Du système dans lequel on considère les lois civiles et politiques comme des conséquences d’une conv

CHAP. 6: > Of the system in which civil and political laws are considered as consequences of a primitive convention, or of the Social Contract of J.-J. Rousseau, and of the opposition that exists between this system and the analytical method.

A numerous assembly, composed of reasonable people, gathers with the intention of hearing the exposition of the principles of one of the sciences most interesting to the human race; the professor who has promised to share his enlightenment with them presents himself before them to fulfill his promise; he begins by announcing that he will set aside all facts, and will take no account of them; he then says that he will make a supposition, false in truth, but that he will consider it as true; that he will draw from this supposition a multitude of consequences as unforeseen as they are interesting; and that these consequences, systematically expounded, will form the science he has promised to teach.

Will there be, I ask, many people who, after such a preliminary, consent to hear more? If there are a few whom curiosity keeps, will there be any simple enough to imagine that they are really going to learn something? If it were a question of natural history, of physics, of chemistry, or of astronomy, there is no doubt that the supposed professor would be immediately abandoned, perhaps he would even be met with jeers. But, if it were a question of legislation or of politics, it could well be that the assembly would be seized with admiration, on hearing so magnificent a debut, especially if it were supported by a pompous style and a dogmatic tone.

Are the Principles of Political Right of J.-J. Rousseau, or his Social Contract, these principles that have been considered as the oracles of wisdom, in fact anything other than a series of deductions drawn from an evidently false supposition? In what country have men gathered, with deliberate intent, to form a people, and to regulate, by a convention, the conditions of their association? How were these men endowed with so much sagacity, so much foresight, that all the peoples who came after them have had to be governed by this contract, and that they could not add to it, nor subtract a single word from it, without ceasing to be? How did it happen that all the nations that cover the earth proceeded at the moment of their formation by a convention conceived in the same terms? By what means did Rousseau manage to know of procedures that are prior to all historical monuments? How can present and future peoples find themselves irrevocably bound by a contract that they certainly did not make, and of whose existence nothing informs them? How, finally, could a contract that is prior to any kind of law and government have been obligatory? What could have given it its force, since it itself gives force to laws and public authorities?

These questions would be well-founded, if the social contract were a fact whose existence was positively affirmed; but as it is only a false supposition, destined to serve as the basis for a system, it is clear that any question relative to the existence of this pact is without object. It can now only be a question of knowing how the author could have been led to see, in the consequences of a false supposition, principles of political right, and what has been and what may still be the influence of these so-called principles.There are few writers who have manifested, in favor of liberty, sentiments more vivid than those expressed in the writings of Rousseau; and there is perhaps none who has established maxims more apt to lead peoples to servitude or to anarchy. When this writer attacks the authors who have spoken in favor of absolute power, he deploys a force of reasoning that belongs only to him; and when he wishes to establish principles of legislation, one would think one was hearing the minister of a sultan who wishes to create free men. This opposition between his sentiments and his maxims explains the popularity he has enjoyed, and the deplorable errors into which he has led his blind admirers. Everyone could share his sentiments; few were in a position to judge his ideas.

It is known how, from the desire to make an impression, and on the advice that Diderot gave him, Rousseau was led to maintain that the sciences and arts had contributed more to corrupting than to purifying morals. Once engaged on this path, he plunged deeper and deeper into it, as much out of vanity as out of the contempt his adversaries inspired in him. He ended by believing in the truth of an opinion he had at first supported only as a play of wit and to prove his skill. In passing from one consequence to another, he was bound to arrive at the belief that with each step peoples had taken in civilization, they had sunk into vice and misery, and that, to find the time when they had had the fewest vices and the most happiness, one had to go back to an epoch when men lived isolated in the woods, like wild beasts, and had for nourishment only water and acorns. It was, in effect, to this consequence that he arrived: he claimed that the state of isolation was the natural state of man; that the formation of the family was already a first step toward corruption, and that coming together in society was an unnatural state.

These principles being admitted, it was no longer possible for him to consider the formation and growth of peoples as a natural consequence of the development of the human race; he could no longer consider the morals and laws of nations as consequences of the needs and faculties of man, or, to put it better, of his organization, since that would have been to recognize that nations, in perfecting their laws or their institutions, had not acted in a manner contrary to human nature. On the other hand, his love for independence, the inappreciable advantage of the state of nature, did not permit him to admit, with some political writers, that men had voluntarily submitted to chiefs. To explain the formation of peoples and their submission to a government, it was necessary to find a means that was neither a consequence of the nature of man, nor an application of force, nor an abnegation of liberty: it was the Social Contract; that is to say, the supposition of a convention between isolated individuals, coming together to form a people. Here is how he establishes this system.

Rousseau supposes men to have reached the point where the obstacles that are harmful to their preservation in the state of nature prove greater, by their resistance, than the forces that each individual can employ to maintain himself in that state. Then this primitive state can no longer subsist, and the human race would perish if it did not change its manner of being.

But men cannot create new forces to overcome the obstacles that are harmful to their preservation; they can only unite and direct those that exist; and as the force and liberty of each individual are the first instruments of his preservation, a difficulty presents itself: it is to know how he will commit them without harming himself, and without neglecting the care he owes himself.

Our savages, who until now had lived isolated like bears, who had had no language, who had consulted only instinct and appetite, perceive the difficulty; one of them, doubtless a geometer, poses the problem in these terms: “Find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before.”

Such was the problem to be solved. Rousseau does not tell us in what language it was expressed, nor even if it was proposed in writing; he informs us only that the Social Contract provided the solution, without even deigning to instruct us as to who was the rare genius that imagined this contract. He reports this contract in these terms, after having set aside what is not of its essence: Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and, in our corporate capacity, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole.

