ought only to protect. The immense power of the ephors, harmless as long as Sparta preserved its morals, hastened its corruption once begun. The blood of Agis, slaughtered by these tyrants, was avenged by his successor: the crime and the punishment of the ephors equally hastened the republic’s downfall, and after Cleomenes Sparta was nothing. Rome perished by the same road; and the excessive power gradually usurped by the tribunes finally served, with the aid of laws made for freedom, as a safeguard for the emperors who destroyed it. As for the Council of Ten at Venice, it is a tribunal of blood, equally horrifying to the patricians and the people, which, far from openly protecting the laws, now serves, after their degradation, only to strike in the darkness blows that no one dares to see.\n\nThe tribunate, like the government, is weakened by multiplying its members. When the tribunes of the Roman people, at first two in number and then five, wished to double that number, the senate let them do it, quite certain it could contain some by means of the others; and so it did.\n\nThe best way to prevent usurpation by so formidable a body—a way no government has yet considered—would be not to make this body permanent, but to regulate the intervals during which it would remain suspended. These intervals, which must not be long enough to give abuses time to take hold, could be fixed by law so as to make them easy to shorten, when needed, by extraordinary commissions.\n\nThis means seems to me free of drawbacks because, as I have said, the tribunate, not being part of the constitution, can be removed without harm to it; and it seems effective because a newly restored magistrate does not start with the power his predecessor possessed, but with the power the law gives him.\n\n### Book IV, Chapter 6\n\nOn the Dictatorship.\n\nThe inflexibility of laws, which prevents them from bending to events, can in certain cases make them harmful and cause the state’s destruction in a crisis. The order and slowness of formal procedures demand a span of time that circumstances sometimes deny. A thousand cases may arise for which the legislator has made no provision; and it is a most necessary form of foresight to recognize that one cannot foresee everything.\n\nWe must not, then, seek to make political institutions so rigid that we deprive ourselves of the power to suspend their operation. Even Sparta allowed its laws to sleep.\n\nBut only the greatest dangers can counterbalance the danger of disturbing public order, and the sacred power of the laws must never be arrested except when the salvation of the country is at stake. In such rare and unmistakable cases, public safety is provided for by a special act entrusting its care to the worthiest man. This commission can be granted in two ways, according to the nature of the danger.\n\nIf greater activity on the government’s part is enough to meet it, the government is concentrated in one or two of its members. In this way it is not the authority of the laws that is altered, but only the manner of their administration. But if the peril is such that the machinery of the laws obstructs protection against it, then a supreme chief is appointed to silence all the laws and suspend sovereign authority for a moment. In such a case the general will is not in doubt, and it is evident that the people’s first intention is that the state should not perish. Thus suspending legislative authority does not abolish it: the magistrate who silences it cannot make it speak; he dominates it without being able to represent it. He can do everything except make laws.\n\nThe first means was employed by the Roman senate when, in a prescribed formula, it charged the consuls to provide for the republic’s safety. The second came into play when one of the two consuls appointed a dictator, a practice for which Alba had set Rome an example.\n\nIn the early days of the republic the dictatorship was resorted to very often, because the state had not yet acquired a footing stable enough to sustain itself by the force of its constitution alone. Since morals then made many precautions superfluous that would have been necessary at another time, no one feared that a dictator would abuse his authority or try to retain it beyond his term. On the contrary, such great power seemed a burden to the man invested with it, so eager was he to lay it down—as though taking the place of the laws were too arduous and perilous a post!\n\nThus it is not the danger of abuse but the danger of debasing it that makes me condemn the indiscriminate use of this supreme magistracy in the early days. For while it was lavished on elections, dedications, and matters of mere formality, there was reason to fear it would become less formidable when needed and that people would grow used to regarding as an empty title one used only for empty ceremonies.\n\nToward the end of the republic, the Romans, grown more circumspect, husbanded the dictatorship with as little reason as they had formerly lavished it. It was easy to see that their fear was ill-founded; that the weakness of the capital then protected it against the magistrates within its walls; that a dictator could in certain cases defend public freedom without ever being able to attack it; and that Rome’s chains would not be forged in Rome itself, but in its armies. The slight resistance Marius offered Sulla, and Pompey offered Caesar, plainly showed what could be expected from authority within against force from without.\n\nThis error led them to commit grave mistakes. One, for example, was their failure to appoint a dictator in the affair of Catiline. Since the danger was confined to the city and, at most, some province of Italy, a dictator, with the unlimited authority the laws gave him, would easily have dispersed the conspiracy; instead, it was stifled only by a combination of fortunate chances that human prudence should never have counted on.\n\nInstead, the senate contented itself with handing all its power to the consuls. As a result, Cicero, in order to act effectively, was forced to overstep that power on a crucial point; and although the first transports of joy won approval for his conduct, he was rightly called to account afterward for citizens’ blood shed in violation of the laws—a reproach that could not have been made against a dictator. But the consul’s eloquence swept all before it; and he himself, though a Roman, loved his own glory more than his country, seeking not so much the most lawful and certain means of saving the state as a means of securing all the honor of the affair for himself. Thus he was rightly honored as the liberator of Rome and rightly punished as a violator of the laws. However glorious his recall, it is certain that it was an act of grace.\n\nMoreover, however this important commission is conferred, its duration must be fixed at a very short term that can never be prolonged. In the crises for which it is instituted, the state is soon destroyed or saved; and once the pressing need has passed, the dictatorship becomes tyrannical or useless. At Rome, dictators being appointed for only six months, most resigned before their term expired. Had the term been longer, perhaps they would have been tempted to prolong it further, as the decemvirs did their term of a year. The dictator had only the time to meet the need for which he was chosen, not the time to contemplate other projects.\n\n### Book IV, Chapter 7\n\nOn the Censorship.\n\nJust as the general will is declared through law, public judgment is declared through the censorship. Public opinion is the kind of law of which the censor is the minister, applying it, like the prince, only to particular cases.\n\nFar from being the arbiter of the people’s opinion, then, the censorial tribunal merely declares it; as soon as it departs from that opinion, its decisions are empty and without effect.\n\nThere is no use distinguishing a nation’s morals from the things it esteems, for all this springs from the same principle and necessarily merges together. Among all the peoples of the world, it is not nature but opinion that decides which pleasures they choose. Set people’s opinions right and their morals will purify themselves. We always love what is beautiful, or what we find beautiful, but we may be mistaken in that judgment; it is therefore that judgment which must be guided. Whoever judges morals judges honor, and whoever judges honor takes his law from opinion.\n\nA people’s opinions arise from its constitution. Although law does not regulate morals, legislation gives rise to them; when legislation weakens, morals degenerate, but then the censors’ judgment cannot accomplish what the force of the laws has failed to do.\n\nIt follows that censorship can be useful in preserving morals, never in restoring them. Establish censors while the laws are vigorous; once they have lost their vigor, all hope is gone. Nothing legitimate retains its force when the laws have none.\n\nCensorship sustains morals by preventing opinions from growing corrupt, preserving their soundness through judicious applications, and sometimes even settling them when they are still uncertain. The practice of using seconds in duels, carried to a frenzy in the Kingdom of France, was abolished there by these words alone in an edict of the king: “As for those who are cowardly enough to call upon seconds.” This judgment anticipated the public’s and settled it at once. But when the same edicts sought to pronounce it cowardly to fight a duel as well—a very true judgment, but one contrary to common opinion—the public mocked this decision, on which its own judgment had already been made.\n\nI have said elsewhere that, since public opinion is not subject to coercion, there must be no trace of coercion in the tribunal established to represent it. One cannot too greatly admire the skill with which this instrument, wholly lost among the moderns, was put to work among the Romans, and still better among the Lacedaemonians.\n\nWhen a man of bad morals proposed sound advice in the council of Sparta, the ephors, disregarding him, had the same advice proposed by a virtuous citizen. What honor for the one, what disgrace for the other, without bestowing either praise or blame on either man! Certain drunkards from Samos defiled the tribunal of the ephors; the next day a public edict permitted the Samians to be scoundrels. A real punishment would have been less severe than such impunity. When Sparta has pronounced on what is or is not honorable, Greece does not appeal its judgments.\n\n### Book IV, Chapter 8\n\nOn Civil Religion.\n\nAt first men had no kings but gods, and no government but theocratic government. They reasoned as Caligula did, and then their reasoning was sound. It takes a long alteration of feelings and ideas before anyone can bring himself to take a fellow human being for his master, and flatter himself that he will be the better for it.\n\nFrom the mere fact that God was placed at the head of each political society, it followed that there were as many gods as peoples. Two peoples foreign to one another, and almost always enemies, could not for long acknowledge the same master; two armies meeting in battle cannot obey the same commander. Thus national divisions gave rise to polytheism, and from it arose theological and civil intolerance, which are naturally one and the same, as will be said below.\n\nThe Greeks' fancy for finding their gods among barbarian peoples sprang from their other fancy of regarding themselves as those peoples' natural sovereigns. But in our day it is a thoroughly ridiculous kind of learning that turns on the identity of the gods of different nations: as if Moloch, Saturn, and Chronos could be the same god; as if the Baal of the Phoenicians, the Zeus of the Greeks, and the Jupiter of the Latins could be the same; as if anything could be common to imaginary beings bearing different names!\n\nBut if someone asks why, in paganism, where every state had its own worship and its own gods, there were no wars of religion, I answer that it was precisely because each state, having its own worship as well as its own government, did not distinguish its gods from its laws. Political war was also theological war: the domains of the gods were, so to speak, fixed by the boundaries of nations. The god of one people had no claim over other peoples. The gods of the pagans were not jealous gods; they divided the dominion of the world among themselves. Even Moses and the Hebrew people sometimes lent themselves to this notion when speaking of the God of Israel. It is true that they regarded the gods of the Canaanites as nothing, for the Canaanites were a proscribed people, doomed to destruction, whose place they were to take; but see how they spoke of the divinities of neighboring peoples whom they were forbidden to attack! “Is not possession of what belongs to Chamos your god rightfully yours?” Jephthah said to the Ammonites. “By the same right we possess the lands our victorious God has acquired for himself.” There, it seems to me, was a clear acknowledgment of equal standing between the rights of Chamos and those of the God of Israel.\n\nBut when the Jews, subject to the kings of Babylon and afterward to the kings of Syria, stubbornly refused to acknowledge any god but their own, that refusal, taken as rebellion against the conqueror, brought upon them the persecutions recorded in their history, of which we see no other example before Christianity.\n\nSince each religion, then, was bound solely to the laws of the state that prescribed it, there was no way to convert a people except to subjugate them, and no missionaries but conquerors. As changing one's worship was the law imposed on the vanquished, one had to begin by conquering before speaking of it. Far from men fighting for the gods, it was the gods who, as in Homer, fought for men; each people asked its god for victory and paid for it with new altars. Before taking a place, the Romans called on its gods to abandon it; and when they left the Tarentines their angry gods, it was because they now regarded those gods as subject to their own and compelled to pay them homage. They left the vanquished their gods as they left them their laws. A crown for the Jupiter of the Capitol was often the only tribute they exacted.\n\nFinally, as the Romans extended their worship and their gods along with their empire, and often themselves adopted the gods of the vanquished, granting citizenship to both alike, the peoples of that vast empire gradually came to have multitudes of gods and forms of worship, nearly the same everywhere; and this is how paganism finally became one and the same religion throughout the known world.\n\nIt was under these circumstances that Jesus came to establish a spiritual kingdom on earth. By separating the theological system from the political system, this caused the state to cease being one, and produced the internal divisions that have never ceased to trouble Christian peoples. Now this new idea of a kingdom in the other world could never enter the minds of the pagans; they always saw Christians as actual rebels who, beneath a hypocritical submission, merely awaited the moment to become independent masters and cleverly usurp the authority they feigned to respect while they were weak. This was the cause of the persecutions.\n\nWhat the pagans feared has come to pass. Then everything changed its face: humble Christians changed their language, and soon this supposed kingdom of the other world was seen to become, under a visible chief, the most violent despotism in this one.\n\nYet since there has always been a prince and civil laws, this double power has produced a perpetual conflict of jurisdiction that has made any sound political order impossible in Christian states; and no one has ever managed to determine which, master or priest, one was obliged to obey.\n\nSeveral peoples, however, even in or near Europe, have tried to preserve or restore the old system, but without success; the spirit of Christianity has won everywhere. Sacred worship has always remained or again become independent of the sovereign, with no necessary bond to the body of the state. Muhammad had very sound ideas; he bound his political system together well, and so long as the form of his government survived under the caliphs, his successors, that government was strictly one, and good in this respect. But when the Arabs, having grown prosperous, learned, civilized, soft, and cowardly, were subjugated by barbarians, division between the two powers began anew. Although less apparent among Muslims than among Christians, it is nevertheless present, especially in the sect of Ali; and there are states, such as Persia, where it never ceases to be felt.\n\nAmong us, the kings of England have established themselves as heads of the Church, as have the czars; but this title has made them its ministers rather than its masters. They have acquired less the right to change it than the power to maintain it; they are not its legislators, only its princes. Wherever the clergy forms a body, it is master and legislator in its own country. There are thus two powers, two sovereigns, in England and Russia, just as elsewhere.\n\nOf all Christian authors, the philosopher Hobbes alone has rightly seen both the evil and the remedy; he alone has dared propose uniting the eagle's two heads and bringing everything back to political unity, without which no state or government will ever be well constituted. But he must have seen that Christianity's domineering spirit was incompatible with his system, and that the priest's interest would always be stronger than the state's. It is not so much what is horrible and false in his politics as what is just and true that has made it odious.\n\nI believe that if historical facts were examined from this point of view, the opposed opinions of Bayle and Warburton could easily be refuted: the first claims that no religion is useful to the body politic, while the second maintains, on the contrary, that Christianity is its firmest support. To the first one could prove that no state has ever been founded without religion serving as its basis; to the second, that Christian law is at bottom more harmful than helpful to the strong constitution of the state. To make myself fully understood, I need only give a little more precision to the overly vague ideas about religion that bear on my subject.\n\nReligion, considered in relation to society, which is either general or particular, can itself be divided into two kinds: the religion of man and that of the citizen. The first, without temples, altars, or rites, confined to the purely inward worship of the Supreme God and to the eternal duties of morality, is the pure and simple religion of the Gospel, true theism, what may be called natural divine right. The other, confined to a single country, gives it its own gods, its own patron and guardian divinities. It has its dogmas, its rites, its outward worship prescribed by law; beyond the one nation that follows it, all are to it infidels, foreigners, barbarians. It extends the duties and rights of man only as far as its altars. Such were all the religions of the earliest peoples, which may be called civil or positive divine right.\n\nThere is a third, more bizarre kind of religion which, by giving men two bodies of law, two chiefs, two homelands, subjects them to contradictory duties and prevents them from being devout and citizens at the same time. Such is the religion of the Lamas, such that of the Japanese, such Roman Christianity. This may be called the religion of the priest. It produces a kind of mixed and unsociable right that has no name.\n\nViewed politically, these three kinds of religion all have their faults. The third is so plainly bad that to spend time demonstrating it would be a waste. Anything that breaks social unity is worthless; all institutions that set a man at odds with himself are worthless.\n\nThe second is good insofar as it joins divine worship to love of the laws and, by making the homeland the object of the citizens' adoration, teaches them that to serve the state is to serve its guardian god. It is a kind of theocracy in which there must be no pontiff but the prince and no priests but the magistrates. Then to die for one's country is to go to martyrdom, to violate the laws is impiety, and to subject a guilty man to public execration is to consign him to the wrath of the gods: sacer estod.\n\nBut it is bad insofar as, being founded on error and falsehood, it deceives men, makes them credulous and superstitious, and drowns true worship of the divinity in empty ceremonial. It is bad, too, when, becoming exclusive and tyrannical, it makes a people bloodthirsty and intolerant, so that they breathe only murder and massacre and believe they perform a holy act in killing anyone who does not accept their gods. This places such a people in a natural state of war with all others, to the grave detriment of its own security.\n\nThere remains, then, the religion of man, or Christianity—not the Christianity of today, but that of the Gospel, which is altogether different. By this holy, sublime, true religion, men, children of the same God, recognize one another as brothers; and the fellowship that unites them is not dissolved even by death.\n\nBut since this religion has no particular relation to the body politic, it leaves the laws with only the strength they draw from themselves, adding nothing to it; and thus one of the great bonds of a particular society remains ineffective. More than that: far from attaching citizens' hearts to the state, it detaches them from it as from all earthly things. I know nothing more contrary to the social spirit.\n\nWe are told that a people of true Christians would form the most perfect society imaginable. I see only one great difficulty in this supposition: a society of true Christians would no longer be a society of men.\n\nI say further that this supposed society, for all its perfection, would be neither the strongest nor the most enduring. By dint of being perfect it would lack cohesion; the defect that destroyed it would lie in its very perfection.\n\nEach person would do his duty; the people would obey the laws, their leaders would be just and moderate, the magistrates upright and incorruptible, the soldiers would scorn death; there would be neither vanity nor luxury. All this is very well, but let us look further.\n\nChristianity is an entirely spiritual religion, concerned solely with the things of heaven: the Christian's homeland is not of this world. He does his duty, it is true, but he does it with profound indifference to the success or failure of his efforts. Provided he has nothing to reproach himself for, he cares little whether all goes well or badly here below. If the state flourishes, he scarcely dares enjoy the public happiness, for fear of growing proud of his country's glory; if the state declines, he blesses the hand of God that weighs upon his people.\n\nFor the society to be peaceful and harmony preserved, every citizen without exception would have to be an equally good Christian. But if, unhappily, there should be in it even one ambitious man, one hypocrite—a Catiline, for example, a Cromwell—he will assuredly make short work of his pious compatriots. Christian charity does not readily permit one to think ill of one's neighbor. As soon as he has contrived by some ruse to deceive them and seize part of the public authority, there stands a man invested with dignity; God wills that he be respected. Soon there stands a power; God wills that it be obeyed. Does the holder of this power abuse it? He is the rod with which God chastises his children. They would scruple to drive out the usurper: that would require disturbing the public peace, using violence, shedding blood; all this sits ill with Christian gentleness. And after all, what does it matter whether one is free or a serf in this vale of misery? The essential thing is to reach paradise, and resignation is merely one more means to that end.\n\nSuppose a foreign war breaks out. The citizens march readily to battle; none of them thinks of fleeing; they do their duty, but without any passion for victory. They know better how to die than how to conquer. Whether they win or lose, what does it matter? Does not Providence know better than they what they need? Imagine what advantage a proud, impetuous, passionate enemy can take of their stoicism! Set against them those generous peoples consumed by ardent love of glory and homeland; suppose your Christian republic faces Sparta or Rome: the pious Christians will be beaten, crushed, destroyed before they have had time to collect themselves, or will owe their survival only to the contempt their enemy comes to feel for them. To my mind the oath sworn by the soldiers of Fabius was a fine one: they did not swear to die or conquer; they swore to return victorious, and kept their oath. Christians would never have made such an oath; they would have thought it tempting God.\n\nBut I am mistaken in speaking of a Christian republic: each of those two words excludes the other. Christianity preaches only servitude and dependence. Its spirit is too favorable to tyranny for tyranny not always to profit from it. True Christians are made to be slaves; they know it and are scarcely disturbed by it; this brief life has too little value in their eyes.\n\nChristian troops are excellent, we are told. I deny it. Let someone show me such troops. For my part, I know of no Christian troops. The Crusades will be cited to me. Without disputing the courage of the Crusaders, I would observe that, far from being Christians, they were the priest's soldiers, citizens of the Church. They fought for its spiritual country, which it had somehow made temporal. Properly understood, this falls back under paganism; since the Gospel establishes no national religion, every holy war is impossible among Christians.\n\nUnder the pagan emperors, Christian soldiers were brave; all Christian authors attest it, and I believe them. It was a contest of honor against the pagan troops. As soon as the emperors became Christian, that rivalry ended; and when the cross had driven out the eagle, all Roman valor disappeared.\n\nBut setting political considerations aside, let us return to right and establish the principles on this important point. The right that the social pact gives the sovereign over subjects does not, as I have said, exceed the limits of public utility. Subjects therefore owe the sovereign an account of their opinions only insofar as those opinions matter to the community. Now it matters greatly to the state that each citizen have a religion that makes him love his duties; but the dogmas of that religion concern neither the state nor its members except insofar as they relate to morality and to the duties that the person professing it must fulfill toward others. Beyond this, everyone may hold whatever opinions he pleases, and it is not for the sovereign to know them. For since the sovereign has no jurisdiction in the other world, whatever fate awaits subjects in the life to come is no concern of his, provided they are good citizens in this one.\n\nThere is, then, a purely civil profession of faith whose articles it belongs to the sovereign to fix, not precisely as religious dogmas but as sentiments of sociability, without which it is impossible to be a good citizen or a faithful subject. Though he cannot force anyone to believe them, he may banish from the state whoever does not believe them. He may banish that person not as impious but as unsociable, incapable of sincerely loving the laws and justice and, when necessary, sacrificing his life to his duty. And if someone, after publicly acknowledging these same dogmas, behaves as though he did not believe them, let him be punished with death: he has committed the greatest of crimes; he has lied before the laws.\n\nThe dogmas of civil religion must be simple, few in number, and stated precisely, without explanations or commentaries. The existence of a powerful, intelligent, beneficent divinity, who foresees and provides; the life to come; the happiness of the just; the punishment of the wicked; the sanctity of the social pact and of the laws: these are the positive dogmas. As for negative dogmas, I limit them to one: intolerance. It belongs to the forms of worship we have excluded.\n\nThose who distinguish civil intolerance from theological intolerance are, in my opinion, mistaken. The two are inseparable. It is impossible to live at peace with people one believes damned; to love them would be to hate the God who punishes them; one must either bring them back or torment them. Wherever theological intolerance is admitted, it cannot fail to have some civil effect; and as soon as it does, the sovereign is no longer sovereign, even in temporal affairs. From then on the priests are the true masters; kings are only their officers.\n\nNow that there is no longer, and can no longer be, an exclusive national religion, all religions that tolerate others should be tolerated, so long as their dogmas contain nothing contrary to the duties of a citizen. But whoever dares say, “Outside the Church there is no salvation,” must be driven from the state—unless the state is the Church and the prince is the pontiff. Such a dogma is suitable only in a theocratic government; in any other it is pernicious. The reason said to have led Henry IV to embrace the Roman religion ought to make every honest man leave it, and above all any prince who knows how to reason.\n\n### Book IV, Chapter 9\n\nConclusion.\n\nHaving set out the true principles of political right and tried to establish the state on its foundation, I would still have to support it by considering its external relations. This would include the law of nations, commerce, the law of war and conquests, public law, alliances, negotiations, treaties, and so forth. But all this forms a new subject too vast for my narrow vision; I ought always to have kept it closer to home.\n\n### Book IV, Appendix\n\n(…)\nwith people one believes damned; to love them would be to hate the God who punishes them; one must either bring them back or torment them. Wherever theological intolerance is admitted, it cannot fail to have some civil effect; and as soon as it does, the sovereign is no longer sovereign, even in temporal affairs. From then on the priests are the true masters; kings are only their officers.\n\nNow that there is no longer, and can no longer be, an exclusive national religion, all religions that tolerate others should be tolerated, so long as their dogmas contain nothing contrary to the duties of a citizen. But whoever dares say, “Outside the Church there is no salvation,” must be driven from the state—unless the state is the Church and the prince is the pontiff. Such a dogma is suitable only in a theocratic government; in any other it is pernicious. The reason said to have led Henry IV to embrace the Roman religion ought to make every honest man leave it, and above all any prince who knows how to reason.\n\nCHAPTER IX.\n\nConclusion.\n\nHaving set out the true principles of political right and tried to establish the state on its foundation, I would still have to support it by considering its external relations. This would include the law of nations, commerce, the law of war and conquests, public law, alliances, negotiations, treaties, and so forth. But all this forms a new subject too vast for my narrow vision; I ought always to have kept it closer to home.\n\nTHE END.\n\nCATALOG OF BOOKS printed by REY,\nBookseller in Amsterdam.\n\nVarious works by Mr. J. J. Rousseau, 2 large duodecimo vols., containing: Discourse on Whether the Restoration of the Sciences and Arts Has Contributed to Purifying Morals, with three replies by the same author to various criticisms. Narcissus. Letter on French Music. The Village Soothsayer. Discourse on Political Economy. Extract from the Project for Perpetual Peace by Mr. Abbé de Saint-Pierre. Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men. Letter against the Theater. Letter from Mr. D'Alembert in reply to the preceding, with the privilege of Their High and Mighty Lordships.