I warn the reader that this chapter requires careful reading, and that I am unable to make myself clear to those who refuse to be attentive1.
Every free action is produced by the concurrence2 of two causes; one moral, i.e. the will which determines the act; the other physical, i.e. the power which executes it. When I walk towards an object, it is necessary first that I should will to go there, and, in the second place, that my feet should carry me. If a paralytic3 wills to run and an active man wills not to, they will both stay where they are. The body politic4 has the same motive5 powers; here too force and will are distinguished6, will under the name of legislative7 power and force under that of executive power. Without their concurrence, nothing is, or should be, done.
We have seen that the legislative power belongs to the people, and can belong to it alone. It may, on the other hand, readily be seen, from the principles laid down above, that the executive power cannot belong to the generality as legislature or Sovereign, because it consists wholly of particular acts which fall outside the competency of the law, and consequently of the Sovereign, whose acts must always be laws.
The public force therefore needs an agent of its own to bind8 it together and set it to work under the direction of the general will, to serve as a means of communication between the State and the Sovereign, and to do for the collective person more or less what the union of soul and body does for man. Here we have what is, in the State, the basis of government, often wrongly confused with the Sovereign, whose minister it is.
What then is government? An intermediate body set up between the subjects and the Sovereign, to secure their mutual9 correspondence, charged with the execution of the laws and the maintenance of liberty, both civil and political.
The members of this body are called magistrates11 or kings, that is to say governors, and the whole body bears the name prince.[1] Thus those who hold that the act, by which a people puts itself under a prince, is not a contract, are certainly right. It is simply and solely12 a commission, an employment, in which the rulers, mere13 officials of the Sovereign, exercise in their own name the power of which it makes them depositaries. This power it can limit, modify or recover at pleasure; for the alienation14 of such a right is incompatible15 with the nature of the social body, and contrary to the end of association.
I call then government, or supreme16 administration, the legitimate17 exercise of the executive power, and prince or magistrate10 the man or the body entrusted18 with that administration.
In government reside the intermediate forces whose relations make up that of the whole to the whole, or of the Sovereign to the State. This last relation may be represented as that between the extreme terms of a continuous proportion, which has government as its mean proportional. The government gets from the Sovereign the orders it gives the people, and, for the State to be properly balanced, there must, when everything is reckoned in, be equality between the product or power of the government taken in itself, and the product or power of the citizens, who are on the one hand sovereign and on the other subject.
Furthermore, none of these three terms can be altered without the equality being instantly destroyed. If the Sovereign desires to govern, or the magistrate to give laws, or if the subjects refuse to obey, disorder19 takes the place of regularity20, force and will no longer act together, and the State is dissolved and falls into despotism or anarchy21. Lastly, as there is only one mean proportional between each relation, there is also only one good government possible for a State. But, as countless22 events may change the relations of a people, not only may different governments be good for different peoples, but also for the same people at different times.
In attempting to give some idea of the various relations that may hold between these two extreme terms, I shall take as an example the number of a people, which is the most easily expressible.
Suppose the State is composed of ten thousand citizens. The Sovereign can only be considered collectively and as a body; but each member, as being a subject, is regarded as an individual: thus the Sovereign is to the subject as ten thousand to one, i.e. each member of the State has as his share only a ten-thousandth part of the sovereign authority, although he is wholly under its control. If the people numbers a hundred thousand, the condition of the subject undergoes no change, and each equally is under the whole authority of the laws, while his vote, being reduced to one hundred thousandth part, has ten times less influence in drawing them up. The subject therefore remaining always a unit, the relation between him and the Sovereign increases with the number of the citizens. From this it follows that, the larger the State, the less the liberty.
When I say the relation increases, I mean that it grows more unequal. Thus the greater it is in the geometrical sense, the less relation there is in the ordinary sense of the word. In the former sense, the relation, considered according to quantity, is expressed by the quotient; in the latter, considered according to identity, it is reckoned by similarity.
Now, the less relation the particular wills have to the general will, that is, morals and manners to laws, the more should the repressive force be increased. The government, then, to be good, should be proportionately stronger as the people is more numerous.
On the other hand, as the growth of the State gives the depositaries of the public authority more temptations and chances of abusing their power, the greater the force with which the government ought to be endowed for keeping the people in hand, the greater too should be the force at the disposal of the Sovereign for keeping the government in hand. I am speaking, not of absolute force, but of the relative force of the different parts of the State.
It follows from this double relation that the continuous proportion between the Sovereign, the prince and the people, is by no means an arbitrary idea, but a necessary consequence of the nature of the body politic. It follows further that, one of the extreme terms, viz. the people, as subject, being fixed23 and represented by unity24, whenever the duplicate ratio increases or diminishes, the simple ratio does the same, and is changed accordingly. From this we see that there is not a single unique and absolute form of government, but as many governments differing in nature as there are States differing in size.
If, ridiculing25 this system, any one were to say that, in order to find the mean proportional and give form to the body of the government, it is only necessary, according to me, to find the square root of the number of the people, I should answer that I am here taking this number only as an instance; that the relations of which I am speaking are not measured by the number of men alone, but generally by the amount of action, which is a combination of a multitude of causes; and that, further, if, to save words, I borrow for a moment the terms of geometry, I am none the less well aware that moral quantities do not allow of geometrical accuracy.
