Chapter 5 Volume 3-2

Chapter Nine Of The Marks Of A Good Government Whoever asks categorically which is the best kind of government raises a question which is both unanswerable and indefinable; There are as many possible combinations of absolute and relative positions as there are optimal answers. But if one asks what are the signs by which a people is well-governed or badly governed; that is another matter, and the question of fact can be settled. However, the problem has never been solved at all, because each side wants to solve it in its own way.The subjects approve of public tranquility, and the citizens of individual liberty; the one prefers security of property, the other of person; Moderate government; the former wants to punish crime, the latter to prevent it; the one thinks it is better to be feared by the neighbors, the other prefers to be ignored by the neighbors; the one is satisfied with the circulation of money, the other Ask the people to have bread.Even if people could agree on these and other similar points, wouldn't the question go a step further?Moral quantities lack precise measures, so even if people agree on such a sign, how can they agree on valuation?

As for me, I've always wondered how people don't recognize a sign so simple, or why people don't have the confidence to admit it. What is the purpose of political union?For the survival and prosperity of its members.And what is the surest and surest sign of their existence and prosperity?That is their number and their population.So look no further for this much-discussed icon!All things being equal, the government under which the number of citizens multiplies and increases the most, without means of immigration, without naturalization, without colonies, is certainly the best. .That government under which the people dwindle and wither is the worst kind of government.Now, statisticians, it is your business; you are invited to calculate, measure, and compare.

Chapter X Of The Abuse Of Government And Its Tendency To Degenerate As individual wills are constantly working against the general will, governments are constantly working against the sovereign.The more this effort is intensified, the more the system changes; and since there is no other corporate will here to counteract and balance the will of the prince, sooner or later the prince will at last overpower the sovereign and break the bond of the social pact. .Herein lies the inward and inevitable evil which, from the birth of the body politic, tends ceaselessly to destroy it, just as old age and death, at last, destroy the body.

There are two general paths in which a government degenerates, namely, the contraction of the government, or the dissolution of the state. When the government passes from the majority to the minority, that is to say, from democracy to aristocracy and from aristocracy to kingship, the government shrinks.This is the natural tendency of the government.We may say that the government is slackened if it regresses from the minority to the majority; but this reversal is impossible. A government, in fact, never changes form, except when the exhaustion of its powers has made it too enfeebled to remain the same.But if the government slackens itself in the process of expansion, it loses all its power, and makes itself more difficult to survive.Therefore, it must be supplemented and contracted in accordance with the degree of consumption of government power, otherwise, the country maintained by this power will be destroyed.

The state of disintegration can arise in two ways. The first is that the monarch no longer governs the country according to the law and usurps sovereign power. Then a great change takes place; now it is not the government that shrinks, but the state.That is to say, when the great state disintegrates, another state is formed within the great state, consisting only of members of the government. For the rest of the people, this state can only be their master, their master. tyrant. Thus, from the moment the government usurps the sovereignty, the social compact is broken; and every common citizen is of course restored to his natural liberty, when his obedience is compelled, not obliged. .

The same happens when the members of the government separately usurp a power which they can only exercise collectively; this is likewise illegal, and produces still greater confusion.At this time, it may be said that there are as many princes as there are magistrates; at the same time, the state is no less divided than the government, which either perishes or changes form. When the state is dissolved, the abuse of government—whatever it may be—is commonly called anarchy.By contrast, democracy degenerates into a mob, and aristocracy degenerates into an oligarchy.I should add that kingship degenerates into tyranny; but this last term is vague and requires explanation.

In the popular sense, a tyrant is a king who rules by violence with no respect for justice or law.But in a strict sense, a tyrant is one who usurps the kingship but has no right to it.This is what the Greek word tyrant meant; and the Greeks called tyrants every prince whose authority was illegitimate, be they good or bad.Tyrant and usurper are two perfectly synonymous terms. In order to give different names to different things, I shall call the usurper of kingship a tyrant, and the usurper of sovereign power a despot.A tyrant is a person who violates the law by intervening in the regime and governs according to the law; a despot is a person who puts himself above the law itself.Thus a tyrant may not be a tyrant, but a tyrant will always be a tyrant.