\n\nJulie, or the New Heloise, 6 large duodecimo vols., original edition, with privilege.\n\nPreface, or a Conversation on Novels between the editor and a Man of Letters.\n\nCollection of Engravings for the New Heloise, with the subjects of those same engravings as supplied by the editor.\n\nThe Holy Bible, or the Old and New Testaments, with a Literal Commentary composed of selected notes drawn from various English and other authors, etc. 4. Containing the 5 books of Moses, the books of Joshua, Judges and Ruth, the two books of Samuel, 5 tomes in 9 parts, 1761.\n\nThe Country Library, or Diversions of the Mind and Heart, 12. 12 vols.\n\nThe Fairy Cabinet by Madame d'Aulnoy, 12. 14 parts with illustrations.\n\nCampaigns of Marshals Villars, Martin, Tallard, Villeroy, Noaille, and Coigny in Germany, composed from the originals, 12. 20 vols.\n\nEssay on General History and on the Morals and Spirit of Nations since Charlemagne, with the Age of Louis XIV, by Voltaire, 8. 7 vols.\n\nCritical History of the Manichaeans and Manichaeism, 4. 2 vols.\n\nJournal of the Learned from its beginning, 1665, to 1753, in 170 vols. with illustrations, duodecimo.\n\n—— ditto, combined with the Memoirs of Trévoux from January 1754 to the present. 68 vols.\n\nMemoirs of Cardinal de Retz, 8. 4 vols.\n\n—— on the life and works of Mr. de Fontenelle and La Motte, by Mr. Abbé Trublet, 1 vol.\n\n—— on Land Clearing by the Marquis de Turbilly, 8. 1 vol. 1761.\n\nTheatrical Works of Nivelle de la Chaussée, 2 small duodecimo vols., 1760.\n\n—— on Mathematics by Father Pardie, 3 vols. with illustrations.\n\n—— by François Rabelais, 4. 3 illustrated vols. 1741.\n\n—— by Louis Racine, 12. 6 vols. 1750.\n\nPrinciples of the Natural Law of Nature and Nations by Wolff, by Formey, 3 vols.\n\nThe New Testament in Catechism Form by Mr. Polier, Professor at Lausanne, 8. 6 vols. 1756.","download_url":"https://mouseia.org/api/works/contrat/translations/trn_contrat_mouseia.txt"},{"id":"trn_contrat_plain","translator":"Mouseia","kind":"plain","note":"Mouseia’s complete Plain English edition, made independently and directly from the complete French text of the 1762 edition, all four books and the appendix.","text":"### Book I, Chapter 1\n\nI want to find out whether there can be any legitimate and reliable rule of government in civil society. I will take people as they are and laws as they can be. Throughout this inquiry, I will try to bring together what right allows and what self-interest requires, so that justice and usefulness do not pull apart.\n\nI will begin without proving that my subject matters. Someone will ask whether I am a prince or a legislator, since I write about politics. My answer is no, and that is precisely why I write about politics. If I were a prince or a legislator, I would not waste my time saying what should be done. I would do it, or I would keep quiet.\n\nI was born a citizen of a free state and am a member of the sovereign. My voice may carry little weight in public affairs, but my right to vote in them is enough to make it my duty to learn about them. Whenever I reflect on governments, I am glad to find fresh reasons in my inquiries to love the government of my country.\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\nSubject of This First Book.\n\nHuman beings are born free, and everywhere they are in chains. A man may think himself the master of others, yet be more of a slave than they are. How did this change come about? I do not know. What can make it legitimate? I think I can answer that question.\n\nIf I considered only force and its effects, I would say this: as long as a people is forced to obey and does obey, it does well. As soon as it can throw off the yoke and does so, it does even better. For if it regains its freedom by the same right through which that freedom was taken away, either it is entitled to take it back or no one was entitled to take it away. But the social order is a sacred right on which all other rights rest. This right does not come from nature, however. It must therefore rest on agreements. The question is what those agreements are. Before I get to that, I must establish the point I have just made.\n\n### Book I, Chapter 2\n\nOn the First Societies.\n\nThe oldest of all societies, and the only natural one, is the family. Even children remain bound to their father only as long as they need him to survive. Once that need ends, the natural bond dissolves. The children no longer owe their father obedience, and the father no longer owes his children care. All become equally independent again. If they stay together, they do so by choice, not by nature. Even the family continues to exist only by agreement.\n\nThis shared freedom follows from human nature. A person's first law is to look after his own survival. His first responsibility is to himself. As soon as he can reason, he alone judges how best to preserve himself and so becomes his own master.\n\nThe family, then, can be called the first model of political societies. The leader stands for the father and the people for the children. All are born equal and free, and they give up their freedom only for their own benefit. The difference is that, in a family, a father's love for his children rewards him for caring for them. In a state, the pleasure of giving orders takes the place of that love, which the leader does not feel for his peoples.\n\nGrotius denies that all human power is established for the benefit of those who are governed. He offers slavery as an example. His usual way of arguing is always to establish a right from a fact. One might use a more consistent method, but none more favorable to tyrants.\n\nSo, according to Grotius, it is an open question whether the human race belongs to a hundred men or those hundred men belong to the human race. Throughout his book he seems to favor the first view. Hobbes thinks so too. On this account, humanity is divided into herds of cattle, each with a leader who guards it in order to eat it.\n\nSince a shepherd is of a higher nature than his flock, the shepherds of human beings, their leaders, must likewise be of a higher nature than their peoples. According to Philo, this was how the Emperor Caligula reasoned. He drew the fairly logical conclusion from this comparison that kings were gods or peoples were beasts.\n\nCaligula's reasoning amounts to that of Hobbes and Grotius. Before them all, Aristotle had also said that people are not naturally equal: some are born for slavery and others for rule.\n\nAristotle was right, but he mistook the effect for the cause. Anyone born into slavery is born for slavery; nothing is more certain. In their chains, slaves lose everything, even the desire to get out. They come to love their servitude, as the companions of Ulysses loved their reduction to brute animals. If there are slaves by nature, then, it is because there were first slaves against nature. Force made the first slaves; their cowardice kept them slaves.\n\nI have said nothing about King Adam or Emperor Noah, the father of three great monarchs who divided the world among themselves, as the children of Saturn did, with whom some have identified them. I hope I get credit for my restraint. After all, I descend directly from one of these princes, perhaps from the eldest branch. Who knows whether, once my claim is checked, I might prove to be the rightful king of the human race? In any case, no one can deny that Adam was sovereign over the world, just as Robinson was sovereign over his island, as long as he was its only inhabitant. What made that empire convenient was that the monarch, secure on his throne, had no rebellion, wars, or conspirators to fear.\n\n### Book I, Chapter 3\n\nOn the Right of the Strongest.\n\nThe strongest person is never strong enough to remain master forever unless he turns his strength into a right and obedience into a duty. That is where the right of the strongest comes from. It sounds like a joke, yet people actually make it a principle. But will no one ever explain what this phrase means? Force is physical power. I do not see how its effects can create a moral obligation. Giving in to force is a necessity, not a choice. At most it is sensible. How can it be a duty?\n\nLet us accept this supposed right for a moment. I say it leads only to hopeless nonsense. For as soon as force makes right, the result changes with the cause. Any force that overcomes the first inherits its right. As soon as people can disobey without being punished, they can disobey legitimately. And since the strongest is always right, all one needs to do is become the strongest. But what sort of right disappears when the force behind it ends? If one must obey because of force, one need not obey out of duty. And if one is no longer forced to obey, one is no longer obliged to obey. So the word right adds nothing to force; here it means nothing at all.\n\nObey the powers that be. If that means give in to force, it is good advice but unnecessary: no one will ever break that rule. All power comes from God, I admit. But so does every disease. Does that mean it is forbidden to call the doctor? Suppose a robber catches me at the edge of a wood. I must hand over my purse because he forces me to. But if I could hide it, would my conscience oblige me to hand it over? The pistol he holds is also a form of power, after all.\n\nLet us agree, then, that force creates no right and that we are obliged to obey only legitimate powers. So my original question still stands.\n\n### Book I, Chapter 4\n\nOn Slavery.\n\nNo person has natural authority over another, and force creates no right. Agreements, then, remain the basis of all legitimate authority among human beings.\n\nIf an individual can give up his freedom and become a master's slave, Grotius says, why could a whole people not give up its freedom and become subjects of a king? Several words here are ambiguous and need explanation. Let us focus on giving up one's freedom. To give something up in this sense is to give it away or sell it. A man who makes himself another man's slave does not give himself away: he sells himself, at least in exchange for his livelihood. But what does a people sell itself for? Far from providing his subjects with a living, a king gets his own living only from them. And, as Rabelais says, a king does not live on little. Do subjects give up their persons on condition that the king also takes their goods? I do not see what they have left to preserve.\n\nSomeone will say that a despot guarantees his subjects civil peace. Perhaps. But what do they gain if the wars brought on by his ambition, his endless greed, and the abuses of his ministers bring them more suffering than their own disagreements would? What do they gain if that peace is itself one of their troubles? People also live quietly in dungeons. Is that enough to make a dungeon a good place to be? The Greeks locked in the Cyclops's cave lived quietly while they waited for their turn to be eaten.\n\nTo say that a person gives himself away for nothing is absurd and inconceivable. Such an act is illegitimate and void, if only because anyone who does it is not in his right mind. To say the same thing about a whole people assumes a people of madmen. Madness does not create a right.\n\nEven if each person could give himself away, he could not give away his children. They are born human and free. Their freedom belongs to them, and no one but they themselves has the right to dispose of it. Before they can reason, their father can make arrangements on their behalf to keep them alive and well. But he cannot give them away irrevocably and without conditions. Such a gift runs against the aims of nature and goes beyond a father's rights. For arbitrary government to be legitimate, then, the people would have to be free in every generation to accept or reject it. But in that case the government would no longer be arbitrary.\n\nTo give up one's freedom is to give up one's standing as a human being, the rights of humanity, and even its duties. Nothing can make up for giving up everything. Such a renunciation is incompatible with human nature. To remove all freedom from a person's will is to strip his actions of all moral meaning. Finally, it is a pointless and contradictory agreement to set absolute authority on one side and unlimited obedience on the other. Is it not clear that we owe nothing to a person from whom we have the right to demand anything at all? Does this condition, with nothing given in return, not itself make the agreement void? For what right could my slave have against me if everything he has belongs to me? If his right is mine, then a right of mine against myself is a phrase without meaning.\n\nGrotius and others find another source for the supposed right to enslave in war. According to them, the victor has a right to kill the defeated person. That person can therefore buy his life back with his freedom, an agreement all the more legitimate because both benefit from it.\n\nBut it is clear that this supposed right to kill defeated people does not follow in any way from a state of war. People living in their original independence do not have relations stable enough with one another to establish either a state of peace or a state of war. For that reason, they are not natural enemies. War arises from relations between things, not between persons. A state of war cannot arise from merely personal relations, only from relations involving property. So private war, or war between one person and another, cannot exist in the state of nature, where property is not stable, or in society, where everything falls under the authority of laws.\n\nIndividual fights, duels, and clashes are acts that do not create an ongoing state. As for private wars authorized by the ordinances of Louis IX, king of France, and suspended by the Peace of God, these are abuses of feudal government. That system is absurd if any is, and it goes against natural right and every sound political order.\n\nWar, then, is not a relation between one person and another but between one state and another. Individuals are enemies only by circumstance, not as human beings or even as citizens, but as soldiers. They are enemies not as members of their country but as its defenders. In short, a state can have only other states as enemies, not people. Things of different kinds cannot have a true relation of this sort.\n\nThis principle agrees with rules recognized throughout history and with the steady practice of all civilized peoples. Declarations of war are addressed less to rulers than to their subjects. A foreigner, whether a king, an individual, or a people, who robs, kills, or detains subjects without declaring war on their ruler is not an enemy but a robber. Even in open war, a just ruler seizes everything belonging to the public in enemy territory, but respects individuals and their property. He respects rights on which his own rights are based. The aim of war is to destroy the enemy state. One therefore has the right to kill its defenders while they hold weapons. But as soon as they lay down their weapons and surrender, they cease to be enemies or instruments of the enemy. They become simply human beings again, and no one has a right to take their lives. Sometimes a state can be destroyed without killing a single one of its members. War gives no right that is not needed to achieve its aim. These are not Grotius's principles. They do not rest on the authority of poets but follow from the nature of things and are grounded in reason.\n\nAs for the right of conquest, its only basis is the rule of the strongest. If war gives the victor no right to massacre defeated peoples, that nonexistent right cannot provide a basis for enslaving them. One has the right to kill an enemy only when one cannot enslave him. The right to enslave him therefore does not come from the right to kill him. It is an unjust bargain to make him pay with his freedom for a life to which the victor has no right. If we base the power of life and death on the right to enslave, and the right to enslave on the power of life and death, are we not plainly arguing in a circle?\n\nEven if we assume this terrible right to kill everyone, I say that a slave taken in war, or a conquered people, owes the master nothing at all except obedience for as long as force compels it. By accepting something in exchange for the captive's life, the victor has shown him no mercy. Instead of killing him without gaining anything, he has killed him for his own benefit. Far from acquiring any authority over the captive beyond force, the victor remains in a state of war with him as before. Their relationship itself is an effect of that state, and using the rights of war does not imply a peace treaty. They have made an agreement, perhaps. But instead of ending the state of war, that agreement assumes that it continues.\n\nSo, however one looks at it, the right to enslave is void. It is not only illegitimate but absurd and meaningless. The words slave and right contradict and exclude each other. Whether one person says it to another person or to a whole people, the following statement is equally senseless: I make an agreement with you that puts every burden on you and gives every benefit to me. I will keep it for as long as I please, and you will keep it for as long as I please.\n\n### Book I, Chapter 5\n\nWhy We Must Always Go Back to an Initial Agreement.\n\nEven if I granted everything I have argued against so far, supporters of despotism would be no further ahead. There is always a big difference between subduing a crowd and governing a society. Suppose scattered people are enslaved one after another by a single man, however many there are. I see only a master and slaves, not a people and its leader. You can call it a gathering, but not an association. There is no public good and no political body. Even if this man enslaves half the world, he is still just an individual. His interest, separate from everyone else's, is still private. If he dies, the empire he leaves falls apart, with nothing to hold it together, just as an oak breaks down into a heap of ashes after fire consumes it.\n\nA people, Grotius says, can give itself to a king. So according to Grotius a people is already a people before giving itself to a king. Giving itself is itself a civil act and assumes public deliberation. Before examining how a people chooses a king, then, it would be wise to examine how a people becomes a people. That act must come first and is the true foundation of society.\n\nIndeed, if there had been no prior agreement, why would the minority have to accept the majority's choice, unless the election was unanimous? And how can a hundred people who want a master have the right to vote on behalf of ten who do not? The rule of majority voting is itself established by agreement and assumes unanimity at least once.\n\n### Book I, Chapter 6\n\nOn the Social Pact.\n\nI assume that people have reached a point where the obstacles to their survival in the state of nature are stronger than the resources each individual can use to remain in that state. Then their original condition can no longer continue. Humanity would perish unless it changed its way of life.\n\nPeople cannot create new forces; they can only join and direct forces that already exist. So their only way to survive is to join together and build up enough combined force to overcome the resistance they face. They must set these forces in motion through a single driving power and make them work together.\n\nThis combined force can arise only if several people cooperate. But each person's strength and freedom are the first tools of his survival. How can he commit them without harming himself or neglecting the care he owes himself? Applied to my subject, this difficulty can be stated as follows.\n\n“Find a form of association that uses all its shared strength to protect the person and property of each member. In it, each person joins everyone else yet obeys only himself and remains as free as before.” This is the basic problem solved by the social pact.\n\nThe terms of this pact are so strictly set by the nature of the act that the slightest change would make them empty and ineffective. Even if they have perhaps never been formally stated, they are the same everywhere and are silently accepted and recognized everywhere. This remains so until the social pact is broken. Then each person returns to his original rights and takes back his natural freedom, losing the freedom established by agreement that he had given it up for.\n\nProperly understood, all these terms come down to one: each member gives himself and all his rights entirely to the whole community. First, because each person gives himself completely, the terms are equal for all. And because they are equal for all, no one has an interest in making them burdensome for others.\n\nWhat is more, because this surrender has no exceptions, the union is as complete as it can be, and no member has anything left to demand. If individuals kept some rights, there would be no common authority to decide disputes between them and the public. Each person, being his own judge in some matters, would soon claim to judge every matter. The state of nature would continue, and the association would inevitably become tyrannical or pointless.\n\nFinally, when each person gives himself to everyone, he gives himself to no one in particular. There is not one member over whom we do not gain the same right that we grant that member over ourselves. So we gain the equivalent of everything we lose, as well as greater strength to keep what we have.\n\nIf we remove from the social pact everything that is not essential to it, its terms come down to this: Each of us places his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will. And together, as one body, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole.\n\nAt once, instead of the separate person of each party to the pact, this act of association creates a collective moral body with as many members as the assembly has votes. From this same act it receives its unity, its shared identity, its life, and its will. This public person, formed by the union of all the others, was once called the City. It is now called the Republic or the political body. Its members call it the State when it is passive, the Sovereign when it is active, and a Power when comparing it with others like it. The members together are called the people. Individually, they are called Citizens when they take part in sovereign authority and Subjects when they obey the laws of the State. These terms are often confused and used interchangeably. It is enough to know how to tell them apart when they are used precisely.\n\n### Book I, Chapter 7\n\nOn the Sovereign.\n\nThis formula shows that the act of association involves a two-way commitment between the public and individuals. Each individual, entering into an agreement with himself, so to speak, is bound in two ways: as a member of the sovereign, he is bound to individuals, and as a member of the State, he is bound to the sovereign. But we cannot apply the rule of civil law that no one is bound by agreements with himself. There is a real difference between binding oneself to oneself and binding oneself to a whole of which one is a part.\n\nThere is another point to note. A public decision can bind all subjects to the sovereign because each subject has those two different roles. But for the opposite reason, it cannot bind the sovereign to itself. So it goes against the nature of the political body for the sovereign to impose a law on itself that it cannot break. The sovereign can see itself in only one role, and in that case it is like an individual entering into an agreement with himself. We can see from this that there is not, and cannot be, any fundamental law binding on the whole people, not even the social pact. This does not mean that the body cannot enter into commitments with others that do not go against the pact. In relation to foreigners, it becomes a single being, an individual.\n\nBut the political body, or sovereign, owes its existence entirely to the sanctity of the pact. It can never commit itself, even to others, to anything that goes against that original act. It cannot, for example, give away a part of itself or submit to another sovereign. To violate the act through which it exists would be to destroy itself. What no longer exists can produce nothing.\n\nOnce this multitude has come together as one body, no one can harm a member without attacking the body. Still less can anyone harm the body without its members feeling it. Thus both duty and interest require the two parties to help each other. The same people, in both their roles, must try to bring together all the benefits those roles provide.\n\nNow the sovereign is made up only of the individuals who form it. It does not and cannot have an interest opposed to theirs. Sovereign power therefore needs no guarantee against its subjects, because the body cannot wish to harm all its members. We will see later that it cannot harm any one member in particular. The sovereign, simply by existing, is always what it should be.\n\nSubjects, however, are not in the same position in relation to the sovereign. Despite their shared interest, nothing would guarantee that they keep their commitments unless the sovereign found ways to secure their loyalty.\n\nIn fact, each individual, as a human being, can have a private will that conflicts with, or differs from, the general will he has as a citizen. His personal interest can speak to him very differently from the common interest. His independent existence may make him see what he owes the common cause as a contribution he can choose to give or withhold. He may think that withholding it will harm others less than paying it will cost him. Because the moral person that makes up the State is not a human being, he may see it as only an idea. He would then enjoy the rights of a citizen without taking on the duties of a subject. If this injustice spread, it would destroy the political body.\n\nFor the social pact to be more than an empty form, then, it silently contains the one commitment that can give force to the others. Anyone who refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body. This means only that he will be forced to be free. This is the condition that, by giving each citizen to the country, protects him against dependence on any individual. It is the device that makes the political system work. It alone makes civil obligations legitimate; without it, they would be absurd, tyrannical, and open to the worst abuses.\n\n### Book I, Chapter 8\n\nOn Civil Society.\n\nThe move from the state of nature to civil society brings about a remarkable change in a person. Justice takes the place of instinct in his conduct, and his actions gain a moral quality that they lacked before. Only then does the voice of duty replace physical impulse, and right replace appetite. Until that time he had looked only to himself. Now he must act on other principles and consult his reason before listening to his inclinations. In this condition he gives up several advantages he had by nature, but he gains such great advantages in return: his abilities are exercised and developed, his ideas broaden, his feelings become nobler, and his whole spirit rises. If abuses of this new condition did not often lower him beneath the condition he had left, he would constantly bless the happy moment that took him out of it forever and turned a limited, unthinking animal into an intelligent being and a human being.\n\nLet us put the two sides of this comparison in simple terms. Through the social pact, a person loses his natural freedom and an unlimited right to everything that attracts him and that he can get. He gains civil freedom and ownership of everything he possesses. To judge these gains and losses correctly, we must distinguish natural freedom, limited only by a person's own strength, from civil freedom, limited by the general will. We must also distinguish possession, which results only from force or the claim of the first occupant, from ownership, which can rest only on a recognized legal title.\n\nTo these gains from civil society we could add moral freedom, which alone makes a person truly his own master. For to be driven only by appetite is slavery, while to obey a law one has set for oneself is freedom. But I have already said more than enough on this matter, and the philosophical meaning of the word freedom is not my subject here.\n\n### Book I, Chapter 9\n\nOn Property in Land.\n\nEach member of the community gives himself to it at the moment it is formed, just as he is, along with all his powers. These include the goods he possesses. This act does not mean that possession changes its nature when it changes hands and becomes ownership in the hands of the sovereign. But the City's powers are far greater than those of an individual. In practice, public possession is therefore stronger and harder to overturn, though no more legitimate, at least in the eyes of foreigners. For through the social pact the State is master of all the goods of its members, and that pact is the basis of all rights within the State. In relation to other powers, however, its claim rests only on the right of first occupancy inherited from those individuals.\n\nThe right of first occupancy is more real than the right of the strongest, but it does not become a true right until the right of ownership has been established. Every person naturally has a right to everything necessary for survival. But once a formal act makes him the owner of some property, he is excluded from the rest. Having received his share, he must keep within its limits and has no further right to what belongs to everyone. That is why every person in civil society respects the right of first occupancy, though it is so weak in the state of nature. In respecting this right, we respect not so much what belongs to someone else as what does not belong to us.\n\nIn general, three conditions must be met to justify a claim based on first occupancy over any piece of land. First, no one must already live on it. Second, the claimant must take only as much as is needed for survival. Third, the claim must be made through work and cultivation, not an empty ceremony. Without legal titles, work and cultivation are the only signs of ownership that others should respect.\n\nIndeed, when we grant the right of first occupancy to need and work, do we not extend it as far as it can go? Can this right be left without limits? Is stepping onto common land enough to claim at once to be its master? Is having the strength to keep others off it for a moment enough to take away their right ever to return? How can a person or a people seize a huge territory and deprive the whole human race of it without committing a punishable theft? Such a seizure takes from other people the places to live and the food that nature gives to everyone in common. When Nuñez Balbao stood on the shore and took possession of the southern sea and all of South America for the crown of Castile, was that enough to dispossess all its inhabitants and shut out every other ruler in the world? On that basis, all these ceremonies served little purpose. The Catholic King could simply have claimed the entire universe from his office, then removed from his empire whatever other rulers already possessed.\n\nIt is easy to understand how neighboring lands held by individuals become public territory when joined together. The right of sovereignty then extends from the subjects to the land they occupy and becomes a right over both land and persons. This makes the landholders more dependent and turns their own strength into a guarantee of their loyalty. Ancient monarchs seem not to have fully understood this advantage. They called themselves Kings of the Persians, the Scythians, and the Macedonians, as if they considered themselves leaders of people rather than masters of the country. Today's monarchs more skillfully call themselves Kings of France, Spain, England, and so on. By holding the land, they can be sure of holding its inhabitants.