The government is on a small scale what the body politic which includes it is on a great one. It is a moral person endowed with certain faculties26, active like the Sovereign and passive like the State, and capable of being resolved into other similar relations. This accordingly gives rise to a new proportion, within which there is yet another, according to the arrangement of the magistracies, till an indivisible middle term is reached, i.e. a single ruler or supreme magistrate, who may be represented, in the midst of this progression, as the unity between the fractional and the ordinal series.
Without encumbering27 ourselves with this multiplication28 of terms, let us rest content with regarding government as a new body within the State, distinct from the people and the Sovereign, and intermediate between them.
There is between these two bodies this essential difference, that the State exists by itself, and the government only through the Sovereign. Thus the dominant29 will of the prince is, or should be, nothing but the general will or the law; his force is only the public force concentrated in his hands, and, as soon as he tries to base any absolute and independent act on his own authority, the tie that binds30 the whole together begins to be loosened. If finally the prince should come to have a particular will more active than the will of the Sovereign, and should employ the public force in his hands in obedience31 to this particular will, there would be, so to speak, two Sovereigns, one rightful and the other actual, the social union would evaporate instantly, and the body politic would be dissolved.
However, in order that the government may have a true existence and a real life distinguishing it from the body of the State, and in order that all its members may be able to act in concert and fulfil the end for which it was set up, it must have a particular personality, a sensibility common to its members, and a force and will of its own making for its preservation32. This particular existence implies assemblies, councils, power of deliberation and decision, rights, titles, and privileges belonging exclusively to the prince and making the office of magistrate more honourable33 in proportion as it is more troublesome. The difficulties lie in the manner of so ordering this subordinate whole within the whole, that it in no way alters the general constitution by affirmation of its own, and always distinguishes the particular force it possesses, which is destined34 to aid in its preservation, from the public force, which is destined to the preservation of the State; and, in a word, is always ready to sacrifice the government to the people, and never to sacrifice the people to the government.
Furthermore, although the artificial body of the government is the work of another artificial body, and has, we may say, only a borrowed and subordinate life, this does not prevent it from being able to act with more or less vigour35 or promptitude, or from being, so to speak, in more or less robust36 health. Finally, without departing directly from the end for which it was instituted, it may deviate37 more or less from it, according to the manner of its constitution.
From all these differences arise the various relations which the government ought to bear to the body of the State, according to the accidental and particular relations by which the State itself is modified, for often the government that is best in itself will become the most pernicious, if the relations in which it stands have altered according to the defects of the body politic to which it belongs.
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1
attentive
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| adj.注意的，专心的；关心(别人)的，殷勤的 | |
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concurrence
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| n.同意；并发 | |
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paralytic
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| adj. 瘫痪的 n. 瘫痪病人 | |
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politic
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| adj.有智虑的；精明的；v.从政 | |
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motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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7
legislative
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| n.立法机构，立法权；adj.立法的，有立法权的 | |
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8
bind
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| vt.捆，包扎；装订；约束；使凝固；vi.变硬 | |
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9
mutual
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| adj.相互的，彼此的；共同的，共有的 | |
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10
magistrate
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| n.地方行政官，地方法官，治安官 | |
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11
magistrates
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| 地方法官，治安官( magistrate的名词复数 ) | |
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12
solely
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| adv.仅仅，唯一地 | |
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13
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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14
alienation
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| n.疏远；离间；异化 | |
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15
incompatible
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| adj.不相容的，不协调的，不相配的 | |
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16
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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17
legitimate
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| adj.合法的，合理的，合乎逻辑的；v.使合法 | |
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18
entrusted
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| v.委托，托付( entrust的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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19
disorder
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| n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调 | |
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20
regularity
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| n.规律性，规则性；匀称，整齐 | |
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21
anarchy
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| n.无政府状态；社会秩序混乱，无秩序 | |
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22
countless
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| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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23
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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24
unity
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| n.团结，联合，统一；和睦，协调 | |
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25
ridiculing
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| v.嘲笑，嘲弄，奚落( ridicule的现在分词 ) | |
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26
faculties
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| n.能力( faculty的名词复数 )；全体教职员；技巧；院 | |
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encumbering
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| v.妨碍，阻碍，拖累( encumber的现在分词 ) | |
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28
multiplication
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| n.增加，增多，倍增；增殖，繁殖；乘法 | |
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29
dominant
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| adj.支配的，统治的；占优势的；显性的；n.主因，要素，主要的人(或物)；显性基因 | |
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30
binds
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| v.约束( bind的第三人称单数 )；装订；捆绑；（用长布条）缠绕 | |
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31
obedience
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| n.服从，顺从 | |
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32
preservation
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| n.保护，维护，保存，保留，保持 | |
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33
honourable
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| adj.可敬的；荣誉的，光荣的 | |
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34
destined
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| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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35
vigour
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| （=vigor）n.智力，体力，精力 | |
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36
robust
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| adj.强壮的，强健的，粗野的，需要体力的，浓的 | |
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37
deviate
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| v.(from)背离，偏离 | |
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38
serene
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| adj. 安详的，宁静的，平静的 | |
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