Chapter Eleven: On the Death of the Body Politics Such is the natural and inevitable tendency of the best constituted governments.If Sparta and Rome perish, what country can hope to last forever?If we wish to establish a lasting institution, let us never dream of making it eternal.In order to be successful, do not try the impossible, nor pretend to give to the work of man a solidity which human things do not allow. The body politic, like the human body, is dying from its birth, and contains within itself the cause of its own extinction.But both can have an organization which is more or less vigorous, and adapted for self-preservation for a longer or shorter time.The organization of the human body is the work of nature; the organization of the state is the work of man.It does not depend on man to prolong his own life; but it depends on man to give the state the best possible organization, so that its life may be prolonged as much as possible.The best constituted state also perishes, but later than others, if accidental accidents do not bring it to its infancy.

The principle of political life lies in the authority of the sovereign.The legislative power is the heart of the country, and the executive power is the brain of the country, and the brain directs the various parts to move.The brain can be paralyzed and the person is still alive.A man can live insensibly; but as soon as the heart stops its work, any animal dies at once.The existence of the state depends not on the laws, but on the legislative power.Although the past laws cannot restrain the present, we can regard silence as tacit consent, and the failure to abolish the laws that the sovereign could have repealed as the sovereign continues to affirm the validity of the laws.All the sovereign's intentions, once declared, remain his intentions so long as he does not revoke them.

Why do people respect ancient laws so much?That's why.One would like to believe that nothing but the superiority of the ancient will has preserved those laws for so long; and that the Sovereign would have abolished them a thousand times, had he not always and continually recognized their usefulness.This is why, far from weakening the laws, in all well-constituted nations, they continually acquire new strength; ancient precedent makes them more and more respectable.Conversely, wherever the laws grow weaker the older they are, it proves that there is no legislative power, and that the state is no longer alive.