\n\nThe striking thing about this transfer is that when the community accepts individuals' goods, it does not take those goods away from them. Instead, it secures their legitimate possession of them, turns an unlawful claim into a true right, and turns use into ownership. The people holding the goods are then seen as trustees of public property. All members of the State respect their rights, and the State uses its full strength to defend those rights against foreigners. By giving up their goods in a way that benefits the public and benefits themselves even more, the owners have, so to speak, gained everything they gave. This apparent contradiction is easy to explain once we distinguish the sovereign's rights over a piece of land from the owner's rights over the same land, as we will see later.\n\nIt may also happen that people begin to unite before owning anything. They then take enough land for all and either use it in common or divide it among themselves, equally or in shares fixed by the sovereign. However the land is acquired, each individual's right to his own piece of land is always subordinate to the community's right to all the land. Otherwise the social bond would not hold firm, and the exercise of sovereignty would have no real power.\n\nI will end this chapter and this book with an observation that should be the basis of every social system. The basic pact does not destroy natural equality. Instead, it replaces whatever physical inequality nature may have given people with a moral and legitimate equality. Though they may be unequal in strength or intelligence, they all become equal by agreement and by right.\n\nEnd of the First Book.\n\n### Book II, Chapter 1\n\nSovereignty Cannot Be Given Away\n\nThe first and most important result of the principles set out above is that only the general will can direct the forces of the State toward the purpose for which it was founded: the common good. Conflict between private interests made societies necessary, but agreement among those same interests made them possible. The social bond is formed by what those different interests have in common. If there were no point on which they agreed, no society could exist. Society must therefore be governed solely in the common interest.\n\nI say, then, that sovereignty is only the exercise of the general will and can never be given away. The sovereign is a collective being and can be represented only by itself. Power can be passed on, but will cannot.\n\nA private will may sometimes agree on a point with the general will. But that agreement cannot be lasting and constant. A private will naturally favors some over others, whereas the general will tends toward equality. It is even less possible to guarantee that agreement, even if it were bound to last forever. Any such agreement would be a matter of chance, not careful design. The sovereign can say, “Right now I want what this particular man wants, or at least what he says he wants.” But it cannot say, “I will also want tomorrow whatever that man wants then.” It makes no sense for a will to tie itself down for the future. Nor can any will consent to something contrary to the good of the being whose will it is. So if the people simply promise to obey, they dissolve themselves by that act. They cease to be a people. The moment there is a master, there is no longer a sovereign, and the political body is destroyed.\n\nThis does not mean that the orders of leaders cannot count as expressions of the general will so long as the sovereign is free to oppose them and does not do so. In that case we should take everyone's silence as the people's consent. I will explain this more fully later.\n\n### Book II, Chapter 2\n\nSovereignty Cannot Be Divided.\n\nFor the same reason that sovereignty cannot be given away, it cannot be divided. A will is either general or it is not. It belongs either to the whole people or only to a part of them. In the first case, the expression of this will is an act of sovereignty and makes law. In the second case, it is merely a private will, or an act of a magistrate. At most it is a decree.\n\nBut our political writers, unable to divide sovereignty at its source, divide it according to what it does. They split it into force and will, legislative power and executive power, the powers to tax, dispense justice, and wage war, domestic administration and the power to make agreements with foreign countries. Sometimes they mix all these parts together; sometimes they pull them apart. They make the sovereign into an imaginary being made of assembled pieces. It is as if they put a human together out of several bodies, one with eyes, another with arms, and another with feet, and nothing more. Japanese performers, it is said, cut a child into pieces before the audience. Then they throw all its limbs into the air one after another, and the child lands alive and whole again. The tricks of our political writers are much the same. They cut the social body into pieces with a fairground illusion, then somehow put the pieces back together.\n\nThis mistake comes from not having a clear idea of sovereign authority and treating what flows from that authority as if it were a part of the authority itself. For example, declaring war and making peace have been considered acts of sovereignty. They are not, since neither is a law. Each is only an application of the law, a specific act deciding a case under the law. This will become clear once we have settled what we mean by the word law.\n\nThe same holds for the other divisions. We would find that whenever we think sovereignty has been split, we are mistaken. All the rights taken for parts of sovereignty are subordinate to it. They always depend on the sovereign will and serve only to carry out its decisions.\n\nIt is hard to say how much confusion this lack of precision has caused in the judgments of writers on political right. They try to decide what rights kings and peoples have in relation to each other by applying their own principles. Anyone can see, in chapters III and IV of the first book of Grotius, how that learned man and his translator Barbeyrac get caught up and tangled in their own weak arguments. They are afraid of saying too much or too little for their purposes and of offending the interests they want to reconcile. Grotius, a refugee in France, unhappy with his homeland and wanting to win favor with Louis XIII, to whom he dedicated his book, does everything he can to strip peoples of all their rights and bestow those rights on kings. Barbeyrac would have liked that too, since he dedicated his translation to George I, King of England. But unfortunately for him, James II's expulsion, which he calls an abdication, forced him to be cautious, dodge the issue, and change course to avoid making William look like a usurper. If these two writers had accepted true principles, all their difficulties would have disappeared, and they would have been consistent throughout. But they would have had to tell the uncomfortable truth and seek favor only with the people. Truth does not bring a fortune, and the people hand out no ambassadorships, professorships, or pensions.\n\n### Book II, Chapter 3\n\nCan the General Will Be Mistaken?\n\nWhat I have said shows that the general will is always right and always aims at the public good. But it does not follow that the people's decisions are always right. People always want what is good for them, but they do not always see what that is. The people are never corrupted, but they are often deceived. Only then do they appear to want what is bad.\n\nThere is often a big difference between the will of all and the general will. The general will looks only to the common interest. The will of all looks to private interests and is simply the sum of private wills. But take away from these wills the pluses and minuses that cancel each other out. The sum of the differences that remains is the general will.\n\nSuppose the people had enough information when they made decisions, and citizens had no communication with one another. Their many small differences would always produce the general will, and the decision would always be good. But when factions form, creating smaller associations at the expense of the larger one, each association's will becomes general for its members but private in relation to the State. Then we can say there are no longer as many voters as people, but only as many as there are associations. There are fewer differences, and the result is less general. Finally, when one association grows so large that it outweighs all the others, the result is no longer a sum of small differences but a single difference. Then there is no longer a general will. The opinion that wins is only a private opinion.\n\nSo, to express the general will correctly, there must be no smaller associations within the State, and each citizen must give his own opinion. This was the one great and remarkable institution of Lycurgus. If smaller associations do exist, their number must be increased and their inequality prevented, as Solon, Numa, and Servius did. These are the only sound precautions for keeping the general will informed and preventing the people from making mistakes.\n\n### Book II, Chapter 4\n\nOn the Limits of Sovereign Power.\n\nIf the State, or City, is only a moral person whose life depends on the union of its members, and if its most important concern is its own survival, it needs a power that applies to everyone and can compel them. It needs this power to move and direct each part in whatever way best serves the whole. Just as nature gives each person absolute power over all the parts of his body, the social pact gives the political body absolute power over all its members. This power, when directed by the general will, is called sovereignty, as I have said.\n\nBut besides the public person, we must consider the private persons who make it up. Their lives and freedom are naturally independent of it. We must therefore make a clear distinction between the rights of citizens and those of the sovereign. We must also distinguish the duties citizens have as subjects from the natural rights they should enjoy as human beings.\n\nEveryone agrees that each person gives up through the social pact only that part of his power, goods, and freedom whose use matters to the community. But we must also agree that the sovereign alone decides what matters to it.\n\nA citizen owes the State every service he can provide as soon as the sovereign asks for it. On the other hand, the sovereign cannot burden subjects with any restrictions that serve no purpose for the community. It cannot even want to do so. Under the law of reason, as under the law of nature, nothing happens without a cause.\n\nOur commitments to the social body bind us only because they are mutual. They are such that when we fulfill them, we cannot work for others without also working for ourselves. Why is the general will always right? Why does everyone always want each person's happiness? It is because each voter counts himself among those meant by “each person” and thinks of himself while voting for everyone. This shows that equal rights, and the idea of justice that follows from them, come from the concern each person has for himself and so from human nature. It shows that, to be truly general, the general will must be general in what it aims at as well as in where it comes from. It must come from everyone and apply to everyone. It loses its natural soundness when it is directed at a particular, identifiable person or thing. In that case we are judging something outside ourselves and have no true principle of fairness to guide us.\n\nIndeed, as soon as the question involves a particular fact or right that has not been settled by a prior general agreement, it becomes a dispute. The individuals concerned are one party to the case, and the public is the other. But I see neither a law to follow nor a judge to give a ruling. It would be absurd then to rely on an express decision of the general will. Such a decision could only be the conclusion reached by one of the parties. For the other party it would be an outside, private will, open to injustice and error in this case. So just as a private will cannot stand for the general will, the general will in turn changes its nature when it takes up a particular matter. As a general will it cannot rule on a person or an event. For example, when the people of Athens appointed or dismissed their leaders, awarded honors to one person, imposed punishments on another, and used many individual decrees to perform all the acts of government without distinction, they no longer had a general will in the proper sense. They acted not as sovereign but as magistrate. This may seem to go against common ideas, but I need time to explain my own.\n\nWe can see from this that what makes a will general is not so much the number of votes as the common interest that unites them. Under this arrangement, each person must accept the conditions he imposes on others. This is a remarkable agreement between interest and justice. It gives decisions made together a quality of fairness that disappears when people discuss any individual case, because there is no common interest to bring the rule used by the judge together with the rule used by the person involved.\n\nWhichever way we trace the matter back to its source, we always reach the same conclusion: the social pact creates such equality among citizens that they all commit themselves on the same terms and must all enjoy the same rights. By the nature of the pact, then, every act of sovereignty—that is, every genuine act of the general will—binds or benefits all citizens equally. The sovereign knows only the nation as a whole and does not single out any of its members. What, exactly, is an act of sovereignty? It is not an agreement between a superior and an inferior, but an agreement between the body and each of its members. It is legitimate because it rests on the social pact; fair because it applies to everyone; useful because it can aim only at the general good; and secure because public strength and supreme power guarantee it. As long as subjects are bound only by agreements of this kind, they obey no one but their own will. To ask how far the rights of the sovereign and citizens extend in relation to each other is to ask how far citizens can commit themselves to themselves, each to all and all to each.\n\nWe can see that sovereign power, however absolute, sacred, and inviolable it may be, does not and cannot go beyond the limits of general agreements. Each person is free to decide what to do with the property and freedom that these agreements have left him. The sovereign therefore never has a right to burden one subject more than another. Once it does, the matter becomes particular, and its power no longer applies.\n\nOnce we accept these distinctions, it is plainly false that individuals truly give anything up in the social pact. Through this pact their condition actually becomes better than it was before. Instead of simply surrendering something, they make a beneficial exchange. They trade an uncertain, insecure way of life for a better, safer one; natural independence for freedom; the power to harm others for their own safety; and strength that others could overcome for a right made unbeatable by social union. The State constantly protects even the lives they have committed to it. When they risk their lives to defend it, what are they doing but returning what they received from it? In the state of nature, would they not do the same thing more often and with greater danger? In unavoidable fights they would risk their lives to defend what keeps them alive. It is true that everyone must fight for the country when needed. But then no one ever has to fight for himself. Do we not still come out ahead by running some risks for our safety, when we would have to face those risks alone as soon as that safety was taken away?\n\n### Book II, Chapter 5\n\nOn the Right of Life and Death.\n\nPeople ask how individuals, who have no right to dispose of their own lives, can transfer to the sovereign a right they do not have. The question seems hard to answer only because it is badly put. Everyone has the right to risk their life to save it. Has anyone ever said that a person who jumps out a window to escape a fire is guilty of suicide? Has anyone even blamed that crime on a person who dies in a storm, though they knew the danger when boarding the ship?\n\nThe social pact aims to preserve those who enter it. Whoever wants the end also wants the means, and those means involve some risks and even some losses. Whoever wants others to preserve their life must also give their life for others when needed. Now a citizen no longer judges the danger to which the law requires them to expose themselves. When the prince says to a citizen, \"The state needs you to die,\" that citizen must die. For only on that condition have they lived safely until then, and their life is no longer only a gift of nature but a conditional gift of the state.\n\nThe death penalty imposed on criminals can be seen in much the same way. We agree to die if we become murderers so that we will not become victims of murderers. In this agreement, far from disposing of our lives, we think only of protecting them. We should not suppose that any of those making the agreement already plans to get hanged.\n\nBesides, anyone who breaks the law and attacks society's rights becomes a rebel and a traitor to their country through their crimes. By breaking its laws, they cease to be a member of it; indeed, they make war on it. The state's survival is then incompatible with theirs. One of the two must perish. When the guilty person is put to death, they are treated less as a citizen than as an enemy. The proceedings and the judgment are the proof and the declaration that they have broken the social pact, and so are no longer a member of the state. Since they acknowledged themselves as a member, at least by living there, they must be removed: by exile as a breaker of the pact, or by death as a public enemy. Such an enemy is not a corporate body but a human being, and in this case the right of war permits the killing of the defeated person.\n\nBut someone will say that the sentencing of a criminal is a particular act. Agreed. That is why sentencing does not belong to the sovereign. It is a right the sovereign may grant but cannot exercise itself. All my ideas are connected, but I cannot set them all out at once.\n\nIn any case, frequent executions are always a sign of weakness or laziness in government. There is no bad person who could not be made useful in some way. We have a right to put someone to death, even as an example, only if we cannot keep that person alive without danger.\n\nAs for the right to pardon someone, or to exempt a guilty person from the penalty set by law and pronounced by a judge, that belongs only to whoever is above the judge and the law: the sovereign. Even here the sovereign's right is not very clear, and there are very few occasions to use it. In a well-governed state there are few punishments, not because pardons are common, but because there are few criminals. As the state decays, the sheer number of crimes ensures that they go unpunished. Under the Roman Republic, neither the Senate nor the consuls ever tried to grant pardons. Even the people did not do so, though they sometimes overturned their own judgment. Frequent pardons signal that crimes will soon no longer need pardons, and everyone can see where that leads. But I feel my heart protesting and holding back my pen. Let us leave these questions to be debated by a just person who has never done wrong and has never needed a pardon.\n\n### Book II, Chapter 6\n\nOn Law.\n\nThrough the social pact, we have given the body politic its existence and life. We must now give it movement and will through legislation. For the original act that forms and unites this body does not yet determine what it must do to survive.\n\nWhat is good and orderly is so by the nature of things, independently of human agreements. All justice comes from God; God alone is its source. But if we knew how to receive it from so high a source, we would need neither government nor laws. There is certainly a universal justice that comes from reason alone. But for this justice to be accepted among us, it must work both ways. From a human point of view, without a natural sanction, the laws of justice are useless among people. They benefit the bad and harm the just when the just person observes them toward everyone but no one observes them toward that person. We therefore need agreements and laws to join rights to duties and restore justice to its proper purpose. In the state of nature, where everything is shared, I owe nothing to people to whom I have promised nothing. I recognize as belonging to someone else only what is of no use to me. That is not how it is in civil society, where all rights are settled by law.\n\nBut what exactly is a law? As long as people attach only metaphysical ideas to that word, they will keep arguing without understanding one another. Even after they explain what a law of nature is, they will know no better what a law of the state is.\n\nI have already said that there is no general will concerning a particular object. That particular object is either inside or outside the state. If it is outside, a will alien to it is not general in relation to it. If the object is inside the state, it is a part of the state. A relationship then arises between the whole and its part, making them two separate entities: one is the part, and the other is the whole minus that part. But the whole minus a part is not the whole. As long as this relationship lasts, there is no longer a whole, only two unequal parts. It follows that the will of either part is not general in relation to the other.\n\nBut when the entire people makes a decision about the entire people, it considers only itself. If a relationship arises then, it is between the whole considered from one viewpoint and the whole considered from another, without any division of the whole. The matter being decided is then as general as the will making the decision. This act is what I call a law.\n\nWhen I say that the subject of laws is always general, I mean that the law considers subjects as a body and actions in the abstract. It never considers an individual person or a particular action. Thus the law may provide for privileges, but it cannot give them to anyone by name. It may establish several classes of citizens and even specify the qualifications for entering them, but it cannot name the people who are to enter. It may establish royal government and hereditary succession, but it cannot elect a king or name a royal family. In short, any task involving an individual object lies outside legislative power.\n\nWith this in mind, we can immediately see that there is no reason to ask who has the right to make laws, since laws are acts of the general will. Nor should we ask whether the prince is above the laws, since the prince is a member of the state; whether a law can be unjust, since no one is unjust to themselves; or how we can be both free and subject to the laws, since laws are only records of our own wills.\n\nWe can also see that a law combines a general will with a general subject. Whatever a person orders on their own authority, whoever they may be, is not a law. Even an order from the sovereign on a particular matter is not a law but a decree. It is an act not of sovereignty but of government.\n\nI therefore call any state governed by laws a republic, whatever form its administration takes. For only then does the public interest govern, and the public good truly counts. Every legitimate government is republican. I will explain below what I mean by government.\n\nLaws are, properly speaking, just the terms of civil association. The people subject to the laws must be their authors. Only those who join together can set the terms of their society. But how will they do it? Will they agree unanimously through a sudden flash of inspiration? Does the body politic have an organ with which to express its wishes? Who will give it the foresight needed to put its decisions into words and publish them in advance? Or how will it announce them when they are needed? How could a blind crowd, which often does not know what it wants because it rarely knows what is good for it, carry out on its own a task as great and difficult as a system of legislation? On its own, the people always want what is good, but on their own they do not always see it. The general will is always right, but the judgment guiding it is not always informed. It must be shown things as they are and sometimes as they ought to appear to it. It must be shown the right path it seeks and protected from the pull of private interests. Distant places and times must be brought closer to its view. The appeal of present, visible benefits must be weighed against the danger of distant, hidden harms. Individuals see the good that they reject; the public wants the good that it does not see. Both need guides equally. Individuals must be made to bring their wills into line with their reason; the public must be taught to understand what it wants. Then public understanding will unite intellect and will in the social body. Its parts will work together properly, and the whole will attain its greatest strength. This is why a legislator is needed.\n\n### Book II, Chapter 7\n\nOn the Legislator.\n\nTo discover the best rules for organizing nations, we would need a superior intelligence. It would see all human passions without feeling any of them. It would have nothing in common with our nature but would know it thoroughly. Its happiness would not depend on us, yet it would willingly concern itself with ours. Finally, it would plan for glory far in the future, working in one century and enjoying the result in another. It would take gods to give laws to human beings.\n\nCaligula made in practice the same argument that Plato made in principle to define the civic or royal man he seeks in his book on kingship. But if a great prince is rare, how rare must a great legislator be? The prince only has to follow the model proposed by the legislator. The legislator is the mechanic who invents the machine; the prince is only the worker who assembles it and gets it running. At the birth of societies, says Montesquieu, the leaders of republics establish their institutions; afterward those institutions shape the leaders of republics.\n\nAnyone who dares undertake to establish institutions for a people must feel able, so to speak, to change human nature. They must transform each individual, who by themselves is a complete and independent whole, into part of a larger whole from which that person receives, in a sense, life and existence. They must alter the human constitution to strengthen it. They must replace the physical and independent existence we all receive from nature with a partial and moral existence. In short, they must take away people's own powers and give them other powers that come from outside themselves and that they cannot use without the help of others. The more their natural powers are extinguished, and the greater and more lasting the acquired powers become, the stronger and more perfect the institution is. Thus if each citizen is nothing and can do nothing except through all the others, and the power acquired by the whole equals or exceeds the sum of all individuals' natural powers, we can say that legislation has reached the highest perfection possible.\n\nThe legislator is an extraordinary person in the state in every respect. That is true of their talent and equally true of their role. This role is neither a magistracy nor sovereignty. The work that establishes the republic has no place within its constitution. It is a special, higher task with nothing in common with ruling people. Whoever commands people must not command the laws, and whoever commands the laws must not command people either. Otherwise their laws would serve their passions and often only perpetuate their injustices. They could never prevent private aims from corrupting the integrity of their work.\n\nWhen Lycurgus gave laws to his country, he first gave up the kingship. Most Greek cities customarily entrusted foreigners with establishing their laws. The modern republics of Italy often followed this practice. Geneva did the same and benefited from it. At the height of its greatness, Rome saw all the crimes of tyranny return within its walls and nearly perished because it combined legislative authority and sovereign power in the same hands.\n\nYet even the Decemvirs never claimed the right to make any law solely on their own authority. They told the people, \"Nothing we propose to you can become law without your consent. Romans, be the authors yourselves of the laws that are to bring you happiness.\"\n\nWhoever drafts the laws therefore has, or ought to have, no legislative right. Even if the people wished to do so, they could not give up this right, which cannot be transferred. Under the fundamental pact, only the general will binds individuals, and we can never be certain that a particular will agrees with the general will until it has been put to a free vote of the people. I have said this already, but it is worth repeating.\n\nIn the work of legislation, then, two seemingly incompatible things come together: a task beyond human powers, and an authority that has no power to carry it out.\n\nThere is another difficulty worth noting. Wise people who speak to ordinary people in their own language rather than the people's cannot be understood. There are countless kinds of ideas that cannot be translated into the people's language. Goals that are too general and matters too far away are equally beyond their grasp. Since each person approves only a plan of government that serves their own interest, they find it hard to see the benefits they will gain from the constant sacrifices good laws require. For a new people to appreciate sound principles of politics and follow the basic rules of statecraft, the effect would have to become the cause. The social spirit that should result from the institutions would have to guide their establishment, and people would have to be, before the laws existed, what the laws are meant to make them. The legislator therefore cannot rely on either force or argument. They must turn to a different kind of authority, one that can draw people along without violence and persuade them without convincing them by reason.\n\nThat is why the founders of nations have always had to invoke heaven and credit the gods with their own wisdom. They wanted people to submit to the laws of the state as they submit to the laws of nature. Recognizing the same power behind the creation of humanity and of the city, people would then obey freely and willingly bear the burden of public happiness.\n\nThe legislator puts the decisions of this lofty reason, which rises beyond the understanding of ordinary people, into the mouths of immortals. Divine authority can then win over those whom human wisdom could not move. But not everyone can make the gods speak, or be believed when claiming to speak for them. The legislator's great spirit is the real miracle that must prove their mission. Anyone can carve stone tablets, buy an oracle, pretend to communicate secretly with a god, train a bird to whisper in their ear, or find some other crude way to fool the people. Someone capable of no more than this might by chance gather a crowd of fools, but will never found an empire. Their absurd creation will soon perish with them. Empty tricks make a temporary bond; only wisdom makes it last. The Jewish law, which still survives, and the law of the child of Ishmael, which has governed half the world for ten centuries, still testify today to the greatness of the men who laid them down. Proud philosophy and blind partisanship see in them only successful frauds. A genuine student of politics admires in their institutions the great and powerful intelligence behind lasting establishments.\n\nWe should not conclude from all this, with Warburton, that politics and religion have the same purpose among us. The conclusion is that, at the founding of nations, one serves as the other's instrument.