Sovereignty, for the same reason as makes it inalienable, cannot be represented; it lies essentially in the general will, and will does not admit of representation: it is either the same, or other; there is no intermediate possibility.The deputies of the people, therefore, are not and cannot be its representatives: they are merely its stewards, and can carry through no definitive acts.Every law the people has not ratified in person is null and void ?is, in fact, not a law.The people of England regards itself as free; but it is grossly mistaken; it is free only during the election of members of parliament.As soon as they are elected, slavery overtakes it, and it is nothing.The use it makes of the short moments of liberty it enjoys shows indeed that it deserves to lose them.
The idea of representation is modern; it comes to us from feudal government, from that iniquitous and absurd system which degrades humanity and dishonours the name of man.In ancient republics and even in monarchies, the people never had representatives; the word itself was unknown.It is very singular that in Rome, where the tribunes were so sacrosanct, it was never even imagined that they could usurp the functions of the people, and that in the midst of so great a multitude they never attempted to pass on their own authority a single plebiscitum.We can, however, form an idea of the difficulties caused sometimes by the people being so numerous, from what happened in the time of the Gracchi, when some of the citizens had to cast their votes from the roofs of buildings.
Where right and liberty are everything, disadvantages count for nothing.
Among this wise people everything was given its just value, its lictors were allowed to do what its tribunes would never have dared to attempt;for it had no fear that its lictors would try to represent it.
To explain, however, in what way the tribunes did sometimes represent it, it is enough to conceive how the government represents the Sovereign.
Law being purely the declaration of the general will, it is clear that, in the exercise of the legislative power, the people cannot be represented;but in that of the executive power, which is only the force that is applied to give the law effect, it both can and should be represented.We thus see that if we looked closely into the matter we should find that very few nations have any laws.However that may be, it is certain that the tribunes, possessing no executive power, could never represent the Roman people by right of the powers entrusted to them, but only by usurping those of the senate.
In Greece, all that the people had to do, it did for itself; it was constantly assembled in the public square.The Greeks lived in a mild climate;they had no natural greed; slaves did their work for them; their great concern was with liberty.Lacking the same advantages, how can you preserve the same rights? Your severer climates add to your needs; 31 for half the year your public squares are uninhabitable; the flatness of your languages unfits them for being heard in the open air; you sacrifice more for profit than for liberty, and fear slavery less than poverty.
What then? Is liberty maintained only by the help of slavery? It may be so.Extremes meet.Everything that is not in the course of nature has its disadvantages, civil society most of all.There are some unhappy circumstances in which we can only keep our liberty at others' expense, and where the citizen can be perfectly free only when the slave is most a slave.Such was the case with Sparta.As for you, modern peoples, you have no slaves, but you are slaves yourselves; you pay for their liberty with your own.
It is in vain that you boast of this preference; I find in it more cowardice than humanity.
I do not mean by all this that it is necessary to have slaves, or that the right of slavery is legitimate: I am merely giving the reasons why modern peoples, believing themselves to be free, have representatives, while ancient peoples had none.In any case, the moment a people allows itself to be represented, it is no long free: it no longer exists.
All things considered, I do not see that it is possible henceforth for the Sovereign to preserve among us the exercise of its rights, unless the city is very small.But if it is very small, it will be conquered? No.
I will show later on how the external strength of a great people 32 may be combined with the convenient polity and good order of a small State.16.THAT THE INSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT IS NOT A CONTRACT T HE legislative power once well established, the next thing is to establish similarly the executive power;for this latter, which operates only by particular acts, not being of the essence of the former, is naturally separate from it.Were it possible for the Sovereign, as such, to possess the executive power, right and fact would be so confounded that no one could tell what was law and what was not; and the body politic, thus disfigured, would soon fall a prey to the violence it was instituted to prevent.
As the citizens, by the social contract, are all equal, all can prescribe what all should do, but no one has a right to demand that another shall do what he does not do himself.It is strictly this right, which is indispensable for giving the body politic life and movement, that the Sovereign, in instituting the government, confers upon the prince.
It has been held that this act of establishment was a contract between the people and the rulers it sets over itself, ?a contract in which conditions were laid down between the two parties binding the one to command and the other to obey.It will be admitted, I am sure, that this is an odd kind of contract to enter into.But let us see if this view can be upheld.
First, the supreme authority can no more be modified than it can be alienated; to limit it is to destroy it.It is absurd and contradictory for the Sovereign to set a superior over itself; to bind itself to obey a master would be to return to absolute liberty.