Chapter 12 How to Maintain Sovereign Authority The sovereign has no other power than the legislative power, so he can only act by the law; and the law is only the formal expression of the general will, so the sovereign can only act when the people are assembled.Some people will say: what a delusion it is to gather the people together!Today, this is a delusion; but two thousand years ago, this was not a delusion.So, has human nature changed? The limits of possibility in spiritual matters are not so narrow as we think.It is our weaknesses, our sins, our prejudices that bind them.No vile soul trusts a great man; and the base slave laughs at the word liberty with a sneer. Let us examine what may be done in light of what has been done.I do not speak of the republic of ancient Greece; but the Roman republic seems to me a great state, and Rome a great city.The last census shows that Rome had 400,000 armed citizens, while the final figure for the whole empire puts it at over 4 million citizens, not counting subjects, Gentiles, women, children, and slaves. We can easily imagine how difficult it must be for the large number of people in and around the capital to gather regularly!Yet the people of Rome seldom went for weeks without assembly, and even assembled many times.The Roman people exercised not only the rights of the sovereign, but also the rights of a part of the government.They dealt with certain affairs, they judged certain cases, and the whole Roman people were almost often in public assembly both magistrate and citizen at the same time. If we go back to the early history of the peoples, we find that most of the ancient governments, even monarchical ones like the Macedonians and the Franks, had similar meetings.In any case, this irrefutable fact itself answers all difficult questions.I think it's a good way to infer the possibility based on the existing ones. Chapter 13 How to Maintain Sovereign Authority (continued) Once a body of laws is ratified by an assembled people, it fixes the constitution of the country; but this is not enough.They have instituted a permanent government, or provided once and for all the means of choosing the magistrate; and this is not enough.They must have, besides special assemblies which contingencies may require, fixed and fixed, which can never be canceled or postponed, so that at the appointed date the people may lawfully meet by law without any other Formal convening procedures. But apart from such purely regular statutory assemblies, all other assemblies of the people—that is, those not called in a legal form by the magistrate charged with this responsibility—must be considered illegal. and all that it decides should be considered void; for the order calling the assembly should itself be according to the law. As for the number of legal assemblies, it depends on various considerations, and we cannot make exact regulations on this point.We can only say generally, that the more powerful the government, the more often should the Sovereign manifest himself. Duan Jane People will say to me that this may be fine for a country with only one city, but what if the country consists of many cities?Are we separating sovereign authority?Or should it be concentrated in one city, and all the others subordinate to it? I replied: We should use neither the former nor the latter.First, there is but one sovereign authority; we cannot divide it without destroying it.Next, a city, like a state, cannot be legally subject to another city; for the essence of a body politic consists in the agreement of subjection and liberty, and the terms subject and sovereign are synonymous. These two ideas are combined in the name of citizen. I would also reply that it is always a bad thing to unite many cities into one single city; and that no one can pretend to avoid natural inconveniences when such a union is contemplated.Abuse of power by great powers must never be used as an excuse against those who advocate only small states.But how can a small country have enough strength to resist a big country?It would be as the cities of Greece in old days resisted the king, and as Holland and Switzerland have lately resisted the kings of Austria. But if one cannot reduce the state to proper boundaries, there is another way: to have no capital at all, but to have the government in each city in turn, and in each city The national conference was called one by one. Let the population be distributed equally over the territory, the same rights everywhere, abundance and life everywhere; only thus can the state be as powerful as possible, and at the same time as best governed as possible. good country.Remember: the walls of the city are made only of the ruins of country houses.Whenever I see a palace being built in the capital, I seem to see that this is reducing the entire country to ruins. Chapter 14 How to Maintain Sovereign Authority (continued) The moment the people are lawfully assembled into a sovereign body, all the powers of government cease; whereupon the executive power ceases, and the insignificant citizenship is as sacred as that of the highest magistrate. , because there can be no representation where the represented person is already present.The riots that arose in the Roman assemblies were largely due to ignorance or neglect of this rule.The consul was then no more than the president of the people, the tribune a mere speaker, and the senate had no place at all. During this interruption, it is always a terrible thing for the prince to admit, or should admit, that there is a real superior; and this assembly of the people, since it is a protection for the political community and a restraint on government, and thus a fear of chiefs in all ages.So they always try to resist the assembly of citizens with all kinds of scheming, all kinds of opposition, all kinds of difficulties and all kinds of promises.If citizens are greedy, cowardly, timid, and prefer ease to liberty, they cannot long resist this repeated effort of the government.The power of resistance is constantly growing in this way, and the sovereign authority will eventually disappear, so most city-states will be overthrown and destroyed prematurely. But between the sovereign authority and the arbitrary government, there sometimes arises a middle power; and this must be mentioned below. Chapter XV Of Members or Representatives As soon as public service ceases to be the chief business of the citizen, and the citizen prefers to pay for it out of his own pocket rather than serve it himself, the state is on the brink of ruin.Need to go out to fight?They can pay for soldiers and stay at home.Need to go to parliament?They can elect MPs and stay at home.Because of laziness and money, they finally have soldiers who can enslave their country and representatives who can sell their country. It is because of the hustle and bustle of commerce and craft, because of mercenary, because of weakness and love of enjoyment, that personal service is transformed into money.People take part of their income in order to increase their income more comfortably.Pay, and soon you will have the chains.The word money is a word for slave; it is unknown in the city-state.In a truly free country, everything is done by the citizens themselves, and