\n\n### Book II, Chapter 8\n\nOn the People.\n\nBefore putting up a large building, an architect examines and tests the ground to see whether it can support the weight. In the same way, a wise founder does not begin by drafting good laws. First they examine whether the people for whom the laws are intended are fit to live under them. That is why Plato refused to give laws to the Arcadians and Cyrenians: he knew both peoples were rich and could not bear equality. That is also why Crete had good laws but bad people: Minos had trained a people already weighed down with vices.\n\nA thousand nations have flourished on earth that could never have tolerated good laws. Even the nations that could have tolerated them had only a very short period in their entire history when they could do so. Peoples, like individuals, are open to learning only when young. They become set in their ways as they grow old. Once customs have taken hold and prejudices have deep roots, trying to reform them is dangerous and pointless. The people cannot even bear to have their troubles touched in order to be cured. They are like foolish, timid patients who shudder at the sight of a doctor.\n\nYet just as some illnesses upset a person's mind and erase memories of the past, states sometimes pass through violent periods when revolutions affect whole peoples as crises affect individuals. Horror of the past takes the place of forgetfulness. A state set ablaze by civil wars rises, so to speak, from its ashes, and recovers the strength of youth as it escapes the grip of death. This happened to Sparta in the time of Lycurgus and to Rome after the Tarquins. In our own times it happened to Holland and Switzerland after they expelled their tyrants.\n\nBut such events are rare. They are exceptions, always explained by the special constitution of the state concerned. They cannot even happen twice to the same people. A people can make itself free while it is still uncivilized, but it can no longer do so after its civic strength has worn out. Then unrest can destroy it, but revolutions cannot restore it. As soon as its chains are broken, it falls apart and ceases to exist. From then on it needs a master, not a liberator. Free peoples, remember this rule: freedom can be gained, but it can never be regained.\n\nNations, like individuals, have a time of maturity. We must wait for it before putting them under laws. But it is not always easy to tell when a people is mature, and if we act too soon the project fails. One people can be disciplined from its birth, while another cannot be disciplined after ten centuries. The Russians will never be truly civilized, because they were civilized too early. Peter had a talent for imitation; he did not have true creative genius, the kind that makes everything out of nothing. Some things he did were good, but most were out of place. He saw that his people were uncivilized but failed to see that they were not ready for organized civil life. He wanted to civilize them when he should only have trained them for war. He wanted to make Germans and Englishmen of them at once, when he should first have made Russians. By persuading his subjects that they were what they are not, he stopped them from ever becoming what they could be. This is how a French tutor trains a pupil to shine briefly as a child and then never amount to anything. The Russian Empire will want to conquer Europe and will itself be conquered. The Tartars, whether its subjects or its neighbors, will become its masters and ours. This revolution seems certain to me. All the kings of Europe are working together to speed it up.\n\n### Book II, Chapter 9\n\nContinued.\n\nNature sets limits on the height of a well-proportioned person. Beyond those limits it produces only giants or dwarfs. In the same way, for a state to have the best constitution, there are limits to its size. It must be neither too large to govern well nor too small to survive on its own. Every body politic has a maximum strength it cannot exceed, and it often moves farther from that maximum as it grows larger. The farther the social bond extends, the weaker it becomes. In general, a small state is proportionally stronger than a large one.\n\nA thousand reasons show why. First, administration becomes harder over greater distances, just as a weight feels heavier at the end of a longer lever. It also costs more as the levels multiply. Every city has its own administration paid for by the people. Every district has another, also paid for by the people. Then come the provinces, followed by the large governing regions, satrapies, and viceroyalties. Each higher level costs more, always at the expense of the unfortunate people. Finally comes the supreme administration, which crushes everything. So many added burdens continually exhaust the subjects. Far from being better governed by all these different levels, they are governed much worse than if they had only one above them. Yet barely any resources remain for emergencies. When such resources are needed, the state is always on the verge of ruin.\n\nThat is not all. The government has less strength and speed to enforce the laws, prevent oppression, correct abuses, and forestall attempts at rebellion in distant places. Meanwhile, people feel less affection for leaders they never see, a homeland that seems to them as vast as the world, and fellow citizens who are mostly strangers to them. The same laws cannot suit so many different provinces with different ways of life, living in opposite climates, and unable to tolerate the same form of government. Different laws produce nothing but disorder and confusion among people who live under the same leaders, remain in constant contact, move between provinces, and intermarry. Living under different customs, they can never be sure whether their inherited property really belongs to them. Talents go unused, virtues unnoticed, and vices unpunished among the crowd of people who do not know one another but are brought together in the seat of supreme administration. The leaders, overwhelmed with business, see nothing for themselves; clerks govern the state. Finally, the measures needed to maintain central authority, which so many distant officials try either to evade or to wield as their own, absorb all public attention. None is left for the people's happiness, and hardly any for their defense when needed. In this way, a body too large for its constitution sinks and dies, crushed by its own weight.\n\nOn the other hand, a state needs a firm enough base to be stable, to resist the shocks it will inevitably face and to make the efforts needed to sustain itself. For all peoples have a kind of centrifugal force. They constantly push against one another and seek to expand at their neighbors' expense, like Descartes's vortices. Weak peoples risk being swallowed up quickly. Hardly anyone can survive without achieving a kind of balance with everyone else, so that pressure is roughly equal on all sides.\n\nThere are therefore reasons to expand and reasons to contract. One of the political leader's greatest talents is finding the balance between them that best preserves the state. In general, the reasons for expansion are merely external and relative and should be subordinate to the others, which are internal and absolute. A sound and strong constitution is the first thing to seek. We should rely more on the strength that comes from good government than on the resources supplied by a large territory.\n\nStill, some states have had constitutions that made conquest necessary to their existence. To survive, they had to keep expanding. Perhaps they congratulated themselves on this fortunate necessity. Yet it showed them, along with the limit of their greatness, the unavoidable moment of their fall.\n\n### Book II, Chapter 10\n\nContinued.\n\nThere are two ways to measure a body politic: by the size of its territory and by the number of its people. To give a state its proper size, these two measurements must stand in a suitable relationship. People make the state, and land feeds the people. The land must therefore provide enough to feed its inhabitants, and there must be as many inhabitants as the land can feed. At that proportion a given population has its greatest strength. If there is too much land, defending it is costly, too little of it is cultivated, and it produces more than is needed. This is the immediate cause of defensive wars. If there is not enough land, the state must rely on its neighbors for what it lacks. This is the immediate cause of offensive wars. Any people whose location leaves it only the choice between trade and war is weak in itself. It depends on its neighbors and on events; its existence is always uncertain and short. It conquers others and changes its position, or is conquered and becomes nothing. It can stay free only by being very small or very large.\n\nNo calculation can establish a fixed ratio between the area of land and the number of people it can support. Land differs in quality, fertility, crops, and climate. The people who live on it also differ in their needs: some consume little on fertile land, while others consume much on poor soil. We must also consider differences in women's fertility, whether conditions in the country favor population growth, and how much the legislator can hope to increase it through institutions. The legislator must therefore base judgment not on what can be seen now but on what can be foreseen. They must consider not only the current population but also the size it will naturally reach. Finally, particular local conditions often require or allow more land to be taken in than seems necessary. A mountainous country, for example, calls for a wide area. Its natural products, namely woods and pasture, require less labor; experience shows that women there are more fertile than on the plains; and a large area of sloping ground offers only a small area of level ground, the only area that counts for growing plants. By contrast, a country can occupy a smaller area by the sea, even among nearly barren rocks and sands. Fishing can largely make up for what the land does not produce. People need to live closer together to repel pirates. Colonies also make it easier to relieve the country of its excess population.\n\nOne more condition must be added to those for establishing a people. Nothing else can replace it, and without it all the others are useless: there must be prosperity and peace. The time when a state is being organized is like the time when a battalion is being formed. At that moment the body is least able to resist and easiest to destroy. People would resist better in complete disorder than during a period of upheaval when everyone is thinking of their place in the ranks instead of the danger. If war, famine, or rebellion breaks out at this critical time, the state will certainly be overthrown.\n\nThis does not mean that many governments have not been established amid such storms. But then those governments themselves destroy the state. Usurpers always bring about or choose troubled times to pass destructive laws under cover of public fear, laws the people would never adopt with a clear head. The choice of when to establish institutions is one of the surest ways to distinguish the work of a legislator from that of a tyrant.\n\nWhat people, then, are suited to legislation? A people already bound by some shared origin, interest, or agreement but not yet subjected to the full yoke of laws. A people without deeply rooted customs or superstitions. A people unafraid of being overwhelmed by a sudden invasion, able without joining its neighbors' quarrels either to resist each one alone or to enlist one against another. A people whose every member can be known to all, and where no one has to carry a burden greater than a person can bear. A people who can do without other peoples, and whom every other people can do without. A people neither rich nor poor, able to provide for itself. Finally, a people with the stability of an old nation and the readiness to learn of a new one. What makes the legislator's work hard is not so much what must be built as what must be destroyed. Success is so rare because it is impossible to find natural simplicity together with the needs of society. It is true that all these conditions are rarely found together. That is why we see few well-constituted states.\n\nThere is still one country in Europe fit for legislation: the island of Corsica. The courage and persistence with which its brave people have won back and defended their freedom deserve a wise person to teach them how to keep it. I have a feeling that one day this small island will amaze Europe.\n\n### Book II, Chapter 11\n\nOn the Different Systems of Legislation.\n\nIf we ask what exactly makes up the greatest good of all, which should be the goal of every system of legislation, we find it comes down to two main things: freedom and equality. Freedom matters because every private dependency takes strength away from the body of the state. Equality matters because freedom cannot survive without it.\n\nI have already explained civil freedom. As for equality, the word does not mean that everyone must have exactly the same amount of power and wealth. Regarding power, it means that power must stop short of violence and be exercised only under official rank and the laws. Regarding wealth, it means that no citizen should be rich enough to buy another and none so poor as to be forced to sell themselves. That requires the powerful to show restraint in their possessions and influence, and ordinary people to restrain their greed and desire.\n\nPeople say this equality is a theoretical fantasy that cannot exist in practice. But if abuses are unavoidable, does it follow that we should not at least control them? It is precisely because events always tend to destroy equality that legislation must always try to preserve it.\n\nYet these general aims of every good institution must be adapted to each country. Local conditions and the character of its inhabitants produce different circumstances. Each people therefore needs its own system of institutions, one best suited perhaps not in itself, but to the state for which it is intended. Is the soil poor and barren, for example, or is the country too crowded for its inhabitants? Turn to industry and crafts, and trade their products for the foodstuffs you lack. Or do you occupy rich plains and fertile hillsides? Do you have too few inhabitants for good land? Devote all your efforts to farming, which increases the population. Drive away crafts that would only finish emptying the country by drawing its few inhabitants together in a handful of places. Do you occupy long, accessible coasts? Fill the sea with ships and develop trade and navigation. Your life as a state will be brilliant and short. Does the sea wash only against nearly inaccessible rocks along your coast? Remain uncivilized fish-eaters. You will live more peacefully, perhaps become better people, and certainly be happier. In short, besides the principles common to all, every people has something within it that calls for those principles to be applied in a particular way and makes its legislation unique. Thus the Hebrews in ancient times and the Arabs more recently made religion their chief aim; the Athenians made learning theirs, Carthage and Tyre trade, Rhodes seafaring, Sparta war, and Rome virtue. The author of The Spirit of the Laws has shown through many examples how skillfully the legislator directs institutions toward each of these goals.\n\nA state's constitution is truly strong and lasting when its circumstances are taken so fully into account that natural conditions and the laws always work toward the same ends. Then the laws, so to speak, only reinforce, support, and correct those natural conditions. But if the legislator chooses the wrong goal and adopts a principle different from the one arising from the nature of things, one will lead toward slavery and the other toward freedom, one toward wealth and the other toward population, one toward peace and the other toward conquest. The laws will gradually weaken, the constitution will change, and the state will remain troubled until it is destroyed or transformed and irresistible nature has regained control.\n\n### Book II, Chapter 12\n\nDivision of the Laws.\n\nTo organize the whole, or give the public body the best possible form, we must consider several relationships. The first is the action of the entire body upon itself: the relationship of the whole to the whole, or of the sovereign to the state. This relationship is made up of the relationships between the intermediate terms, as we will see later.\n\nThe laws governing this relationship are called political laws. They are also called fundamental laws, with some reason if they are wise. If each state has only one good way to be organized, the people who have found it should keep it. But if the existing arrangement is bad, why treat as fundamental laws that prevent it from becoming good? Besides, whatever the situation, a people always has the power to change its laws, even the best ones. If it chooses to harm itself, who has the right to stop it?\n\nThe second relationship is between members, or between each member and the entire body. This relationship should be as small as possible in the first case and as large as possible in the second. Each citizen should thus be fully independent of every other citizen and strongly dependent on the city. The same means always bring about both conditions, for only the strength of the state makes its members free. Civil laws arise from this second relationship.\n\nWe can consider a third kind of relationship between people and the law: the relationship between disobedience and punishment. This leads to criminal laws, which are at bottom not so much a separate kind of law as the enforcement of all the others.\n\nA fourth kind joins these three, and it is the most important of all. It is engraved neither on marble nor on bronze, but in the hearts of citizens. It forms the state's real constitution, gains new strength every day, and revives or replaces the other laws when they grow old or die out. It keeps a people faithful to the spirit of its founding and gradually replaces the force of authority with the force of habit. I mean ways of life, customs, and above all public opinion. Our political thinkers neglect this part, though the success of all the other parts depends on it. The great legislator works on it in secret while seeming to focus only on specific regulations. Those regulations merely support the arch while customs, which take longer to develop, eventually form its unshakable keystone.\n\nOf these different classes, political laws, which establish the form of government, are the only ones relevant to my subject.\n\nEnd of Book Two.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 1\n\nBefore discussing the different forms of government, let us try to establish the exact meaning of that word, which has not yet been explained very well.\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\nOn Government in General.\n\nI warn the reader to read this chapter carefully. I do not know how to make things clear to anyone unwilling to pay attention.\n\nEvery free action has two causes that work together to produce it. One is moral: the will that decides on the act. The other is physical: the power that carries it out. If I walk toward something, first I must want to go there, and second my feet must carry me. A paralyzed person may want to run, and an agile person may not want to; both will stay where they are. The body politic works in the same way. We can likewise distinguish force from will in it: will is called legislative power, and force executive power. Nothing happens or should happen there unless they work together.\n\nWe have seen that legislative power belongs to the people, and can belong only to them. By contrast, the principles already established make it easy to see that executive power cannot belong to the people as a whole in their role as legislator or sovereign. Executive power consists entirely of particular acts, which fall outside the province of law and therefore of the sovereign, whose acts can only be laws.\n\nThe public force therefore needs its own agent to bring it together and put it to work as the general will directs. This agent must provide communication between the state and the sovereign. In the public body, it must do something like what the union of soul and body does in a human being. This is why a state needs government. Government is wrongly confused with the sovereign, for it is only the sovereign's servant.\n\nWhat, then, is government? It is an intermediate body established between the subjects and the sovereign so that they can communicate with each other. It is responsible for enforcing laws and maintaining both civil and political freedom.\n\nMembers of this body are called magistrates or kings, that is, governors. The body as a whole is called the prince. Those who argue that the act by which a people places itself under leaders is not a contract are therefore quite right. It is simply an appointment to an office. As mere officials of the sovereign, the leaders exercise in its name the power it has entrusted to them. The sovereign can limit, change, or take back that power whenever it wishes. Giving up such a right would be incompatible with the nature of the social body and contrary to the purpose of association.\n\nI therefore call the legitimate exercise of executive power government or supreme administration, and the person or body entrusted with that administration the prince or magistrate.\n\nThe intermediate forces are found in government. Their relationships make up the relationship of whole to whole, or sovereign to state. We can represent this last relationship as the two extremes of a continued proportion, with government as the middle term. Government receives from the sovereign the orders it gives to the people. For the state to be in proper balance, when everything is taken into account, the power of government considered on its own must equal the power of the citizens, who are sovereigns in one respect and subjects in another.\n\nFurthermore, we cannot change any one of these three terms without immediately upsetting the proportion. If the sovereign tries to govern, the magistrate tries to make laws, or the subjects refuse to obey, order gives way to disorder. Force and will no longer work together, and the dissolved state falls into despotism or anarchy. Finally, just as there is only one middle term for any given relationship, there is only one possible good government in a given state. But countless events can change a people's relationships. Different governments can therefore suit different peoples, and can even suit the same people at different times.\n\nTo give some idea of the different relationships that can exist between these two extremes, I will use the number of people as an example, since it is easier to express.\n\nSuppose a state has ten thousand citizens. We can consider the sovereign only collectively, as a body. But each person as a subject is considered individually. Thus the sovereign stands to the subject as ten thousand stands to one. In other words, each member of the state has only a ten-thousandth share of sovereign authority, although they are subject to all of it. If the people number one hundred thousand, the position of each subject does not change. Each is equally subject to the full force of the laws, while each person's vote, reduced to a hundred-thousandth share, has ten times less influence on making them. With the subject still counting as one, the sovereign's relative size grows in proportion to the number of citizens. It follows that as the state grows, freedom decreases.\n\nWhen I say that the ratio grows, I mean that it moves farther from equality. The greater a ratio is in the mathematical sense, the weaker the relationship is in the ordinary sense. In mathematics, a ratio considered in terms of quantity is measured by its numerical value. In ordinary speech, a relationship considered in terms of identity is judged by similarity.\n\nNow the less private wills agree with the general will, that is, the less customs agree with the laws, the greater the restraining force must be. For government to be good, then, it must become relatively stronger as the population grows.\n\nOn the other hand, as the state grows, those entrusted with public authority face more temptations and have more means to abuse their power. The more strength the government needs to restrain the people, the more strength the sovereign needs in turn to restrain the government. Here I am speaking not of absolute strength but of the relative strength of the different parts of the state.\n\nIt follows from these two relationships that the continued proportion between sovereign, prince, and people is not an arbitrary idea. It is a necessary result of the nature of the body politic. It follows further that one extreme, the people as subjects, is fixed and represented by one. Whenever the ratio between the extremes increases or decreases, the ratio between neighboring terms also increases or decreases in the same way, so the middle term changes. This shows that there is no single, absolute constitution for government. Governments can differ in kind as much as states differ in size.\n\nSomeone might mock this system and say that, on my account, all one need do to find this middle term and form the body of government is take the square root of the number of people. I would reply that I use that number only as an example. The relationships I discuss are measured not merely by the number of people but more generally by the amount of activity, which depends on many causes. Besides, though I briefly borrow terms from geometry to express myself in fewer words, I know very well that mathematical precision does not apply to moral quantities.\n\nOn a small scale, government is what the body politic containing it is on a large one. It is a corporate body with certain powers, active like the sovereign and passive like the state. It can be broken down into other similar relationships. From these comes a new proportion, then another within it according to the ranking of the courts, until we reach an indivisible middle term: a single leader or supreme magistrate. We may picture that leader in the middle of this series as one stands between the series of fractions and the series of whole numbers.\n\nRather than get tangled up in this multiplication of terms, let us consider government simply as a new body within the state, distinct from the people and from the sovereign, and standing between them.\n\nThere is a basic difference between these two bodies. The state exists on its own, while government exists only through the sovereign. The prince's ruling will is, or ought to be, nothing but the general will or the law. Its force is only the public force concentrated in its hands. As soon as it tries to act with independent, unlimited authority of its own, the bond uniting the whole begins to loosen. If the prince finally develops a private will more active than the sovereign's and uses the public force in its hands to carry out that private will, there will be, so to speak, two sovereigns: one by right and the other in fact. At that instant the social union will vanish and the body politic will dissolve.\n\nNevertheless, the body of government needs a real life of its own, distinct from the life of the state, so that all its members can work together and fulfill the purpose for which it was established. It needs its own sense of self, shared feelings among its members, and its own force and will directed toward its preservation. This separate existence requires assemblies and councils, the power to deliberate and decide, and rights, titles, and privileges belonging exclusively to the prince. These make a magistrate's position more honorable in proportion to its hardships. The difficulty lies in arranging this subordinate whole within the greater whole so that, in strengthening its own structure, it does not weaken the state's constitution. It must always distinguish the special force needed for its own preservation from the public force needed for the state's preservation. In short, it must always be ready to sacrifice the government for the people, not the people for the government.\n\nBesides, although the artificial body of government is the work of another artificial body, and its life is, in a sense, borrowed and dependent, it can still act with greater or lesser energy or speed. It can enjoy, so to speak, more or less robust health. Finally, it can move farther or less far from the aim of its founding without moving directly away from that aim. How far it moves depends on how it is constituted.\n\nThese differences give rise to the different relationships that government must have with the body of the state, depending on the particular and changing conditions that shape that state. For the government best in itself will often become the worst if its relationships are not adjusted to the flaws of the body politic to which it belongs.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 2\n\nOn the principle that determines the different forms of government.\n\nTo explain the general cause of these differences, we must distinguish the prince from the government here, just as I distinguished the state from the sovereign earlier.\n\nThe body of magistrates can have more or fewer members. We said that the relationship of the sovereign to the subjects grows greater as the population grows. By an obvious analogy, we can say the same about the government in relation to the magistrates.\n\nNow the government's total strength is always the strength of the state, so it does not change. It follows that the more of this strength the government uses on its own members, the less it has left to act on the whole people.\n\nSo the more magistrates there are, the weaker the government is. Since this principle is fundamental, let us make it clearer.\n\nWe can distinguish three essentially different wills in a magistrate. First comes the individual's own will, which aims only at personal advantage. Second comes the shared will of the magistrates, which looks only to the prince's advantage. We can call it the will of the body. It is general in relation to the government, but particular in relation to the state, of which the government is a part. Third comes the will of the people, or the sovereign will. It is general in relation both to the state as a whole and to the government as part of that whole.\n\nUnder perfect laws, the particular or individual will must count for nothing. The will belonging to the government as a body must be strictly subordinate. The general or sovereign will must therefore always prevail and be the sole rule for all the others.\n\nIn the natural order, by contrast, these different wills become more active the more concentrated they are. Thus the general will is always the weakest, the will of the body comes second, and the particular will comes first. In the government, then, each member is first himself, then a magistrate, and then a citizen. This order is exactly the reverse of what the social order requires.\n\nWith that established, put the whole government in the hands of one man. The particular will and the will of the body then come together completely. The latter is therefore as strong as it can possibly be. The use of strength depends on the strength of the will, while the government's absolute strength does not change. It follows that government by one person is the most active kind.\n\nConversely, let us unite the government with legislative authority. Let the sovereign be the prince, and make every citizen a magistrate. The will of the body then merges with the general will and will be no more active than it is. It leaves the particular will at full strength. So the government, still possessing the same absolute strength, has the least possible relative strength or activity.\n\nThese relationships are beyond dispute, and other considerations confirm them. For example, each magistrate is more active in his body than each citizen is in his. The particular will therefore has much more influence on acts of government than on acts of the sovereign. Almost every magistrate has some government function, whereas an individual citizen has no function of sovereignty. Besides, as the state grows, its real strength increases, though not in proportion to its size. But if the state stays the same, multiplying the magistrates does not give the government more real strength. That strength belongs to the state, whose measure stays the same. Thus the government's relative strength, or activity, decreases, while its absolute or real strength cannot increase.\n\nIt is also certain that business gets done more slowly as more people become responsible for it. By placing too much trust in caution, we leave too little to chance. We miss opportunities, and by deliberating too long we often lose the benefit of deliberation.\n\nI have just shown that government grows weaker as magistrates become more numerous. Earlier I showed that as the population grows, the force needed to keep it in check must increase. It follows that the number of magistrates relative to the government must move in the opposite direction from the number of subjects relative to the sovereign. That is, the larger the state grows, the smaller the government must become, so that the number of leaders falls as the number of people rises.\n\nBut I am speaking here only of the government's relative strength, not of how rightly it acts. In fact, the more numerous the magistrates, the closer their shared will comes to the general will. Under a single magistrate, as I said, that same shared will is nothing but a particular will. So what is gained on one side may be lost on the other. The legislator's skill lies in finding the point where the government's strength and will, which always vary in opposite directions, combine in the way most favorable to the state.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 3\n\nThe division of governments.\n\nThe preceding chapter showed why the different kinds or forms of government are distinguished by the number of their members. We must now see how this division works.\n\nFirst, the sovereign may entrust the government to all the people or to most of them, so that more citizens are magistrates than private citizens. This form of government is called democracy.\n\nOr the sovereign may place the government in the hands of a small number, so that there are more ordinary citizens than magistrates. This form is called aristocracy.\n\nFinally, the sovereign may place the whole government in the hands of a single magistrate, from whom all the others get their authority. This third form is the most common, and is called monarchy or royal government.\n\nIt should be noted that all these forms, or at least the first two, can vary in degree. They cover a fairly wide range. Democracy can include the whole population or be limited to half of it. Aristocracy, in turn, can shrink from half the population to an indefinitely small number. Even kingship can be divided to some extent. By its constitution Sparta always had two kings. In the Roman Empire there were as many as eight emperors at once, without anyone being able to say that the Empire was divided. So there is a point where each form of government merges with the next. Though there are only three names, there can really be as many different forms of government as there are citizens in the state.\n\nThere is more. A single government may in some respects divide into parts, one administered in one way and another in another way. Combining the three forms can thus produce many mixed forms, each of which can be varied by all the simple forms.\n\nPeople have long argued a great deal about the best form of government. They have not considered that each is best in some cases and worst in others.\n\nIf the number of supreme magistrates in different states must move in the opposite direction from the number of citizens, then, generally speaking, democratic government suits small states, aristocratic government suits states of moderate size, and monarchy suits large ones. This rule follows directly from the principle. But how can we count the many circumstances that might create exceptions?\n\n### Book III, Chapter 4\n\nOn democracy.\n\nThe person who makes a law knows better than anyone how it should be carried out and interpreted. So it seems that the best constitution would join executive power to legislative power. But that very arrangement makes this government inadequate in some ways. It fails to separate things that should be separate. Because the prince and the sovereign are the same person, they form, so to speak, a government without a government.\n\nIt is not good for the maker of laws to carry them out, or for the people as a whole to turn their attention away from general matters and toward particular ones. Nothing is more dangerous than the influence of private interests on public affairs. The government's misuse of the laws is a lesser evil than the corruption of the legislator, which inevitably follows from a focus on particular interests. Once the state is corrupted at its core, reform becomes impossible. A people who would never misuse the government would not misuse independence either. A people who always governed themselves well would not need to be governed.\n\nIf we use the word in its strict sense, a true democracy has never existed and never will. It goes against the natural order for the many to govern and the few to be governed. We cannot imagine the people remaining continually assembled to attend to public affairs. And it is easy to see that they cannot set up committees to do so without changing the form of administration.\n\nIn fact, I think I can state this as a principle: when government functions are divided among several bodies, those with the fewest members sooner or later acquire the most authority. If nothing else, they get it because they can handle business more easily, which naturally brings them authority.\n\nBesides, how many difficult conditions must come together for this government to exist! First, the state must be very small, so the people can easily assemble and every citizen can easily know all the others. Second, customs must be very simple, so that many matters and difficult disputes do not arise. Then there must be a high degree of equality in rank and wealth. Otherwise equality of rights and authority cannot last long. Finally, there must be little or no luxury. Luxury either comes from wealth or makes wealth necessary. It corrupts rich and poor alike: the rich through owning things and the poor through wanting them. It sells out the country to comfort and vanity. It takes every citizen away from the state and makes them servants to one another, and all of them servants to public opinion.\n\nThat is why a famous author made virtue the guiding principle of the republic: none of these conditions can last without virtue. But this brilliant man failed to make the necessary distinctions. He was often inaccurate and sometimes unclear. He did not see that sovereign authority is the same everywhere, so the same principle must apply to every well-constituted state, though to different degrees depending on its form of government.\n\nLet me add that no government is more exposed to civil wars and internal unrest than a democratic or popular one. None has such a strong and constant tendency to change its form, or needs more vigilance and courage to maintain it. In this constitution above all, the citizen must arm himself with strength and resolve. Every day of his life he must say in his heart what a virtuous Palatine said in the Diet of Poland: \"I prefer dangerous freedom to peaceful slavery.\"\n\nIf there were a people of gods, they would govern themselves democratically. Such a perfect government is not suited to human beings.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 5\n\nOn aristocracy.\n\nHere we have two very distinct collective persons: the government and the sovereign. So there are two general wills, one concerning all citizens and the other concerning only the members of the administration. The government can set its internal rules as it likes. But it can never speak to the people except in the sovereign's name—that is, in the name of the people themselves. We must never forget this.\n\nThe earliest societies governed themselves aristocratically. Heads of families discussed public affairs with one another. Young people readily accepted the authority of experience. This is where the names priests, elders, senate, and gerontes come from. The peoples of northern America still govern themselves this way today, and are very well governed.\n\nBut as inequality created by institutions came to outweigh natural inequality, wealth or power took precedence over age. Aristocracy then became elective. Finally, when power passed with a father's property to his children, families became patrician and the government became hereditary. Senators of twenty years of age appeared.\n\nThere are therefore three kinds of aristocracy: natural, elective, and hereditary. The first suits only simple peoples. The third is the worst of all governments. The second is the best; it is aristocracy in the proper sense.\n\nBesides keeping the two powers separate, elective aristocracy has the advantage of choosing its members. Under popular government, all citizens are born magistrates. Here, the magistrates are limited to a small number and reach office only by election. This means that honesty, knowledge, experience, and all the other grounds for preference and public respect provide additional guarantees of wise government.\n\nAlso, assemblies are easier to hold. Business is discussed more thoroughly and handled with more order and speed. Respected senators uphold the state's standing abroad better than an unknown or despised crowd can.\n\nIn short, it is best and most natural for the wisest people to govern the many, when we can be sure they govern for the people's benefit rather than their own. There is no need to add needless machinery or to do with twenty thousand people what a hundred chosen people can do even better. But we must note that here the interest of the governing body begins to direct public power less closely by the rule of the general will. Another unavoidable tendency takes away some of the laws' executive power.\n\nAs for the particular conditions needed, the state should not be so small, or its people so simple and upright, that the public will leads directly to enforcement of the laws, as it does in a good democracy. Nor should the nation be so large that its leaders, scattered across it to govern, can each act like the sovereign in their own district, first making themselves independent and then becoming masters.\n\nAristocracy may require fewer of the virtues needed under popular government, but it requires other virtues of its own. The rich must be moderate and the poor content. Strict equality would seem out of place here; it was not even observed in Sparta.\n\nFinally, if this form allows some inequality of wealth, it does so in order to entrust public administration, as a rule, to those who can best devote all their time to it. It is not, as Aristotle claims, so that the rich will always be favored. On the contrary, it matters that an occasional choice in the opposite direction teaches the people that personal merit gives stronger grounds for preference than wealth does.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 6\n\nOn monarchy.\n\nSo far we have considered the prince as a collective person, united by the force of the laws and entrusted with executive power in the state. Now we must consider that power placed in the hands of a natural person: a real man who alone has the right to use it according to the laws. He is called a monarch or a king.\n\nIn the other forms of administration, a collective being represents an individual. In this one, an individual represents a collective being. The collective unity that makes up the prince is therefore also a physical unity. All the abilities that the law works so hard to bring together in the other form are brought together naturally in this one.\n\nThus the will of the people, the will of the prince, the state's public force, and the government's particular force all respond to the same impulse. All the parts of the machine are in the same hand, and everything moves toward the same goal. No opposing movements cancel each other out. We cannot imagine another kind of constitution where less effort produces more action. Archimedes sitting calmly on the shore and pulling a great ship afloat with ease reminds me of a skilled monarch who governs his vast states from his office. He sets everything in motion while appearing not to move.\n\nBut while no government has more energy, none lets the particular will hold more power or dominate the others more easily. Everything moves toward the same goal, it is true. But that goal is not public happiness. The strength of the administration itself constantly works against the state.\n\nKings want absolute power. People call out to them from a distance that the best way to get it is to earn their peoples' love. This is a fine rule, and even true in some respects. Unfortunately it will always be laughed at in royal courts. The power that comes from the people's love is surely the greatest, but it is uncertain and conditional. Princes will never be content with it. Even the best kings want to be able to act badly if they please and still remain masters. A political preacher may tell them over and over that the people's strength is their own, and that their greatest interest is to have a thriving, numerous, formidable people. They know very well that this is not true. Their first personal interest is to keep the people weak, miserable, and unable ever to resist them. I admit that if subjects always remained perfectly obedient, a prince would then benefit from having a powerful people, since their power would be his and would make him formidable to his neighbors. But that interest is only secondary and subordinate, and the two assumptions cannot both hold. So princes naturally always choose the rule that serves them most directly. This is what Samuel explained forcefully to the Hebrews, and what Machiavelli clearly showed. By pretending to teach kings, he gave great lessons to peoples. Machiavelli's The Prince is the book of republicans.\n\nWe found from the general relationships that monarchy suits only large states. Looking at it directly leads us to the same conclusion. The more members the public administration has, the smaller the ratio of the prince to the subjects becomes and the closer it comes to equality. In democracy this ratio is one, or equality itself. The ratio rises as the government is concentrated, reaching its highest point when the government is in one person's hands. Then the distance between the prince and the people is too great, and the state lacks a link between them. Intermediate ranks are needed to create one: princes, great lords, and nobles must fill those ranks. But none of these suits a small state; all those levels would ruin it.\n\nYet if governing a large state well is difficult, governing it well through one man is much more difficult. Everyone knows what happens when a king appoints substitutes.\n\nOne basic and unavoidable defect will always put monarchy below republican government. In a republic, public opinion almost never raises anyone to the highest offices except capable, knowledgeable people who fill those offices honorably. In monarchies, those who rise are usually petty meddlers, petty crooks, and petty schemers. The small talents that bring them high offices at court only show the public how incompetent they are once they get there. The people make far fewer mistakes in choosing than the prince does. A truly capable man is almost as rare in a monarchy's ministry as a fool at the head of a republican government. So when, by some lucky chance, one of these men born to govern takes charge in a monarchy nearly ruined by swarms of clever little managers, everyone is astonished by the resources he finds. It marks an era in the country.\n\nFor a monarchical state to be well governed, its size or extent would have to match the abilities of its ruler. Conquest is easier than governing. With a lever long enough, one finger could shake the world, but it takes the shoulders of Hercules to hold it up. If a state is at all large, the prince is almost always too small for it. When, on the other hand, the state is too small for its ruler, which is very rare, it is still badly governed. The ruler follows his grand ambitions and forgets the people's interests. His excess talents, misused, make them no less miserable than a limited ruler makes them through the talents he lacks. A kingdom would have to grow or shrink, so to speak, with every reign according to the prince's abilities. A senate's abilities are more stable. A state can therefore have fixed borders and still be governed just as well.\n\nThe most obvious drawback of one-person government is the lack of continuous succession that provides an unbroken link in the other two forms. When a king dies, another is needed. Elections leave dangerous gaps and bring turmoil. Unless the citizens have a selflessness and integrity rarely found under this government, campaigning and corruption enter the process. A man to whom the state has sold itself is likely to sell it in turn, and to recover from the weak the money that the powerful have extorted from him. Sooner or later everything is for sale under such an administration. The peace then enjoyed under kings is worse than the disorder between reigns.\n\nWhat has been done to prevent these evils? Crowns have been made hereditary in certain families, and an order of succession has been set up to prevent disputes when kings die. In other words, regencies have replaced the trouble of elections. An appearance of calm has been preferred to wise administration. People have preferred the risk of child rulers, monsters, and fools to arguing over the choice of good kings. They have not considered that by taking the risks of this alternative, they have stacked almost all the odds against themselves. The young Denis made a very sensible reply when his father reproached him for a shameful act and asked, \"Did I set you that example?\" The son answered, \"Ah, your father was not a king!\"\n\nEverything conspires to rob a man raised to command others of justice and reason. We are told that much effort goes into teaching young princes how to reign. This education does not seem to do them any good. It would be better to begin by teaching them how to obey. The greatest kings celebrated by history were not raised to reign. Ruling is a skill that excessive study makes one less able to practice, and one learns it better by obeying than by commanding. For the most useful and shortest way to tell good things from bad is to consider what you would have wanted, or not wanted, under another prince.\n\nOne consequence of this lack of continuity is the inconsistency of royal government. It follows one plan and then another, according to the character of the reigning prince or of those who rule for him. It cannot keep one fixed goal or follow a consistent policy for long. This variation sends the state drifting from principle to principle and project to project. It does not happen in other governments, where the prince always remains the same. We see, in general, that though a court has more cunning, a senate has more wisdom. Republics pursue their goals with steadier plans and follow them more consistently. But every change in a monarchy's ministers brings a change in the state. Almost all ministers and kings share the rule of doing the opposite of their predecessor in everything.\n\nThis same inconsistency also exposes a favorite false argument of defenders of kings. They compare civil government with household government and the prince with the head of a family—an error already refuted. They also freely give the ruler every virtue he would need, always assuming the prince is what he ought to be. On this assumption royal government is plainly preferable to every other kind, because it is undeniably the strongest. To be the best as well, it needs only a will of the governing body more in line with the general will.\n\nBut if, as Plato says, a natural-born king is so rare, how often will nature and fortune join forces to crown one? And if a royal upbringing necessarily corrupts those who receive it, what can we hope from a series of men raised to reign? It is plainly self-deception to confuse royal government with the government of a good king. To see what this government is in itself, we must consider it under limited or wicked princes. Either they will come to the throne that way, or the throne will make them that way.\n\nOur authors have not missed these difficulties, but they are not troubled by them. The remedy, they say, is to obey without complaint. God gives us bad kings in his anger, and we must bear them as punishments from heaven. This is edifying talk, no doubt. But I wonder if it belongs in a sermon rather than a book about politics. What would we say of a doctor who promises miracles but whose entire skill consists of urging his patient to be patient? Of course we know that we must bear a bad government when we have one. The question is how to find a good one.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 7\n\nOn mixed governments.\n\nStrictly speaking, there is no simple government. A single leader must have magistrates under him. A popular government must have a leader. So executive power is always divided in degrees, from the many to the few. The difference is that sometimes the many depend on the few, and sometimes the few depend on the many.\n\nSometimes power is divided equally. The parts may depend on each other, as they do in the government of England. Or each part's authority may be independent but incomplete, as in Poland. This second form is bad, because the government has no unity and the state lacks a link between its parts.\n\nWhich is better, a simple government or a mixed government? Political writers have debated this question intensely. The answer is the same one I gave earlier about every form of government.\n\nSimple government is best in itself, simply because it is simple. But when executive power does not depend enough on legislative power—that is, when the relationship of the prince to the sovereign is greater than that of the people to the prince—we must correct this imbalance by dividing the government. All its parts still have just as much authority over the subjects. But together they are weaker against the sovereign because they have been divided.\n\nThe same problem can also be prevented by setting up intermediate magistrates. These leave the government intact but help balance the two powers and protect the rights of each. The government is then not mixed but moderated.\n\nSimilar means can correct the opposite problem. When the government is too weak, we can establish councils to concentrate its power. This is done in every democracy. In the first case we divide the government to weaken it, and in the second we concentrate it to strengthen it. Simple governments have both the greatest potential strength and the greatest potential weakness. Mixed forms, by contrast, have strength somewhere between the two.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 8\n\nNot every form of government suits every country.\n\nFreedom is not a fruit of every climate, so it is not within every people's reach. The more we consider this principle established by Montesquieu, the more we see its truth. The more people dispute it, the more opportunities they give us to establish it with new evidence.\n\nIn every government in the world, the public body consumes but produces nothing. Where, then, does what it consumes come from? From the work of its members. The surplus produced by individuals supplies the public's necessities. It follows that a civil society can survive only so long as people's work produces more than they need.\n\nNow this surplus is not the same in every country. In many it is large; in others moderate; in others zero; and in still others negative. The amount depends on the climate's fertility, the kind of work the land requires, the nature of what it produces, the strength of its inhabitants, how much they need to consume, and several similar relationships that make it up.\n\nOn the other hand, not all governments are alike. Some consume more than others. These differences rest on another principle: the farther public contributions travel from their source, the more burdensome they become. We should measure this burden not by the amount of tax collected but by the distance the money must travel before returning to the hands that paid it. If this circulation is prompt and works properly, it does not matter whether people pay much or little. They are always prosperous and public finances are always sound. Conversely, however little the people give, if it never comes back to them, they soon use up their resources by constantly paying. The state is never rich, and the people are always poor.\n\nIt follows that the greater the distance between the people and the government, the heavier the taxes become. Thus in democracy the people carry the lightest burden, in aristocracy a heavier one, and in monarchy the heaviest. Monarchy therefore suits only wealthy nations; aristocracy suits states of middling wealth and size; democracy suits small, poor states.\n\nIndeed, the more we think about it, the more differences we find here between free and monarchical states. In the first, everything serves the common good. In the second, public and private forces work against each other: one grows as the other weakens. In the end, rather than governing subjects to make them happy, despotism makes them miserable in order to govern them.\n\nSo each climate has natural causes from which we can identify the form of government its conditions lead to, and even say what kind of inhabitants it should have. Barren, infertile places where the yield is not worth the work should remain uncultivated and empty, or be inhabited only by peoples living without settled institutions. Places where human labor produces exactly what is needed must be inhabited by peoples without organized government; political society would be impossible there. Places where the excess of output over labor is moderate suit free peoples. Places where rich, fertile soil yields a great deal for little work call for monarchy. The prince's luxury can then consume the subjects' excess surplus, for it is better that the government absorb it than that individuals waste it. There are exceptions, I know. But these very exceptions confirm the rule, since sooner or later they bring about revolutions that return things to the natural order.\n\nWe must always distinguish general laws from the particular causes that can change their effects. Even if the whole south were covered in republics and the whole north in despotic states, it would still be true that climate makes despotism suitable for hot countries, lack of political organization for cold ones, and sound political society for regions in between. I can also see that people might accept the principle while disputing its application. They might say that some cold countries are very fertile and some southern ones very barren. But this is a problem only for people who fail to look at every relevant factor. As I have already said, we must take account of labor, strength, consumption, and so on.\n\nSuppose that two equally sized pieces of land yield five and ten respectively. If the inhabitants of the first consume four and those of the second nine, the first yield's surplus is 1/5 and the second's is 1/10. The ratio of these surpluses is the reverse of the ratio of the yields. Thus the land yielding only five gives twice the surplus of the land yielding ten.\n\nBut we are not talking about a yield twice as large. I do not think anyone would dare claim that cold countries are generally even as fertile as hot ones. Still, let us suppose that they are equally fertile. Let us set England against Sicily and Poland against Egypt, if you like. Farther south we have Africa and the Indies; farther north we have nothing left. Even with equal yields, how different is the work of cultivating the land! In Sicily it only needs scratching; in England it needs so much labor to plow it. Where more hands are needed to produce the same yield, the surplus must be smaller.\n\nConsider, too, that the same number of people consume much less in hot countries. The climate requires moderation in food for good health. Europeans who try to live there as they do at home all die of dysentery and indigestion. \"Compared with the Asians,\" says Chardin, \"we are meat-eating beasts, wolves.\" Some people say the Persians eat moderately because their land is less cultivated. I believe, on the contrary, that their land has fewer provisions because its inhabitants need less. If their frugality, he continues, resulted from a shortage of food in the country, only poor people would eat little. Instead, everyone does. People would also eat more or less in each province according to its fertility, but the same moderation is found throughout the kingdom. They take great pride in the way they live, saying that you need only look at their complexions to see how much better it is than the Christians' way of life. In fact, Persians have even complexions and beautiful, fine, smooth skin. By contrast, their Armenian subjects, who live like Europeans, have rough, blotchy complexions and large, heavy bodies.\n\nThe closer people live to the equator, the less they live on. They eat almost no meat. Rice, corn, couscous, millet, and cassava are their usual foods. In the Indies millions of people eat for less than a sol a day. Even in Europe we see clear differences in appetite between northern and southern peoples. A Spaniard could live for eight days on a German's dinner. In countries where people eat more, luxury centers on things to consume. In England it appears on a table loaded with meat; in Italy you are treated to sugar and flowers.\n\nLuxury in clothing shows similar differences. In climates where seasons change quickly and sharply, clothing is better made and simpler. Where people dress only to look good, they seek showiness rather than practical use. Clothes themselves become a luxury. In Naples you will see men walking along the Pausylippe every day in gold jackets and no stockings. The same is true of buildings. When there is no harsh weather to fear, all the effort goes into grandeur. In Paris and London people want homes that are warm and comfortable. In Madrid they have splendid rooms, but no windows that close, and they sleep in places fit for rats.\n\nFood is much more nourishing and flavorful in hot countries. This is a third difference that must have an effect on the second. Why do people eat so many vegetables in Italy? Because they are good, nourishing, and delicious. In France, where vegetables are fed only with water, they provide no nourishment and scarcely count at the table. Yet they take up no less land and require at least as much work to grow. Experience has shown that grain from Barbary, though otherwise inferior to French grain, yields far more flour. French grain in turn yields more than northern grain. From this we can infer that the same progression generally holds from the equator to the pole. Is it not a clear disadvantage to get less food from the same amount of produce?