nothing costs money.Far from paying to absolve themselves of their obligations, they pay to fulfill their obligations themselves.I am far too far from the usual ideas; I believe that servitude is less contrary to liberty than taxation. The better the constitution of the state, the more public matters will prevail over private matters in the minds of the citizens.Private matters would even be greatly diminished, since the total public happiness constitutes such a large part of the individual happiness that there is little left for the individual to bother to seek.In a well-governed city, everyone will run to the assembly; but under a bad government, no one will take a step there, because no one is interested in what happens there, Because it is expected that the general will will not prevail there, and in the end it is because of housework that all the people are attracted to. Good laws lead to better laws, and bad laws lead to worse laws.As long as someone talks about national affairs and says: What does this have to do with me?We can bet that the country is doomed. The cooling of patriotism, the activity of private interests, the enormity of states, conquests, the abuse of government power, all these may lead us to imagine the origin of the members or representatives of the people in the national parliaments.They are what is openly called the third estate in some countries.This places the special interests of the two classes first and second; while the public interest occupies only the third place. Just as sovereignty is inalienable, so sovereignty cannot be represented; sovereignty is essentially constituted by the general will, and the will can never be represented; it can only be the same will, or another will, and there must be nothing in between.So the people's deputies are not and cannot be the people's representatives, they are only the people's clerks; they cannot make any definite decisions.Every law that has not been sanctioned by the people itself is void; it is no law at all.The English people think they are free; they are dead wrong.They are free only during the election of members of Congress; once the members are elected, they are slaves, they are nothing. The way in which they used their liberty during their brief moments of freedom was indeed worth their loss. The idea of ​​representation is a modern product; it arose from feudal government, from that system of government, both criminal and absurd, which humiliated the human race and deprived the name of man of dignity.In ancient republics, and even in ancient monarchies, the people were never represented, and they did not know such a term.In Rome the tribunes were so sacred that it was never even conceived that they usurped the functions of the people, and that they never attempted a plebiscite on their position as chiefs in such a large crowd;— — This is very unique.However, from what happened in the time of Gracchus, when a part of the citizens actually voted from the rooftops, we can judge what trouble a large number of people sometimes caused. In a place where rights and liberties are everything, inconvenience is nothing. These wise people will arrange everything with due measures, and they will make their officers do what the tribunes dare not do; for they need not be afraid that their officers will try to represent them. However, in order to show how the tribunes sometimes represent the people, we need only imagine how the government represents the sovereign.Since the law is nothing more than a declaration of the general will, it is obvious that the people cannot be represented in the legislative power; but in the administrative power, the people can and should be represented, because the administrative power is nothing more than the exercise of force. Legally only.From this it can be seen that, on closer examination, one finds that very few peoples have laws.At any rate we may be sure that the tribune, possessing no part of the executive power, could never represent the Roman people in his official capacity, unless he had usurped the rights of the senate. With the Greeks, whatever the people needed to do, the people themselves did; they were constantly assembling in the square.They live in a temperate climate, they desire nothing; the slaves do their labor; their great thing is their own freedom.But how can the same rights be preserved now, when the same facilities are no longer available?Your harsher climate makes you more needy, public halls are immobile for six months of the year, your slurs cannot be heard in the open air; you care Your own income is far greater than your own freedom, and your fear of slavery is far less than your fear of poverty.what!Is liberty maintained only by slavery?Maybe. It's two extremes that meet.Everything that does not exist in nature has its inconveniences, and civilized society more than anything else.There are indeed unfortunate circumstances in which men cannot preserve their liberty without that of others at the expense of that of others, and citizens cannot be perfectly free without slaves being slaves to the extreme.Such was the case with Sparta.As for you modern people, you have no slaves at all, yet you are slaves yourself; you pay for theirs with your own.You have boasted greatly of this preference of yours, and yet I find it more cowardice than humanity. By all this, I do not mean by any means that there must be slaves, still less that slavery is lawful, for I have proved just the opposite.Here I am just explaining why the modern people who think they are free should have representatives and why the ancient people have no representatives.In any case, as soon as a people raises its representatives, they are no longer free; they cease to exist.After examining all things carefully, I think that unless the city-state is very small, it will be impossible for the Sovereign to continue to exercise his own rights among us hereafter. But if the city-state is very small, will it not be conquered?Will not!Now I will show how one can combine the external power of a large nation with the simple institutions and good order of a small country. Chapter XVI. Of the Creation of Governments It is by no means a contract that once the legislative power has been established, the executive power must likewise be established; since the executive power can only be exercised by individual acts, and does not belong to the essence of the legislative power, it is naturally related to the legislative power. Detached.The Sovereign, considered as Sovereign, if it were possible to have executive power; then right and fact would be confused, so that it would no longer be clear what is law and what is not.This degenerate body polity would then quickly become the spoils of violence, although the body polity was created against violence. Since all citizens are equal according to the social contract, all can prescribe what all should do, and at the same time, no one has the right to require others to do what he himself does not do.This is the right necessary to the existence and activity of the body politic; and it is precisely this right which the Sovereign, in establishing the Government, bestows on the Prince. There are many who think that the act of creating a government is