\n\nTo all these different considerations I can add one that follows from them and strengthens them. Hot countries need fewer inhabitants than cold countries, yet could feed more. This creates a double surplus, always to the advantage of despotism. The larger the area occupied by the same number of people, the harder it is to revolt. People cannot coordinate quickly or secretly, and the government can easily discover plots and cut off communication. But the closer together a large population lives, the less the government can seize the sovereign's power. Leaders can discuss matters in their rooms as securely as the prince does in his council, and crowds can assemble in the squares as quickly as troops in their quarters. A tyrannical government therefore has the advantage when acting over great distances. With the points of support it establishes, its power grows at a distance like the power of levers. The people's power, by contrast, works only when concentrated. It dissipates and fades as it spreads out, like gunpowder scattered on the ground, which catches fire only one grain at a time. The least populated countries are thus the most suited to tyranny: fierce animals reign only in deserts.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 9\n\nThe signs of a good government.\n\nSo when someone asks without qualification which government is best, the question is too vague to answer. Or, if you like, it has as many valid answers as there are possible combinations of the peoples' circumstances, considered both in themselves and in relation to others.\n\nBut asking how we can tell whether a particular people is well or badly governed would be another matter. That is a factual question, and it could be answered.\n\nYet no one answers it, because everyone wants to answer it in their own way. Subjects praise public calm; citizens praise individual freedom. One person prefers the safety of possessions, another the safety of persons. One wants the best government to be the strictest, another argues that it is the gentlest. One wants crimes punished, another wants them prevented. One thinks it is good to be feared by neighboring countries, another would rather be ignored by them. One is satisfied when money circulates, another insists that the people have bread. Even if we agreed on these points and others like them, would we be any further along? Moral qualities have no exact measure. Even if we agreed on what sign to use, how would we agree on assessing it?\n\nFor my part, I am always amazed that people fail to recognize such a simple sign, or dishonestly refuse to admit it. What is the purpose of political association? To preserve its members and help them prosper. And what is the surest sign that they are surviving and prospering? Their numbers and their population growth. So do not look elsewhere for this much-disputed sign. All else being equal, the best government is always the one under which citizens increase in number the most, without outside help, naturalizations, or colonies. The worst is the one under which a people shrinks and dies out. Those of you who calculate, it is now your turn: count, measure, compare.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 10\n\nThe abuse of government and its tendency to decline.\n\nJust as the particular will constantly works against the general will, the government constantly pushes against sovereignty. The stronger this pressure becomes, the more the constitution changes. Here no other will of a governing body stands against the prince's will to balance it. So sooner or later the prince must finally oppress the sovereign and break the social pact. This is the inherent and unavoidable flaw that works without rest to destroy the political body from the moment it is born, just as old age and death eventually destroy the human body.\n\nThere are two general ways a government declines: it becomes concentrated, or the state dissolves.\n\nThe government becomes concentrated when it passes from many hands to few: from democracy to aristocracy, and from aristocracy to kingship. This is its natural tendency. If it went backward from few hands to many, we could say it was growing weaker. But this movement in the opposite direction is impossible.\n\nIn fact, government changes form only when its driving force has worn down and become too weak to maintain its current form. If it weakened still more as it spread out, its strength would vanish altogether and it would be even less able to survive. So as this driving force gives way, we must wind it up and tighten it. Otherwise the state it supports will collapse.\n\nThe state can dissolve in two ways.\n\nFirst, the prince may stop governing the state according to the laws and seize sovereign power. Then a remarkable change takes place. It is not the government that becomes concentrated, but the state. I mean that the large state dissolves, and another forms within it. The new state consists only of the members of the government. To the rest of the people it is now nothing but their master and tyrant. So as soon as the government seizes sovereignty, the social pact is broken. All ordinary citizens regain their natural freedom by right. They are forced to obey, but are under no obligation to do so.\n\nThe same thing also happens when government members individually seize power that they should exercise only together. This breaks the laws just as seriously and creates even greater disorder. Then, so to speak, there are as many princes as magistrates. The state is as divided as the government and either perishes or changes form.\n\nWhen the state dissolves, abuse of government of any kind goes by the general name of anarchy. More precisely, democracy declines into mob rule, and aristocracy into oligarchy. I would add that kingship declines into tyranny. But this last word has more than one meaning and needs explanation.\n\nIn ordinary usage a tyrant is a king who rules violently without regard for justice or the laws. More precisely, a tyrant is a private individual who claims royal authority without any right to it. That is how the Greeks understood the word tyrant. They applied it equally to good and bad princes whose authority was not legitimate. Thus tyrant and usurper mean exactly the same thing.\n\nTo give different things different names, I call someone who seizes royal authority a tyrant and someone who seizes sovereign power a despot. A tyrant takes office against the laws but governs according to the laws. A despot sets himself above the laws themselves. Thus a tyrant may not be a despot, but a despot is always a tyrant.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 11\n\nThe death of the political body.\n\nThat is the natural and unavoidable tendency even of the best-constituted governments. If Sparta and Rome perished, what state can hope to last forever? If we want to establish something lasting, we should not aim to make it eternal. To succeed we must not attempt the impossible or flatter ourselves that human work can have a permanence that human affairs do not allow.\n\nThe political body, like the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born and carries the causes of its destruction within itself. But each can have a stronger or weaker constitution, able to preserve it for a longer or shorter time. A human being's constitution is the work of nature; the state's is the work of human skill. People cannot choose to extend their own lives, but they can extend the state's life as far as possible by giving it the best constitution it can have. Even the best-constituted state will end, but later than another would, unless an unforeseen accident brings it down early.\n\nThe source of political life lies in sovereign authority. Legislative power is the heart of the state; executive power is its brain, which sets every part in motion. The brain can become paralyzed while the person continues to live. A person can lose his mental powers and still live. But the moment the heart stops working, the living being dies.\n\nThe state survives not through its laws but through the power to make laws. Yesterday's law does not bind us today. But silence is taken as unspoken consent, and the sovereign is understood to confirm continually the laws it could repeal but does not. Whatever it has once declared that it wants, it continues to want unless it takes that declaration back.\n\nWhy, then, do people respect old laws so much? For just this reason. We must assume that only the excellence of past decisions could have preserved those laws so long. If the sovereign had not constantly recognized their benefit, it would have repealed them a thousand times. That is why laws continually gain new strength, rather than lose it, in every well-constituted state. Respect for their age makes them more honored every day. By contrast, wherever laws grow weaker with age, this proves that the power to make laws no longer exists and the state is no longer alive.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 12\n\nHow sovereign authority is maintained.\n\nThe sovereign has no power except the power to make laws, and so it acts only through laws. Laws are official acts of the general will, so the sovereign can act only when the people are assembled. The people assembled, someone will say! What a fantasy! It is a fantasy today, but it was not one two thousand years ago. Have human beings changed their nature?\n\nThe limits of what is possible in moral matters are less narrow than we think. Our weaknesses, vices, and prejudices make them narrower. Small-minded people do not believe in great people. Servile people sneer at the word freedom.\n\nLet us use what has been done to judge what can be done. I will not speak of the ancient Greek republics. But the Roman Republic was, I think, a large state, and the city of Rome was a large city. The last census counted four hundred thousand citizens of Rome able to bear arms. The last count of the Empire recorded more than four million citizens, not including subjects, foreigners, women, children, and slaves.\n\nHow difficult we might imagine it would be to assemble the huge population of that capital and its surrounding area often! Yet hardly a few weeks went by without the Roman people assembling, sometimes several times. They exercised not only the rights of sovereignty but also some of the rights of government. They handled certain affairs and judged certain cases. Almost as often as they acted as citizens, all these people acted as magistrates in the public square.\n\nIf we look back to the earliest times of nations, we find that most ancient governments, even monarchies like those of the Macedonians and the Franks, had similar councils. In any case, this one undeniable fact answers every objection. It seems reasonable to me to conclude that what has existed is possible.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 13\n\nContinued.\n\nIt is not enough for the assembled people to have established the state's constitution once by approving a body of laws. Nor is it enough for them to have set up a permanent government or arranged the election of magistrates once and for all. Besides the extraordinary assemblies that unforeseen events may require, there must be regular, periodic assemblies that nothing can abolish or postpone. On the appointed day, the law itself must legitimately convene the people, without any further formal summons.\n\nBut apart from assemblies made lawful by their scheduled date alone, any assembly of the people that has not been called by the magistrates appointed for that purpose, according to the prescribed procedures, must be considered illegitimate. Everything done there must be considered void, because even the order to assemble must come from the law.\n\nHow often legitimate assemblies should meet depends on so many factors that no precise rules can be given. In general, though, the stronger the government, the more often the sovereign must make its presence felt.\n\nThis may be fine for a single city, someone will tell me. But what should be done when a state contains several? Should sovereign authority be divided, or should it be concentrated in one city and all the others subjected to it?\n\nMy answer is that neither should be done. First, sovereign authority is single and indivisible. It cannot be divided without being destroyed. Second, a city, no more than a nation, can legitimately be the subject of another. The political body's very nature lies in the agreement of obedience with freedom. The words subject and sovereign refer to two related aspects of the same thing, brought together in the single word citizen.\n\nI also answer that joining several towns into one city-state is always a bad thing. Anyone determined to make such a union should not imagine they can avoid its natural drawbacks. Those who want only small states should not be confronted with the abuses of large ones. But how can small states be given enough strength to withstand large ones? In the way the Greek cities once resisted the Great King, and the way Holland and Switzerland more recently resisted the House of Austria.\n\nStill, if the state cannot be brought within reasonable limits, one option remains. It should have no capital. The government should sit in each city in turn, and the assemblies of the country should also meet in each city in turn.\n\nSpread the population evenly across the territory. Give people the same rights everywhere. Bring plenty and life to every part of it. That is how the state can become both as strong and as well governed as possible. Remember that city walls are built only from the ruins of country homes. Whenever I see a palace going up in the capital, I feel as though I am watching a whole region fall into ruin.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 14\n\nContinued.\n\nAs soon as the people lawfully assemble as the sovereign body, all government authority ceases and executive power is suspended. The least prominent citizen is then as sacred and inviolable as the highest magistrate, because where those represented are present, there is no longer any representative. Most of the disturbances that broke out in Rome during the voting assemblies came from ignorance or neglect of this rule. At such times the consuls were only presiding officers of the people, the tribunes were simply speakers, and the Senate was nothing at all.\n\nThese periods of suspension, when the prince recognizes, or ought to recognize, a superior who is actually present, have always frightened him. Assemblies of the people protect the political body and hold the government in check, so rulers have always dreaded them. They spare no effort, objection, obstacle, or promise to put citizens off attending. When citizens are greedy, cowardly, timid, and more attached to comfort than to freedom, they cannot hold out long against the government's repeated efforts. As the power resisting them steadily grows, sovereign authority finally disappears. That is how most city-states fall and perish before their time.\n\nBut between sovereign authority and arbitrary government, an intermediate power sometimes appears. I must discuss it.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 15\n\nDeputies or Representatives.\n\nAs soon as citizens stop making public service their main concern, and would rather contribute money than serve in person, the state is already close to ruin. When they have to march into battle, they pay troops and stay home. When they have to go to the council, they appoint deputies and stay home. Through laziness and money, they finally acquire soldiers to enslave their country and representatives to sell it.\n\nThe demands of trade and the crafts, the eager pursuit of profit, softness, and the love of convenience are what turn personal service into a payment of money. People give up some of their profit so they can comfortably make more. Pay money, and soon you will be in chains. The word finance is a slave's word. It is unknown in a free city. In a truly free state, citizens do everything with their own hands and nothing with money. Far from paying to avoid their duties, they would pay to carry them out themselves. I am far from the usual view: I think compulsory labor is less opposed to freedom than taxes are.\n\nThe better a state is organized, the more public affairs outweigh private affairs in citizens' minds. There are even far fewer private affairs, because each person gets a greater share of happiness from the common good and has less left to seek through private efforts. In a well-run city-state, everyone rushes to the assemblies. Under a bad government, no one wants to take a step to get there. No one cares what happens at them; people expect the general will not to prevail there, and in the end household concerns take up all their attention. Good laws lead to better ones, and bad laws lead to worse ones. As soon as anyone says of state affairs, \"What does it matter to me?\" the state must be considered lost.\n\nA weakening love of country, the drive for private advantage, the vast size of states, conquests, and abuses of government have led people to devise the use of deputies or representatives of the people in national assemblies. In some countries they dare to call this the Third Estate. So the private interests of two orders come first and second, and the public interest comes only third.\n\nSovereignty cannot be represented for the same reason it cannot be given away. It consists essentially in the general will, and a will cannot be represented. It is either the same will or a different one; there is no middle ground. The people's deputies, then, are not and cannot be their representatives. They are only their agents and cannot make any final decision. Any law the people have not ratified in person is void; it is not a law. The English people think they are free, but they are badly mistaken. They are free only during the election of members of Parliament. As soon as those members are elected, the people are slaves; they count for nothing. What they do with their brief moments of freedom makes them deserve to lose it.\n\nThe idea of representatives is modern. It comes from feudal government, that unjust and absurd government in which humanity is degraded and the name of man is dishonored. In the ancient republics, and even in monarchies, the people never had representatives; the word was unknown. It is very striking that in Rome, where tribunes were so revered, no one even imagined they might take over the people's functions. Amid such a large population, they never tried to pass a single plebiscite on their own authority. Yet the trouble a crowd could sometimes cause is clear from what happened in the time of the Gracchi, when some citizens cast their votes from the rooftops.\n\nWhere rights and freedom matter more than anything, inconveniences count for nothing. Among those sensible people, everything was kept in its proper place. They let their lictors do what their tribunes would not have dared to do. They did not fear that their lictors would try to represent them.\n\nStill, to explain how the tribunes sometimes did represent the people, we only need to understand how the government represents the sovereign. Since law is only a declaration of the general will, the people clearly cannot be represented in legislative power. But they can and must be represented in executive power, which is simply force applied to the law. This shows that, if we examine things carefully, we will find that very few nations have laws. In any case, the tribunes held no executive power. They could therefore never represent the Roman people by virtue of their offices, but only by taking over powers belonging to the Senate.\n\nAmong the Greeks, the people did everything they had to do themselves. They were constantly assembled in the public square. They lived in a mild climate, they were not greedy, slaves did their work, and freedom was their chief concern. Without those advantages, how can you keep the same rights? Your harsher climates give you more needs. For six months of the year the public square is unbearable. Your voices cannot carry outdoors. You care more about your earnings than your freedom, and you fear poverty far more than slavery.\n\nWhat? Can freedom be maintained only with the support of servitude? Perhaps. The two extremes meet. Everything that is not natural has its drawbacks, and civil society more than anything else. There are unfortunate circumstances in which people can preserve their freedom only at the expense of someone else's, and a citizen can be completely free only if a slave is utterly enslaved. That was Sparta's situation. As for you, modern peoples, you have no slaves, but you are slaves yourselves. You pay for their freedom with your own. You may praise that choice as much as you like; I see more cowardice than humanity in it.\n\nI do not mean by any of this that people should have slaves, or that a right to enslave them is legitimate. I have already proved the opposite. I am only explaining why modern peoples who believe themselves free have representatives, while ancient peoples had none. In any case, as soon as a people gives itself representatives, it is no longer free; it no longer exists.\n\nAll things considered, I cannot see how the sovereign can continue to exercise its rights among us unless the city-state is very small. But if it is very small, will it be conquered? No. Later I will show how the external power of a large people can be combined with the easy administration and good order of a small state.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 16\n\nWhy Establishing a Government Is Not a Contract.\n\nOnce legislative power has been properly established, executive power must be established too. The executive acts only in particular cases. It does not belong to the essential nature of legislative power and is naturally separate from it. If the sovereign as such could exercise executive power, law and action would become so confused that no one could tell what was law and what was not. The political body, thus changed from its proper nature, would soon fall prey to the very violence it was created to prevent.\n\nAll citizens are equal under the social pact. What everyone must do, everyone may prescribe. But no one has the right to demand that another person do something they do not do themselves. It is precisely this right, which is necessary to keep the political body alive and moving, that the sovereign gives to the prince when it establishes the government.\n\nMany have claimed that the act of establishing a government is a contract between the people and the leaders they choose. Under that contract, the two sides supposedly set the terms on which one agrees to command and the other to obey. I am sure you will agree that this is a strange way to make a contract! But let us see if the idea can stand up.\n\nFirst, supreme authority can no more be modified than it can be given away. To limit it is to destroy it. It is absurd and contradictory for the sovereign to give itself a superior. To bind oneself to obey a master is to return oneself to complete freedom.\n\nMoreover, it is clear that this contract between the people and particular persons would be a particular act. It follows that the contract could be neither a law nor an act of sovereignty, and would therefore be illegitimate.\n\nWe can also see that the contracting parties would be bound to each other only by the law of nature, with no one to guarantee their mutual commitments. That is contrary to a civil state in every way. The person who holds the power would always control whether the agreement is carried out. We might as well call it a contract if one man said to another, \"I give you all my property on condition that you return as much of it as you please.\"\n\nThere is only one contract in the state: the contract of association. That contract alone rules out every other one. No other public contract can be imagined without violating the first.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 17\n\nHow a Government Is Established.\n\nHow, then, should we understand the act that establishes a government? First, I should point out that this act is complex: it is made up of two other acts, namely making the law and carrying out the law.\n\nIn the first, the sovereign decides that a governing body of a certain kind will be established. Clearly, this act is a law.\n\nIn the second, the people appoint the leaders who will be responsible for the government so established. This appointment is a particular act. It is therefore not a second law but only a consequence of the first law and an exercise of government power.\n\nThe difficulty is understanding how an act of government can take place before a government exists, and how the people, who are only sovereign or subjects, can in certain circumstances become prince or magistrates.\n\nHere again we find one of the political body's astonishing features: it can bring together actions that seem contradictory. In this case it does so by a sudden conversion of sovereignty into democracy. Nothing changes in any visible way. Instead, everyone's relationship to everyone else changes. The citizens become magistrates and move from general acts to particular acts, from lawmaking to carrying out the law.\n\nThis change in relationships is not just a theoretical subtlety with no practical example. It happens every day in the Parliament of England. On certain occasions, the lower house becomes a grand committee so it can discuss matters more thoroughly. It thus becomes a mere committee, though a moment earlier it was a sovereign court. Then, as the House of Commons, it reports to itself what it has just decided as a grand committee, and debates anew under one name what it already settled under another.\n\nThe special advantage of democratic government is that it can actually be established through a simple act of the general will. After that, this provisional government remains in charge if that is the form adopted. Otherwise, on behalf of the sovereign, it establishes the government prescribed by law. In this way everything is done according to the rules. There is no other legitimate way to establish a government without abandoning the principles set out above.\n\n### Book III, Chapter 18\n\nHow to Prevent the Government from Usurping Power.\n\nThese explanations confirm what I said in chapter XVI: the act establishing the government is a law, not a contract. Those entrusted with executive power are not the people's masters but their officers. The people may appoint and dismiss them whenever they please. Their task is not to make a contract but to obey. When they take on the duties assigned to them by the state, they are only doing their duty as citizens. They have no right at all to argue about the terms.\n\nSo when the people establish a hereditary government, whether a monarchy within one family or an aristocracy within one order of citizens, they do not make a binding commitment. They give the administration a provisional form until they choose to arrange things differently.\n\nIt is true that such changes are always dangerous. An established government should never be touched unless it becomes incompatible with the public good. But this caution is a rule of political prudence, not a rule of law. The state has no more obligation to leave civil authority with its leaders than to leave military authority with its generals.\n\nIt is also true that, in such a case, every required formality must be followed with the greatest care. This is needed to distinguish a regular, lawful act from a seditious disturbance, and the will of an entire people from the shouting of a faction. Above all, no more must be granted to an objectionable case than the strictest interpretation of law requires. This very obligation also gives the prince a great advantage: he can keep his power despite the people without anyone being able to say he has usurped it. By appearing merely to exercise his rights, he can easily extend them. He can prevent assemblies meant to restore good order, claiming he is protecting public peace. Then he uses a silence he has prevented people from breaking, or procedural faults he has led them to commit, to assume that those silenced by fear approve of him, and to punish those who dare to speak. That is how the Decemvirs, first elected for one year and then kept on for another, tried to keep their power forever by no longer allowing the voting assemblies to meet. By this simple means, every government in the world, once it has public force at its disposal, sooner or later usurps sovereign authority.\n\nThe periodic assemblies I mentioned earlier can prevent or delay this misfortune, especially when they need no formal summons. The prince then cannot stop them without openly declaring himself a breaker of the laws and an enemy of the state.\n\nThese assemblies, whose only purpose is to uphold the social pact, must always open with two proposals. Neither may ever be omitted, and each must be voted on separately.\n\nThe first: whether the sovereign wishes to keep the present form of government.\n\nThe second: whether the people wish to leave its administration in the hands of those currently in charge.\n\nI assume here something I believe I have proved: no fundamental law in the state is beyond repeal, not even the social pact. If all the citizens came together and agreed to break that pact, there is no doubt that they would do so quite legitimately. Grotius even thinks that each person can leave the state of which he is a member and recover his natural freedom and his property by leaving the country. It would be absurd if all the citizens together could not do what each one can do separately.\n\nEnd of Book Three.\n\n### Book IV, Chapter 1\n\nWhy the General Will Cannot Be Destroyed.\n\nAs long as people joined together see themselves as a single body, they have only one will. It concerns their common survival and general well-being. Then all the state's mechanisms are strong and simple. Its guiding principles are clear and easy to see. It has no tangled, conflicting interests. The common good is obvious everywhere, and it takes only common sense to recognize it. Peace, unity, and equality are enemies of political subtleties. Honest, straightforward people are hard to fool precisely because they are straightforward. Clever traps and excuses do not deceive them. They are not even sophisticated enough to be taken in. When we see groups of peasants among the happiest people in the world managing state affairs beneath an oak tree and always acting wisely, how can we help looking down on the refinements of other nations? With all their art and secrecy, those nations make themselves famous and miserable.\n\nA state governed in this way needs very few laws. When new laws become necessary, everyone can see the need. Whoever proposes them first is only saying what everyone has already felt. There is no need for scheming or eloquence to make into law what everyone has already decided to do, as soon as they know others will do the same.\n\nWhat misleads theorists is that they see only states badly organized from their beginnings. They are struck by the impossibility of maintaining such a system there. They laugh at the thought of all the foolish things a skillful trickster or a persuasive speaker could get the people of Paris or London to believe. They do not know that the people of Bern would have put Cromwell on the warning bells, and the Genevans would have put the Duke of Beaufort under discipline.\n\nBut when the social bond begins to loosen and the state to weaken, private interests begin to make themselves felt and small groups begin to influence the larger community. The common interest changes and meets opposition. Votes are no longer unanimous, and the general will is no longer the will of everyone. Contradictions and debates arise. Even the best proposal cannot pass without argument.\n\nFinally, the state is close to ruin and survives only as an empty, misleading form. The social bond has broken in every heart, and the lowest self-interest shamelessly dresses itself in the sacred name of the public good. Then the general will falls silent. Everyone is guided by hidden motives and no longer votes as a citizen, just as if the state had never existed. Unjust decrees aimed only at private interests are falsely passed off as laws.