a contract between the people and the chiefs they have added to themselves; The other party has an obligation to obey.But I'm sure people will admit it's a weird kind of party.Let us see whether this view holds water. In the first place, supreme authority is as inalterable as it is inalienable; to limit it is to destroy it.It is absurd and self-contradictory to say that the Sovereign adds to itself a superior; to make oneself obliged to obey a master is to restore oneself to complete freedom. Again, it is evident that this contract between the people and so-and-so is an individual act.From this it can be seen that this contract can be neither law nor an act of sovereignty, and therefore it is also illegitimate. It will also be seen that the contracting parties are relatively under only one law of nature, and that there is no guarantee of mutual agreement between them; this is in every respect contrary to the state of politics.Since he who holds the power in his hands is always the master of the execution of the contract, it is no different from the name of the contract. You, the condition is that you can give me back as much as you want." There can be only one contract in a state, and that is the contract of association; and this contract itself excludes all others.We cannot conceive of any other public contract that does not violate the original contract. Chapter XVII. Of the Creation of Governments How, then, is the act of creating a government to be understood?I will first point out that this act is a compound act, or is composed of two other acts, viz. the establishment of the law and the execution of the law. By the former act, the Sovereign dictates that there be a body of government in one form or another; and this act is evidently a law. As a result of this latter act, the people appoint chiefs to be in charge of the established government.But this appointment is an individual act, so that it is not another law, but a mere consequence of the former, and a function of government. The difficulty consists in understanding how men can have the act of a government before there is a government; and how the people, who can only be sovereign or subjects, can under certain circumstances be princes or magistrates. It is here, too, that one of the most astonishing properties of the body politic is to be found, by virtue of which it reconciles apparently contradictory activities.For this is accomplished by the sudden transformation of sovereignty into democracy; and thus, without any visible change but only through another new relation of the whole to the whole, the citizen becomes the magistrate, and so also It is the transition from general behavior to individual behavior, from law to execution. Far from being a speculative myth, this shift in relation is exemplified in practice; it happens every day in the British Parliament.The House of Commons of the English Parliament, in certain cases, transforms itself into a committee of the whole house, in order to better discuss business; the temple which was at one moment the sovereign, now becomes a mere committee.It was therefore obliged afterwards to report to itself as the House of Commons on the plans it had made in committees of the whole House; What has been decided in the name. Such is the convenience inherent in democratic government, that it is established in fact by only one simple act of general will.Henceforth this provisional government either remained in power--if such was the form it took--or instituted a government by law in the name of the Sovereign; Follow the rules.Besides, there cannot be any other lawful way of creating government without abandoning the principles we have above established. CHAPTER XVIII. METHOD OF PREVENTING GOVERNMENT USERS From what has been said above, conclusions consistent with those of Chapter 16 can be drawn: namely, that the act of creating government is never a contract, but only a law; Officials of the people; they may be appointed or removed if the people choose.For these officials it was never a matter of contract, but of obedience; and in assuming the duties entrusted to them by the state, they were merely performing their civic duties without in any way arguing the right to conditions. Therefore, when the people create a hereditary government, whether it be a monarchy hereditary by a family, or an aristocracy hereditary by a certain class of citizens, the action taken by the people is by no means any agreement—it is only the A provisional form given to the executive until the people will dictate otherwise. Such change, it is true, is always dangerous; therefore, never touch an established government, unless it has become incompatible with the public good.This consideration, however, is only a political maxim, not a prescription of right; and the state is no more obliged to entrust political authority to its leaders than it is to entrust military authority to its generals. It is also true that, in such cases, one will not take so much care to observe the forms necessary to distinguish normal, lawful conduct from insurgent agitation, and the will of the people as a whole. Distinguish from factional clamor.Here especially, where abominable circumstances are compelled to grant what, under the strictest right, one cannot refuse; People cannot say that he has usurped power.For the prince, who appears to be merely exercising his own rights, is all too apt to extend them, and, under pretext of public safety, to prohibit assemblies intended to re-establish good order; , or use the abnormal state he created to assume that those who are silenced by fear are speaking for him, and punish those who dare to speak up.Such was the case with the Council of Ten; at first they were elected for a one-year term, then extended for another year, and at last the Assembly of the People was no longer allowed to meet, in order to preserve their power forever.All governments in the world, once they have assumed public power, sooner or later usurp sovereign authority by this convenient means. The regular meetings of which I have spoken, are suitable for preventing or postponing such misfortunes, especially when such gatherings do not require formal convocation.For at this time, if the prince prevents it, he cannot but declare himself a violator of the law and an enemy of the state. Such an assembly, which can only be aimed at maintaining the social pact, should always begin with two proposals; these two proposals can never be cancelled, and must be voted on separately. The first is: "Would the sovereign wish to preserve the present form of government?" The second is: "Would the people want to keep those who are actually in charge of the administration?" What I am assuming here is what I believe to have been proven, namely, that there is no fundamental law in a state, not even a social convention, which cannot be repealed; If this covenant is broken, then we cannot doubt that the breach of this covenant is very legitimate.Grotius even thought that everyone could withdraw from the country of which he was a member, and regain his natural freedom and his own wealth when he left the country.It would be absurd to say that all the citizens assembled could not do what each of them individually could do.