\n\nDoes it follow that the general will has been destroyed or corrupted? No. It remains constant, unchangeable, and pure, but other wills take priority over it. Each person separates their own interest from the common interest. They know they cannot separate it completely, but the share they bear of public harm seems like nothing next to the exclusive benefit they hope to claim for themselves. Apart from that private benefit, they want the general good for their own sake as strongly as anyone else. Even when they sell their vote for money, they do not extinguish the general will within themselves; they evade it. Their mistake is to change the question and answer something other than what they were asked. Instead of saying with their vote, \"This benefits the state,\" they say, \"It benefits this person or that party for this or that proposal to pass.\" So the rule for public order in assemblies is not so much to preserve the general will there as to make sure that it is always asked the question and always gives the answer.\n\nI could say a great deal here about the basic right to vote in every act of sovereignty, a right that no one can take away from citizens. I could also discuss the right to express an opinion, make proposals, divide a question, and debate it, which the government always takes great care to reserve for its own members. But this important subject would require a work of its own, and I cannot say everything in this one.\n\n### Book IV, Chapter 2\n\nVoting.\n\nThe previous chapter shows that the way public affairs are handled can give a fairly reliable indication of the state of people's morals and the health of the political body. The more agreement there is in assemblies, that is, the closer opinions come to unanimity, the more the general will prevails. But long debates, disagreements, and disorder show that private interests are gaining the upper hand and the state is declining.\n\nThis seems less clear when the state includes two or more orders, as Rome did with its patricians and plebeians. Their quarrels often disturbed the voting assemblies even in the republic's best days. But this exception is more apparent than real. Because of a flaw built into the political body, there are, so to speak, two states in one. What is not true of the two together is true of each separately. In fact, even in the most turbulent periods, the people's plebiscites always passed quietly and by a large majority when the Senate did not interfere. Since the citizens shared a single interest, the people had a single will.\n\nAt the opposite end of the cycle, unanimity returns. This happens when citizens have fallen into servitude and have neither freedom nor a will of their own. Then fear and flattery turn votes into shouts of approval. People no longer deliberate; they worship or curse. That was the Senate's shameful way of voting under the emperors. Sometimes they took ridiculous precautions. Tacitus notes that under Otho, when senators heaped curses on Vitellius, they deliberately made a terrible noise at the same time. That way, if he happened to become their master, he could not tell what any individual senator had said.\n\nThese different considerations produce rules for counting votes and comparing opinions. The rules depend on how easy it is to know the general will and how far the state has declined.\n\nOnly one law, by its nature, requires everyone's consent: the social pact. Joining a civil society is the most voluntary act in the world. Every person is born free and in charge of themselves. No one can subject anyone to authority without their consent, whatever excuse they give. To decide that the child of an enslaved woman is born a slave is to decide that the child is not born human.\n\nSo if some people oppose the social pact when it is made, their opposition does not invalidate the contract. It simply keeps them from being included in it. They are foreigners among the citizens. Once the state is established, living there counts as consent. To live in its territory is to submit to its sovereignty.\n\nApart from that original contract, the vote of the majority always binds all the others. This follows from the contract itself. But one may ask how a person can be free while being forced to follow wills that are not their own. How can those who voted against laws still be free when they must obey laws they did not agree to?\n\nMy answer is that the question is put wrongly. The citizen agrees to all the laws, even those passed against their wishes, and even those that punish them when they dare to break one. The enduring will of all the members of the state is the general will. It is through that will that they are citizens and free. When a law is proposed in an assembly of the people, they are not being asked exactly whether they approve or reject the proposal. They are being asked whether it agrees with the general will, which is their own. Each person gives an opinion on this by voting, and the counting of votes produces a declaration of the general will. So when the opinion opposite to mine wins, it proves only that I was mistaken: what I thought was the general will was not. If my private opinion had won, I would have done something other than what I wanted. That is when I would not have been free.\n\nThis assumes, of course, that the majority still has all the qualities of the general will. Once it no longer does, there is no freedom, whichever side one takes.\n\nI have already shown how private wills are substituted for the general will in public deliberations. In doing so, I have sufficiently indicated practical ways to prevent this abuse, and I will discuss them again later. I have also given the principles for deciding what proportion of votes is needed to declare the general will. A difference of one vote breaks a tie; one dissenting voter breaks unanimity. But between unanimity and a tie there are various unequal divisions. For each of them, the necessary number can be set according to the condition and needs of the political body.\n\nTwo general rules can help set these proportions. First, the more important and serious the decision, the closer the winning opinion should come to unanimity. Second, the more urgently the issue must be settled, the narrower the required margin between opposing opinions should be. For decisions that must be made immediately, a lead of one vote should be enough. The first rule seems better suited to laws and the second to practical affairs. In any case, combining them gives the best standards for determining what majority is needed to make a decision.\n\n### Book IV, Chapter 3\n\nElections.\n\nAs for electing the prince and the magistrates, these elections are, as I have said, complex acts. There are two ways to carry them out: by choice and by lot. Both methods have been used in different republics. Even today the election of the Doge of Venice uses a very complicated mixture of the two.\n\nMontesquieu says, \"Selection by lot is in the nature of democracy.\" I agree, but why? He continues, \"Drawing lots is a way of electing that offends no one; it leaves every citizen a reasonable hope of serving the country.\" Those are not the reasons.\n\nIf we remember that choosing leaders is a function of government, not of sovereignty, we will see why drawing lots fits democracy better. In a democracy, administration works better the fewer separate acts it requires.\n\nIn every genuine democracy, holding office is not a benefit but a heavy duty. It cannot fairly be imposed on one individual rather than another. Only the law can impose this duty on the person selected by lot. Then the conditions are equal for all, and the selection depends on no human decision. No particular application of the rule changes the law's universal character.\n\nIn an aristocracy, the prince chooses the prince. The government maintains itself, and there voting is properly used.\n\nThe example of the Doge's election in Venice confirms this distinction rather than disproving it. This mixed method suits a mixed government. It is a mistake to regard Venice's government as a genuine aristocracy. Even though the people have no role in the government, the nobility there are themselves a people. Large numbers of poor Barnabotes never come near any public office. All they get from their noble status is the empty title of Excellency and the right to attend the Great Council. That council has as many members as our General Council in Geneva. Its distinguished members have no more privileges than our ordinary citizens. If we set aside the extreme differences between the two republics, Geneva's citizens correspond exactly to Venice's patricians; our natives and residents correspond to Venice's city dwellers and common people; our peasants correspond to its subjects on the mainland. In short, however we look at that republic, leaving aside its size, its government is no more aristocratic than ours. The whole difference is that we have no leader who holds office for life, so we have less need to draw lots.\n\nElections by lot would have few drawbacks in a genuine democracy. There, everyone would be equal in customs, talents, principles, and wealth, so the choice would matter very little. But I have already said that there is no genuine democracy.\n\nWhen choice and chance are combined, choice should fill posts that require particular talents, such as military positions. Drawing lots is suitable for posts requiring only common sense, fairness, and honesty, such as judicial offices. In a well-organized state, all citizens share these qualities.\n\nNeither drawing lots nor voting has any place in a monarchy. The monarch is by right the sole prince and the only magistrate, so only the monarch can choose deputies. When the Abbé de St. Pierre proposed increasing the number of councils of the King of France and electing their members by ballot, he did not realize that he was proposing to change the form of government.\n\nI still have to discuss how votes are cast and collected in the people's assembly. But perhaps the history of Roman procedures in this area will explain all the rules I could lay down more clearly. A thoughtful reader will not find it beneath them to see in some detail how public and private business was conducted in a council of two hundred thousand people.\n\n### Book IV, Chapter 4\n\nOn the Roman Assemblies.\n\nWe have no reliable records of Rome's earliest days. Indeed, most of what is said about them is probably fiction. In general, the most instructive part of a people's history—the story of how they were founded—is the part we know least. Every day, experience teaches us what causes empires to undergo revolutions. But since new peoples are no longer forming, we have little more than guesses about how they came into being.\n\nEstablished customs at least show that those customs had a beginning. Of the traditions that reach back to those beginnings, we should accept as most certain the ones supported by the greatest authorities and confirmed by the strongest reasons. These are the principles I have tried to follow in investigating how the freest and most powerful people on earth exercised its supreme power.\n\nAfter Rome was founded, the young republic—that is, its founder's army, made up of Albans, Sabines, and foreigners—was divided into three groups. From this division they took the name tribes. Each tribe was divided into ten curiae, and each curia into decuries. Leaders called curions and decurions were placed at their heads.\n\nIn addition, a body of one hundred horsemen, or knights, called a century, was drawn from each tribe. These divisions, hardly needed in a small town, were thus military at first. But the little city of Rome seems to have been driven by an instinct for greatness to equip itself in advance with an organization suited to the capital of the world.\n\nThis first division soon caused a problem. The Alban and Sabine tribes stayed the same size, while the tribe of foreigners grew constantly as more foreigners arrived. Before long the third tribe surpassed the other two. Servius dealt with this dangerous imbalance by changing the division. He abolished the division by ancestry and replaced it with one based on the parts of the city occupied by each tribe. Instead of three tribes he made four, each occupying and named after one of Rome's hills. In this way he corrected the existing inequality and prevented it from returning. And so that the division would apply to people, not just places, he forbade the residents of one district to move into another. This kept the different ancestries from mixing.\n\nHe also doubled the three old centuries of cavalry and added twelve more, but kept the old names. By this simple and sensible means he finished separating the knights as a body from the people without provoking complaints from the latter.\n\nTo these four urban tribes Servius added fifteen more, called rural tribes. They were made up of country residents divided among the same number of districts. Later as many new tribes were created, until the Roman people were divided into thirty-five tribes. That number remained fixed until the end of the republic.\n\nThe distinction between city and country tribes had an effect worth noting. Nothing like it happened elsewhere, and Rome owed to it both the preservation of its customs and the growth of its empire. One might think the urban tribes would soon have claimed power and honors for themselves and reduced the rural tribes to a lower status. The opposite happened. We know the early Romans' taste for country life. They got this taste from the wise founder who joined farming and military work to freedom, and, so to speak, relegated crafts, trades, scheming, wealth, and slavery to the city.\n\nThus, since all of Rome's prominent people lived in the country and worked the land, people grew used to looking there alone for the republic's defenders. Everyone honored this way of life because the most worthy patricians followed it. The villagers' simple, hardworking life was preferred to the idle, weak life of Rome's city dwellers. A man who would have been a miserable proletarian in the city became a respected citizen as a farmer in the countryside. Our great-hearted ancestors had good reason, Varro said, to establish in the village the nursery of the strong and brave men who defended them in wartime and fed them in peacetime. Pliny says explicitly that the country tribes were honored because of the people in them. Cowards whom people wanted to disgrace were instead transferred to the city tribes. When the Sabine Appius Claudius came to settle in Rome, he was showered with honors and enrolled in a rural tribe, which later took his family's name. Finally, freedmen all entered the urban tribes, never the rural ones. Throughout the entire republic, not a single one of these freedmen ever reached a magistracy, even though they had become citizens.\n\nThis principle was excellent, but it was taken so far that it eventually brought about a change, and certainly an abuse, in public administration.\n\nFirst, after long claiming the right to move citizens at will from one tribe to another, the censors allowed most citizens to enroll in whichever tribe they liked. This permission did no good at all and took away one of the main tools of the censorship. Moreover, the great and powerful all enrolled in the country tribes, while freedmen who had become citizens remained with the common crowd in the city tribes. The tribes in general no longer had a place or territory of their own. All became so mixed that only the records could identify each tribe's members. The idea conveyed by the word tribe thus shifted from a real place to a set of persons, or rather became almost imaginary.\n\nAnother result was that the city tribes, being closer at hand, were often the strongest in the assemblies. They sold the state to anyone willing to buy the votes of the rabble that made them up.\n\nAs for the curiae, the founder had established ten in each tribe. All the Roman people, then living within the city walls, thus made up thirty curiae. Each had its temples, gods, officials, priests, and festivals called compitalia, like the paganalia that the rural tribes later had.\n\nWhen Servius made his new division, the number thirty could not be divided equally among his four tribes. He chose not to change it. The curiae became independent of the tribes and formed another division of Rome's inhabitants. But there were no curiae in the rural tribes or among the people who made them up. By then the tribes had become a purely civil institution, and a different system had been introduced for raising troops. Romulus's military divisions had therefore become unnecessary. So although every citizen was enrolled in a tribe, far from every citizen was enrolled in a curia.\n\nServius made a third division, unrelated to the first two, that became the most important of all because of its effects. He divided the entire Roman people into six classes. He distinguished these not by place or ancestry but by property. The rich filled the first classes, the poor the last, and people of moderate means the middle ones. These six classes were divided into 193 other bodies called centuries. They were distributed so that the first class alone contained more than half the centuries, while the last contained only one. The class with the fewest people thus had the most centuries. The entire last class counted as just one subdivision, although it alone contained more than half of Rome's inhabitants.\n\nTo make the people less aware of what this last arrangement meant, Servius tried to give it a military appearance. He placed two centuries of armorers in the second class and two of makers of military equipment in the fourth. In every class except the last, he distinguished the young from the old: those required to bear arms and those exempted by law because of their age. This distinction, even more than the distinction by property, made it necessary to repeat the census, or count of the people, often. Finally, he required that the assembly meet on the Field of Mars and that everyone old enough to serve come armed.\n\nHe did not make the same division between young and old in the last class because the common people who made it up were not granted the honor of bearing arms for their country. One had to have a home to earn the right to defend it. Of the countless hordes of beggars who fill the armies of kings today, perhaps not one would have escaped being scornfully driven from a Roman unit when soldiers were defenders of freedom.\n\nEven in the last class, however, a distinction was made between the proletarians and those called capite censi. The former had not been reduced to having nothing at all: they at least supplied the state with citizens, and sometimes even soldiers in urgent need. Those who had nothing whatsoever, and could only be counted by their heads, were considered of no account at all. Marius was the first to deign to enlist them.\n\nWithout deciding here whether this third way of counting the people was good or bad in itself, I think I can say that only the early Romans' simple customs, their lack of self-interest, their love of farming, and their contempt for commerce and the drive for profit could make it workable. What modern people could let such a system last twenty years without turning the whole state upside down? Their consuming greed, restless spirit, schemes, constant movements, and endless changes of fortune would prevent it. We should also note that custom and the censorship were stronger than this institution and corrected its flaw in Rome: a rich man could find himself relegated to the class of the poor for showing off his wealth too much.\n\nAll this makes it easy to understand why only five classes are almost ever mentioned, though there were actually six. The sixth provided neither soldiers for the army nor voters on the Field of Mars. Since it had almost no role in the republic, it was seldom counted as anything.\n\nThese were the different divisions of the Roman people. Let us now see how they affected the assemblies. Assemblies properly called together were called comitia. They were usually held in Rome's public square or on the Field of Mars. They were distinguished as assemblies by curiae, by centuries, or by tribes, depending on which of those three divisions governed them. Romulus established the assemblies by curiae, Servius those by centuries, and the tribunes of the people those by tribes. No law was ratified and no magistrate elected except in the assemblies. And since every citizen was enrolled in a curia, a century, or a tribe, no citizen was excluded from the right to vote. The Roman people were truly sovereign, both in law and in fact.\n\nThree conditions had to be met for an assembly to be properly convened and for its acts to have the force of law. First, the body or magistrate calling it had to have the necessary authority. Second, it had to meet on a day permitted by law. Third, the omens had to be favorable.\n\nThe reason for the first rule needs no explanation. The second concerned public administration: assemblies could not be held on holidays or market days, when country people came to Rome on business and did not have time to spend the whole day in the public square. The third let the Senate keep a proud and restless people in check and curb the zeal of rebellious tribunes when necessary. But the tribunes found more than one way around this restriction.\n\nLaws and the election of leaders were not the only matters submitted to the assemblies for judgment. The Roman people had taken over the most important functions of government, so one could say that Europe's fate was decided in these meetings. This range of matters explains the different forms the assemblies took according to what they had to decide.\n\nTo judge these forms, we need only compare them. In establishing the curiae, Romulus intended to restrain the Senate by means of the people and the people by means of the Senate, while ruling over both. He therefore gave the people the full strength of their numbers under this arrangement, to offset the power and wealth he left to the patricians. Yet, in keeping with monarchy, he still gave the patricians an advantage through the influence of their clients over the majority of votes. The remarkable institution of patrons and clients was a masterpiece of politics and humanity. Without it, the patriciate, so opposed to the spirit of a republic, could not have survived. Rome alone has the honor of giving the world this fine example. It never resulted in abuses, yet it has never been followed.\n\nThe arrangement by curiae continued under the kings until Servius. Since the reign of the last Tarquin was not considered legitimate, royal laws came to be known in general as leges curiatae.\n\nUnder the republic, the curiae remained confined to the four urban tribes and contained only Rome's common crowd. They suited neither the Senate, which led the patricians, nor the tribunes, who, though plebeians, led the well-off citizens. The curiae therefore fell into disrepute. They sank so low that their thirty lictors, assembled together, did what the assemblies by curiae should have done.\n\nDivision by centuries favored the aristocracy so strongly that it is not immediately clear why the Senate did not always prevail in the assemblies of that name. Those assemblies elected the consuls, censors, and other curule magistrates. Of the one hundred and ninety-three centuries forming the six classes of the entire Roman people, the first class contained ninety-eight. Votes were counted only by century, so this first class alone outvoted all the rest. When all its centuries agreed, the remaining votes were not even collected. The decision of the smaller number of people passed as the decision of the multitude. One might say that the assemblies by centuries decided matters by the majority of coins, far more than by the majority of votes.\n\nBut two things moderated this enormous power. First, the tribunes were generally in the class of the rich, as were many plebeians. They offset the influence of the patricians within that first class.\n\nThe second was this: instead of having the centuries vote immediately in their assigned order, which would always have put the first class first, a century was chosen by lot. That century alone made a preliminary election. Then, on another day, all the centuries were called in their order, repeated the same election, and usually confirmed it. The influence of setting an example was thus taken away from rank and given to chance, in keeping with the principle of democracy.\n\nThis custom had another advantage. Country citizens had time between the two elections to learn about the merits of the provisionally chosen candidate, so they could vote on an informed basis. But the custom was eventually abolished on the pretext of saving time, and both elections took place on the same day.\n\nThe assemblies by tribes were, properly speaking, the council of the Roman people. Only the tribunes called them together. The tribunes were elected there and passed their plebiscites there. Not only did the Senate have no standing in them; it did not even have the right to attend. Forced to obey laws on which they could not vote, the senators were in this respect less free than the lowest citizens. This injustice made no sense at all and was enough by itself to invalidate the decisions of a body that did not admit all its members. Even if all the patricians had attended these assemblies, as they were entitled to do as citizens, they would then have been mere individuals. They could have had little influence under a voting system in which votes were taken by head and the poorest proletarian counted as much as the Senate's leading member.\n\nWe can therefore see that these ways of dividing up such a large people did more than bring order to the collection of votes. They were not merely different arrangements with no significance of their own. Each had effects suited to the aims behind the choice of that arrangement.\n\nWithout going into further detail, the preceding explanation shows that the assemblies by tribes most favored popular government, while the assemblies by centuries favored aristocracy. In the assemblies by curiae, Rome's common crowd alone made up the majority. Since these assemblies served only to help tyranny and bad schemes, they had to fall into disrepute. Even troublemakers avoided a tool that exposed their plans too clearly. The Roman people appeared in their full dignity only in the assemblies by centuries, which alone included everyone. The rural tribes were absent from the assemblies by curiae, and the Senate and patricians were absent from those by tribes.\n\nAs for the method of collecting votes, it was as simple among the early Romans as their customs, though less simple than at Sparta. Each person gave his vote aloud, and a clerk wrote the votes down as they came in. A majority of votes in each tribe determined that tribe's vote; a majority of votes among the tribes determined the people's vote. The same was true of the curiae and centuries. This practice worked while the citizens were honest and each was ashamed to vote publicly for an unjust proposal or an unworthy candidate. But when the people became corrupt and votes were bought, it became advisable to vote in secret. That made buyers unsure of what they would get and let the cheats avoid becoming traitors.\n\nI know that Cicero criticizes this change and partly blames it for the republic's downfall. Although I recognize the weight Cicero's authority should carry here, I cannot agree with him. On the contrary, I think the state fell more quickly because too few such changes were made. A regimen fit for healthy people is not fit for the sick. We should not try to govern a corrupt people by the same laws that suit a good one. Nothing proves this principle better than the endurance of the republic of Venice. Its outward form still exists, solely because its laws suit only bad people.\n\nSo citizens were given tablets on which they could vote without anyone knowing their choice. New procedures were also introduced for collecting the tablets, counting the votes, comparing the totals, and so on. Even so, the honesty of the officials in charge of these tasks was often suspected. Finally, edicts were issued to stop electioneering and the buying and selling of votes. Their sheer number shows how little good they did.\n\nToward the end, extraordinary measures were often needed because the laws were not enough. Sometimes prodigies were alleged. This could deceive the people, but not those who governed them. Sometimes an assembly was called suddenly, before candidates had time to campaign. Sometimes an entire meeting was spent on speeches when it was clear the people had been won over and were about to make a bad choice. But ambition eventually found ways around everything. What seems incredible is that amid so many abuses, this huge people still managed, thanks to its old rules, to elect magistrates, pass laws, judge cases, and handle private and public business almost as easily as the Senate itself could have done.\n\n### Book IV, Chapter 5\n\nOn the Tribunate.\n\nWhen we cannot establish an exact balance among the parts of the state, or when lasting causes constantly change their relations, we create a special office that is not part of the other bodies. It puts each part back in its proper relation to the others. It serves as a link or intermediary between the ruler and the people, between the ruler and the sovereign, or on both sides at once if necessary.\n\nThis body, which I will call the tribunate, protects the laws and legislative power. Sometimes it protects the sovereign against the government, as the tribunes of the people did in Rome. Sometimes it supports the government against the people, as the Council of Ten now does in Venice. And sometimes it maintains the balance on both sides, as the ephors did in Sparta.\n\nThe tribunate is not one of the constituent parts of the state. It should have no share of legislative or executive power. Yet that very fact makes its own power greater: because it can do nothing, it can stop anything. As the defender of the laws, it is more sacred and more respected than the ruler who carries them out or the sovereign who makes them. This was plain in Rome. The proud patricians, who always despised the people as a whole, were forced to bow before a mere officer of the people who had neither the authority to take auspices nor judicial authority.\n\nA tribunate kept within sensible limits is the strongest support for a good constitution. But give it even a little too much power and it overturns everything. Weakness, on the other hand, is not in its nature. As long as it has any power at all, it never has less than it needs.\n\nIt turns into tyranny when it seizes the executive power it is supposed only to restrain and wants to grant exemptions from laws it is supposed only to protect. The ephors' enormous power was harmless as long as Sparta kept its customs, but it sped up the corruption once it began. Agis was slaughtered by these tyrants, and his successor avenged his death. Both the ephors' crime and their punishment hastened the republic's fall. After Cleomenes, Sparta was nothing. Rome also perished in the same way. The tribunes gradually seized excessive power. In the end, with the help of laws made for freedom, that power shielded the emperors who destroyed freedom. As for the Council of Ten in Venice, it is a bloodstained court, as terrifying to the patricians as to the people. Far from openly protecting the laws, now that the laws have been degraded it serves only to strike in the dark, where no one dares see its blows.\n\nThe tribunate, like the government, becomes weaker as its membership grows. The Roman people's tribunes originally numbered two, then five. When they wanted to double that number, the Senate let them. It knew it could use some to keep the others in check, and that is exactly what happened.\n\nThe best way to prevent a body so formidable from seizing power is one no government has yet thought of: do not make it permanent. Instead, set intervals during which it will be suspended. These intervals must not be long enough for abuses to become entrenched. They can be fixed by law in a way that lets special commissions shorten them easily when needed.\n\nI see no drawback to this method. As I said, the tribunate is not part of the constitution, so it can be removed without harming the constitution. And the method seems effective to me: an official who has just been reinstated starts not with the power his predecessor held, but with the power the law gives him.\n\n### Book IV, Chapter 6\n\nOn Dictatorship.\n\nLaws cannot bend to fit events. In some cases this rigidity can make them harmful and cause the state to perish during a crisis. Orderly procedures take time, and circumstances do not always allow it. A thousand situations can arise that the legislator did not plan for. Recognizing that we cannot foresee everything is itself a necessary form of foresight.\n\nSo we should not make political institutions so rigid that we deprive ourselves of the power to suspend their operation. Even Sparta let its laws lie dormant.\n\nBut only the gravest dangers can outweigh the danger of disturbing public order. We should never stop the sacred power of the laws unless the country's survival is at stake. In these rare and obvious cases, a special act provides for public safety by entrusting it to the person most worthy of the task. This responsibility can be assigned in two ways, depending on the kind of danger.\n\nIf a more active government is enough to deal with it, power is concentrated in one or two of its members. In that case, it is not the authority of the laws that changes, only the way they are administered. But if the danger is such that the machinery of the laws prevents us from protecting ourselves, a supreme leader is appointed to silence all the laws and briefly suspend the sovereign's authority. In such a case there can be no doubt about the general will. Clearly the people's first intention is that the state should not perish. Suspending legislative authority in this way does not abolish it. The magistrate who silences it cannot make it speak. He controls it but cannot represent it. He can do anything except make laws.\n\nThe Roman Senate used the first method when it charged the consuls, in an established formula, with securing the republic's safety. The second was used when one of the two consuls appointed a dictator, following an example that Alba had given Rome.\n\nAt the beginning of the republic, dictators were appointed very often. The state was not yet firmly settled enough to sustain itself by the strength of its constitution alone. At the time, customary behavior made many precautions unnecessary that would have been needed in another age. No one feared that a dictator would abuse his power or try to keep it beyond his term. On the contrary, such great power seemed to burden its holder: he hurried to give it up, as if taking the place of the laws were too difficult and dangerous a position.\n\nSo it is not the danger of abuse that makes me criticize the careless use of this supreme office in the early days. It is the danger of making the office lose respect. While it was handed out for elections, dedications, and purely formal matters, there was reason to fear that it would be less formidable when really needed. People might get used to regarding as an empty title one used only for empty ceremonies.\n\nToward the end of the republic, the Romans became more cautious. They made as little sense in holding the dictatorship back as they had once made in granting it freely. It was easy to see that their fear was unfounded. The capital's weakness then made it safe from the magistrates within it. A dictator could, in some cases, defend public freedom without ever being able to attack it. The chains that would bind Rome would be forged not in Rome itself but in its armies. The little resistance Marius offered Sulla, and Pompey offered Caesar, clearly showed what power inside the city could do against force outside it.\n\nThis mistake led them to make serious errors. One was failing to appoint a dictator during the affair of Catiline. The danger lay only within the city and, at most, in some part of Italy. A dictator, with the unlimited authority the laws gave him, could easily have broken up the conspiracy. Instead, it was put down only through a run of fortunate accidents that human prudence should never have expected.\n\nThe Senate instead settled for handing over all its power to the consuls. As a result, Cicero had to exceed that power on a crucial point in order to act effectively. At first, an outburst of joy brought approval for his actions. But later he was rightly called to account for the blood of citizens shed against the laws. That reproach could not have been made against a dictator. The consul's eloquence, however, carried everyone along. Though a Roman, Cicero himself preferred his own glory to his country. He sought less the most lawful and safest means of saving the state than a way to take all the credit for the affair. So he was rightly honored as Rome's liberator and rightly punished as a breaker of the laws. However splendid his recall from exile was, it was certainly an act of grace.\n\nIn any case, however this important responsibility is assigned, it is essential to set a very short term that can never be extended. In the crises that require it, the state is soon either destroyed or saved. Once the urgent need has passed, a dictatorship becomes either tyrannical or useless. At Rome, dictators served for only six months, and most resigned before their term was up. If the term had been longer, they might have been tempted to extend it further, as the decemvirs did with their one-year term. A dictator had only enough time to deal with the need for which he had been chosen, not enough to think up other plans.\n\n### Book IV, Chapter 7\n\nOn Censorship.\n\nThe law expresses the general will, and censorship similarly expresses public judgment. Public opinion is a kind of law. The censor is its officer and, like the ruler, only applies it to particular cases.\n\nSo the court of censors is far from being the judge of what the people think. It only states their opinion. As soon as it departs from that opinion, its decisions are empty and ineffective.\n\nThere is no point in distinguishing a nation's customs from what its people hold in esteem. Both come from the same source and necessarily go together. Among every people in the world, opinion, not nature, determines what pleasures they choose. Set people's opinions right, and their customs will improve on their own. We always love what is beautiful or what we think is beautiful. But it is this judgment that can be mistaken, so this judgment is what needs to be guided. Whoever judges customs judges honor, and whoever judges honor takes the standard for that judgment from opinion.\n\nA people's opinions arise from its constitution. Although the law does not govern customs, legislation gives rise to them. When legislation grows weak, customs decline. But then the censors' judgment cannot accomplish what the force of the laws failed to accomplish.\n\nIt follows that censorship can help preserve customs, but can never restore them. Appoint censors while the laws are strong. Once the laws have lost their strength, there is no hope. Nothing legitimate has any force when the laws no longer have it.\n\nCensorship maintains customs by keeping opinions from becoming corrupt and preserving sound judgment through wise applications. Sometimes it even settles opinions that are still uncertain. The use of seconds in duels had become a frenzy in the Kingdom of France. It was abolished there by just these words in a royal edict: “As for those who are cowardly enough to call on seconds.” This judgment anticipated the public's and immediately shaped it. But when the same edicts declared that fighting a duel was also cowardly—which is quite true, but went against common opinion—the public laughed at the decision. It had already made up its mind on that point.\n\nI have said elsewhere that public opinion cannot be forced. The court established to express it must therefore have no trace of force. We cannot admire too much the skill with which this tool, completely lost among modern peoples, was put to work by the Romans and even better by the Spartans.\n\nA man of bad character offered good advice in the council of Sparta. The ephors ignored him and had an upstanding citizen offer the same advice. What an honor for the second man, and what a mark of disgrace for the first, though neither had been praised or blamed! Some drunk men from Samos defiled the ephors' court. The next day a public edict gave the Samians permission to behave like scoundrels. Would a real punishment have been as severe as that kind of impunity? When Sparta has decided what is or is not honorable, Greece does not appeal its judgments.\n\n### Book IV, Chapter 8\n\nOn Civil Religion.\n\nAt first, people had no kings but gods and no government but theocratic government. They reasoned as Caligula did, and at that point they were right. It takes a long change in feelings and ideas before people can bring themselves to accept another human being as their master and expect things to turn out well.\n\nOnce God was placed at the head of each political society, there were as many gods as there were peoples. Two peoples who were strangers to each other, and almost always enemies, could not recognize the same master for long. Two armies fighting each other cannot obey the same commander. So national divisions gave rise to polytheism, and from that came both religious and civil intolerance. These are naturally the same thing, as I will explain below.\n\nThe Greeks liked to find their own gods among the peoples they called barbarians because they also liked to see themselves as those peoples' natural rulers. But the scholarship of our time that tries to prove the gods of different nations were identical is ridiculous. As if Moloch, Saturn, and Chronos could be the same god! As if the Phoenicians' Baal, the Greeks' Zeus, and the Latins' Jupiter could be the same! As if imaginary beings with different names could have anything in common!\n\nBut someone may ask why there were no religious wars in pagan times, when each state had its own worship and its own gods. My answer is that each state had its own worship as well as its own government and did not separate its gods from its laws. Political war was also religious war. The territories of the gods were, so to speak, set by the borders of the nations. One people's god had no rights over other peoples. The pagan gods were not jealous gods. They divided the rule of the world among themselves. Even Moyse and the Hebrew people sometimes accepted this idea when speaking of the God of Israel. It is true that they considered the gods of the Canaanites to be nothing: the Canaanites were a people marked for destruction, whose land the Hebrews were to occupy. But look at how they spoke of the gods of neighboring peoples whom they were forbidden to attack! “Aren't you rightfully entitled to possess what belongs to Chamos your god?” Jephté said to the Ammonites. “We possess, by the same right, the lands our victorious God has won for himself.” That seems to me a clear acknowledgment that Chamos and the God of Israel had equal rights.\n\nBut when the Jews, under the kings of Babylon and later under the kings of Syria, insisted on recognizing no god but their own, their refusal was seen as rebellion against their conqueror. It brought on the persecutions recorded in their history. We see no other example of such persecutions before Christianity.\n\nSince each religion was tied solely to the laws of the state that prescribed it, the only way to convert a people was to conquer them. Conquerors were the only missionaries. Changing their worship was a requirement imposed on the defeated, so conquest had to come first, before anyone could speak of conversion. Far from people fighting for the gods, the gods fought for people, as in Homer. Each person asked his god for victory and paid for it with new altars. Before taking a city, the Romans ordered its gods to abandon it. When they let the people of Tarentum keep their angry gods, they considered those gods subject to their own and forced to pay them homage. They let the defeated keep their gods just as they let them keep their laws. A crown for Jupiter of the Capitol was often the only tribute they demanded.\n\nIn the end, the Romans spread their worship and their gods along with their empire. They often adopted the gods of conquered peoples themselves, granting citizenship to both their own gods and those of the conquered. Little by little, the peoples of this vast empire came to have many gods and forms of worship, much the same everywhere. That is how paganism finally became one and the same religion throughout the known world.\n\nIt was under these circumstances that Jesus came to establish a spiritual kingdom on earth. This separated the religious system from the political system. The state ceased to be a single whole, and internal divisions began that have never stopped troubling Christian peoples. Pagans could never understand the new idea of a kingdom in another world. They always saw Christians as real rebels who pretended to submit while waiting for the chance to become independent rulers and cleverly seize the authority they appeared to respect while they were weak. This was the cause of the persecutions.\n\nWhat the pagans feared came to pass. Then everything changed. The humble Christians changed their tune, and soon this supposed kingdom of another world became, under a visible leader, the most violent despotism in this world.\n\nYet there has always been a ruler and civil laws. These two sources of power have therefore produced a constant conflict over jurisdiction. That has made any sound political order impossible in Christian states, and no one has ever managed to settle whether people must obey the ruler or the priest.\n\nSeveral peoples, even in Europe or nearby, have tried to preserve or restore the old system, but without success. The spirit of Christianity has spread everywhere. Religious worship has always remained, or again become, independent of the sovereign, with no necessary connection to the body of the state. Mahomet had very sound ideas. He tied his political system together well. As long as his form of government lasted under the caliphs who succeeded him, that government was fully united, and good in that respect. But the Arabs became prosperous, educated, refined, soft, and cowardly, and were conquered by foreign peoples. Then the division between the two powers began again. Though it is less obvious among Muslims than among Christians, it is still there, especially in the sect of Ali. In some states, such as Persia, it continues to make itself felt.\n\nAmong us, the kings of England have made themselves heads of the Church, and the czars have done the same. But this title has made them its servants more than its masters. They have gained less of a right to change it than a power to maintain it. They are not legislators in the Church, only rulers. Wherever the clergy forms a corporate body, it is master and legislator in its country. So there are two powers, two sovereigns, in England and Russia, just as elsewhere.\n\nOf all Christian writers, the philosopher Hobbes alone clearly saw both the problem and the remedy. He dared to propose joining the eagle's two heads and bringing everything back under a single political authority. Without that unity, no state or government will ever be properly organized. But he must have seen that Christianity's drive to rule was incompatible with his system, and that the priest's interest would always outweigh the state's. His political ideas became hated not so much for what is awful and false in them as for what is right and true.\n\nI think that looking at historical facts this way would easily refute the opposing views of Baile and Warburton. One claims that no religion benefits the political body; the other maintains, on the contrary, that Christianity is its strongest support. To the first, we could prove that no state was ever founded without religion serving as its basis. To the second, we could prove that Christian law is, at heart, more harmful than helpful to a strong state. To make my meaning fully clear, I only need to make the vague ideas about religion relevant to my subject a little more precise.\n\nSociety can be universal or particular. Religion, considered in relation to society, can likewise be divided into two kinds: the religion of the human being and the religion of the citizen. The first has no temples, altars, or rites. It is limited to inward worship of the supreme God and the lasting duties of morality. It is the pure and simple religion of the Gospel, true belief in God, and what may be called natural divine law. The other belongs to a single country and gives it its own protecting gods and patrons. It has its beliefs, rites, and public worship prescribed by law. Everyone outside the one nation that follows it is, to its eyes, an unbeliever, a foreigner, and a barbarian. It extends human duties and rights only as far as its altars reach. Such were all the religions of the earliest peoples. They may be called civil or positive divine law.\n\nThere is a third, stranger kind of religion. It gives people two sets of laws, two leaders, and two homelands, places them under conflicting duties, and prevents them from being both devout and citizens. The religion of the Lamas is like this, as is that of the Japanese, and so is Roman Christianity. We can call the last of these the religion of the priest. It produces a kind of mixed, antisocial law that has no name.\n\nConsidered politically, all three kinds of religion have faults. The third is so obviously bad that proving it would be a waste of time. Anything that breaks up social unity is worthless. Any institution that puts a person at odds with himself is worthless.\n\nThe second kind is good because it joins worship of God to love of the laws. It makes the homeland an object of the citizens' devotion and teaches them that serving the state means serving its protecting god. It is a kind of theocracy in which the ruler must be the only chief priest and the magistrates the only priests. Dying for one's country then means becoming a martyr; breaking the laws means acting without reverence for God; and making a criminal the object of public condemnation means dedicating him to the gods' anger: sacer estod.\n\nBut it is bad because it rests on error and lies. It deceives people, makes them gullible and superstitious, and drowns true worship of God in empty ceremonies. It is also bad when it becomes exclusive and tyrannical, turning a people bloodthirsty and intolerant. Such a people then thinks only of killing and slaughter, and believes that killing anyone who does not accept its gods is a holy act. This places it in a natural state of war with all other peoples, greatly endangering its own safety.\n\nThat leaves the religion of the human being, or Christianity. I do not mean today's Christianity but the Christianity of the Gospel, which is entirely different. Under this holy, noble, true religion, people recognize one another as brothers, children of the same God. The society that unites them does not end even at death.\n\nBut this religion has no particular connection to the political body. It leaves the laws with only the force they have on their own and adds nothing to it. As a result, one of the strongest bonds in a particular society does not work. More than that, instead of attaching citizens' hearts to the state, it draws them away from the state, just as it draws them away from everything earthly. I know of nothing more opposed to a social spirit.\n\nWe are told that a people of true Christians would form the most perfect society imaginable. I see just one great problem with this idea: a society of true Christians would no longer be a society of human beings.\n\nI would even say that this supposed society, for all its perfection, would not be the strongest or most lasting. Because it was so perfect, it would lack cohesion. Its fatal flaw would lie in its very perfection.\n\nEveryone would do their duty. The people would obey the laws, the leaders would be fair and moderate, the magistrates honest and incorruptible, and the soldiers unafraid of death. There would be no vanity or luxury. All that is very good, but let us look further.\n\nChristianity is an entirely spiritual religion, concerned only with heaven. The Christian's homeland is not in this world. He does his duty, certainly, but he is deeply indifferent to whether his efforts succeed or fail. As long as he has done nothing to blame himself for, he cares little whether things go well or badly on earth. If the state prospers, he hardly dares enjoy the common good, for fear of taking pride in his country's glory. If the state declines, he blesses the hand of God that bears down on his people.\n\nFor society to be peaceful and remain united, every citizen without exception would have to be an equally good Christian. But suppose, unfortunately, there is just one ambitious person, one hypocrite—a Catilina or a Cromwel, for example. He will certainly have an easy time exploiting his devout fellow citizens. Christian charity does not readily allow people to think badly of their neighbors. As soon as he has used some trick to deceive them and gain a share of public authority, he becomes an officeholder. God wants him respected. Soon he has power. God wants people to obey him. Does the holder of that power abuse it? He is the rod with which God punishes his children. People would feel it was wrong to drive out the usurper. That would mean disturbing the public peace, using force, and shedding blood. None of that fits well with Christian gentleness. After all, what does it matter whether one is free or a slave in this valley of misery? The important thing is to reach paradise, and resignation is simply one more way to do so.\n\nWhat if a foreign war breaks out? The citizens readily march into battle. None of them thinks of fleeing. They do their duty, but they have no passion for victory. They are better at dying than winning. Whether they win or lose, what does it matter? Doesn't providence know better than they do what they need? Imagine what advantage a proud, forceful, passionate enemy could gain from their stoicism! Set against them the brave peoples consumed by a passionate love of glory and country. Imagine your Christian republic facing Sparta or Rome. The devout Christians will be beaten, crushed, and destroyed before they have time to collect themselves, or will owe their survival only to the contempt their enemy feels for them. The soldiers of Fabius took an admirable oath, in my view. They did not swear to die or win; they swore to return victorious, and they kept their word. Christians would never have sworn such an oath. They would have thought it was testing God.\n\nBut I am wrong to say “Christian republic.” Each of those two words rules out the other. Christianity preaches only servitude and dependence. Its spirit favors tyranny too much for tyrants not to take advantage of it every time. True Christians are made to be slaves. They know it and are hardly troubled by it. This short life matters too little in their eyes.\n\nWe are told that Christian troops are excellent. I deny it. Show me such troops. For my part, I know of none. Someone will cite the Crusades. Without arguing about the courage of the Crusaders, I will point out that, far from being Christians, they were the priest's soldiers, citizens of the Church. They fought for its spiritual homeland, which it had somehow turned into an earthly one. Strictly speaking, this takes us back to paganism. Since the Gospel establishes no national religion, a holy war among Christians is impossible.\n\nUnder the pagan emperors, Christian soldiers were brave. All Christian writers say so, and I believe them. They were competing with pagan troops for honor. As soon as the emperors became Christian, this competition ended. When the cross drove out the eagle, all Roman courage disappeared.\n\nBut let us leave political considerations aside, return to questions of right, and set out the principles on this important point. As I have said, the right the social pact gives the sovereign over subjects does not go beyond what serves the public good. Subjects therefore owe the sovereign an account of their opinions only when those opinions matter to the community. It certainly matters to the state that every citizen have a religion that makes him love his duties. But the beliefs of that religion concern the state and its members only insofar as they relate to morality and to the duties its followers owe to others. Beyond that, anyone may hold whatever opinions he likes. It is not the sovereign's place to inquire into them. The sovereign has no authority in the next world, so what happens to subjects in the life to come is none of its business, provided they are good citizens in this one.\n\nThere is therefore a purely civil statement of faith. The sovereign may set out its articles, not exactly as religious doctrines, but as social attitudes without which one cannot be a good citizen or faithful subject. The sovereign cannot force anyone to believe them, but it can banish from the state anyone who does not. It can banish such a person not for being godless but for being unsociable: for being unable to love the laws and justice sincerely or, when necessary, to give his life for his duty. And if someone publicly acknowledges these beliefs and then acts as though he does not believe them, let him be put to death. He has committed the greatest of crimes: he has lied before the laws.\n\nThe beliefs of civil religion must be simple, few, and stated precisely, without explanations or commentary. There is a powerful, intelligent, kind God who sees ahead and provides for us; there is a life to come, happiness for the just, punishment for the wicked, and the social contract and the laws are sacred. These are the positive beliefs. I limit the negative beliefs to just one: intolerance. It belongs to the forms of worship we have rejected.\n\nPeople who distinguish civil intolerance from religious intolerance are mistaken, in my view. The two cannot be separated. It is impossible to live in peace with people whom one believes damned. To love them would mean hating the God who punishes them. One must either bring them back to the faith or torment them. Wherever religious intolerance is accepted, it must have some civil effect. As soon as it does, the sovereign is no longer sovereign, even in worldly matters. From then on, priests are the real masters, and kings are merely their agents.\n\nNow that there is no longer, and can no longer be, an exclusive national religion, every religion that tolerates others should be tolerated, as long as its beliefs do not conflict with a citizen's duties. But anyone who dares say “Outside the Church there is no salvation” must be driven from the state, unless the state is the Church and its ruler is the chief priest. Such a belief works only in a theocratic government. In any other government, it is harmful. The reason for which Henri IV. is said to have adopted the Roman religion should lead any honest person to leave it, especially any ruler capable of reasoning.\n\n### Book IV, Chapter 9\n\nConclusion.\n\nHaving set out the true principles of political right and tried to give the state a firm foundation, I would still need to support it by discussing its relations with other states. This would include the law of nations, commerce, the law of war and conquests, public law, alliances, negotiations, treaties, and so on. But all this is a new subject, too vast for my limited view. I should always have kept my attention closer to home.\n\n### Book IV, Appendix\n\n(…)\nwith people whom one believes damned. To love them would mean hating the God who punishes them. One must either bring them back to the faith or torment them. Wherever religious intolerance is accepted, it must have some civil effect. As soon as it does, the sovereign is no longer sovereign, even in worldly matters. From then on, priests are the real masters, and kings are merely their agents.\n\nNow that there is no longer, and can no longer be, an exclusive national religion, every religion that tolerates others should be tolerated, as long as its beliefs do not conflict with a citizen's duties. But anyone who dares say “Outside the Church there is no salvation” must be driven from the state, unless the state is the Church and its ruler is the chief priest. Such a belief works only in a theocratic government. In any other government, it is harmful. The reason for which Henri IV. is said to have adopted the Roman religion should lead any honest person to leave it, especially any ruler capable of reasoning.\n\nChapter IX.\n\nConclusion.\n\nHaving set out the true principles of political right and tried to give the state a firm foundation, I would still need to support it by discussing its relations with other states. This would include the law of nations, commerce, the law of war and conquests, public law, alliances, negotiations, treaties, and so on. But all this is a new subject, too vast for my limited view. I should always have kept my attention closer to home.\n\nEnd.\n\nCatalog of books printed by REY,\nBookseller in Amsterdam.\n\nVarious works by Mr. J. J. Rousleau, 2 large duodecimo volumes,\ncontaining: Discourse on Whether the Revival of the Sciences\nand Arts Has Helped to Purify Morals, with three\nreplies by the same author to various critics. Narcissus. Letter\non French Music. The Village Soothsayer. Discourse\non Political Economy. Extract from the Plan for Perpetual Peace\nby Mr. the Abbé de Saint Pierre. Discourse on the Origin\nand Foundations of Inequality Among Men. Letter\nAgainst the Theater. Letter by Mr. D’Alembert in reply\nto the preceding one, with the privilege of Their High Mightinesses.\n\nJulie, or the New Heloise, 6 large duodecimo volumes, original edition, with privilege.\n\nPreface, or Conversation about Novels between the editor and a man of letters.\n\nCollection of Prints for the New Heloise, with descriptions\nof the subjects of the same prints, as supplied by the editor.\n\nThe Holy Bible, or the Old and New Testaments, with\na Literal Commentary consisting of selected notes taken from\nvarious English and other authors, etc. Quarto (4). Containing the 5 books\nof Moses, the books of Joshua, Judges, and Ruth, the\ntwo books of Samuel; 5 tomes in 9 parts, 1761.\n\nCountry Library, or Diversions of the Mind and\nHeart, duodecimo (12). 12 volumes.\n\nThe Fairies' Cabinet by Madame d’Aunoy, duodecimo (12). 14 parts with illustrations.\n\nCampaigns of Marshals Villars, Martin, Tallard, Villeroy,\nNoaille, and Coigny in Germany, compiled from the originals,\nduodecimo (12). 20 volumes.\n\nEssay on General History and on the Morals and Spirit of\nNations since Charlemagne, with the Age of Louis XIV,\nby Voltaire, octavo (8). 7 volumes.\n\nCritical History of the Manichaeans and Manichaeism, quarto (4). 2 volumes.\n\nJournal of Scholars from its beginning, 1665, until\n1753, in 170 volumes, with illustrations, duodecimo.\n\n—— Same, combined with the Memoirs of Trevoux from January\n1754 to the present. 68 volumes.\n\nMemoirs of Cardinal de Retz, octavo (8). 4 volumes.\n\n—— On the life and works of\nMr. de Fontenelle and La Motte, by Mr. the Abbé Trublet, 1 volume.\n\n—— On Land Clearing, by the Marquis de Turbilly, octavo (8).\n1 volume. 1761.\n\nTheatrical Works of Nivelle de la Chaussée, 2 small duodecimo volumes,\n1760.\n\n—— Mathematical Works by Father Pardie, 3 volumes, illustrated.\n\n—— Works of François Rabelais, quarto (4). 3 volumes, illustrated. 1741.\n\n—— Works of Louis Racine, duodecimo (12). 6 volumes. 1750.\n\nPrinciples of the Natural Law of Nature and Nations by Wolff,\nby Formey, 3 volumes.\n\nThe New Testament Put into Catechism Form by Mr. Polier, Professor\nat Lausanne, octavo (8). 6 volumes. 1756.","download_url":"https://mouseia.org/api/works/contrat/translations/trn_contrat_plain.txt"}],"retex_markdown_url":"https://mouseia.org/api/works/contrat/retex.md"}}