Doubtless, when the contract was thus proposed, there were in the assembly children and women, and as there was no positive law that distinguished the capable from the incapable, it would be good to know how the distinction was made. It would be good to know equally if the contracting parties engaged themselves not only for themselves, but also for their posterity, and if they believed themselves authorized to treat for generations to come. Finally, it would be curious to know if, when the formula each of us puts his person and all his power in common was proposed, the ladies were not frightened, and did not ask for some explanations before signing the contract.

The alienation that each made of his person and his power was without reserve; for, according to Rousseau, each member of the community gives himself to it at the moment it is formed, just as he is, himself and all his forces, of which the goods he possesses form a part. The clauses of this contract, he says, are so determined by the nature of the act, that the slightest modification would make them vain and of no effect; so that, although they have perhaps never been formally stated, they are the same everywhere, everywhere tacitly admitted and recognized, until, the social compact being violated, each one then regains his original rights and resumes his natural liberty, while losing the conventional liberty for which he renounced it.

Thus, the Social Contract is tacitly admitted everywhere its clauses are not violated, which is certainly incontestable; but the violation of one of the clauses renders it null, and each one then resumes his natural liberty. If, then, it happens that one of the associates, after having put his person and all his power in common, does not keep the engagement he has contracted; if he does not obey the supreme direction of the general will; if he takes flight when he is called to combat; if he refuses to pay his share of the tax; if, on returning from a voyage, he conceals from the customs officers a pair of buckles or a handkerchief from the Indies, he evidently violates the social contract; at that instant the State is dissolved; each one resumes his natural liberty, and has a right to all he can attain.

But, before examining the consequences of the violation of the contract, let us see the immediate results of its formation. As soon as its formula is drawn up and unanimously adopted, the associates pass from the state of nature to a perfect social order: justice is at once substituted for instinct, actions take on a morality they did not have; the voice of duty succeeds physical impulse, and right succeeds appetite; the faculties are exercised and developed; ideas are extended; sentiments are ennobled; the whole soul is uplifted; a stupid and limited animal becomes an intelligent being and a man; and if the abuses of this new condition did not often degrade him below that from which he has emerged, he would have to bless unceasingly the happy moment that snatched him from it forever.

This miraculous transformation of a multitude of stupid and limited animals, having no connection among themselves, into a united, intelligent, moral population, rigorously observant of its duties, is due solely to the secret virtue of the social contract, to the magic power of these words: each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will. These words are scarcely pronounced, when the savage's cunning becomes good faith, greed becomes disinterestedness, cruelty becomes humanity, and intemperance becomes moderation.

Before the contract, these stupid and limited animals, who obeyed only instinct and appetite, and whose actions were without morality, nevertheless had goods. Rousseau has not taught us whence they held them. Had they created them by their labors? Had they received them from their ancestors? The first means is hardly likely; for stupid, isolated, and unprotected animals must not be very laborious. The second means supposes a social order already established. The goods of each of the members of society pass to the State by the sole effect of the contract. The State, says Rousseau, in relation to its members, is master of all their goods by the social contract, which in the State serves as the basis for all rights. However, private individuals are not despoiled of the goods they possess, but they are considered as depositories of the public good.

The associates do not put only their goods in common, they also put their persons there; and, as nature gives each man an absolute power over all his members, the social compact gives the body politic an absolute power over all its own. It follows from this that, when the prince has said to a citizen, it is expedient to the State that you die, he must die; since it is only on that condition that he has lived in security until then, and that his life is no longer merely a benefit of nature, but a conditional gift of the State.

The end of the social contract is the greatest good of all; and the great good of all reduces to two principal objects, liberty and equality. But this liberty does not consist in disposing of oneself in the manner one judges suitable; in making of one's faculties and one's means the use one believes most advantageous. It consists in conforming to the law, even when the law constrains us; one can even say that the more the law places fetters on the exercise of our individual faculties, the more it approaches perfection. It is perfect if it succeeds in annihilating the natural forces of man to such a point that he is incapable of acting, except by means of forces that are foreign to him and by making use of the help of others. We are about to see what is the means by which the associates can obtain such perfect laws, and become free men.

The social contract is drawn up and adopted. At that instant, in place of the private person of each contracting party, this act of association produces a moral and collective body composed of as many members as the assembly has voices, which receives from this same act its unity, its common self, its life and its will. This public person, which takes various names according to the point of view from which it is considered, is called Sovereign when it makes laws. All its power consists in willing, and each of its wills is a law. Its power is indivisible, inalienable, untransmissible; so that no people can claim to have laws, if the moral person that the social contract has formed has not made them.

It is the social contract that forms the sovereign; it is the sovereign that forms the law, and the law can be formed only by a majority; the only act that requires unanimity is that which serves as the foundation for all the rest. Laws are therefore the expression of the general will, that is, of the majority of the members of the sovereign. When each is admitted to vote, no one can complain of the result of the deliberation; it is essentially just, since no one is unjust toward himself, that the general will is always right, and that it always tends to the public utility.

But, although no one can be unjust toward himself, and the general will, which is only that of the majority, is always right, the people may not always see what is advantageous to it. It needs a guide, a man who makes it will; in a word, a legislator. This legislator must propose, as we have seen previously, liberty and equality, and here is how he achieves it.

He must feel himself capable of changing, so to speak, human nature; of transforming each individual, who by himself is a perfect and solitary whole, into part of a greater whole from which this individual receives, in a way, his life and his being; of altering man's constitution in order to strengthen it; of substituting a partial and moral existence for the physical and independent existence that we have all received from nature. He must, in a word, take away man's own forces, to give him others that are foreign to him, and which he cannot use without the help of others. The more these natural forces are dead and annihilated, the greater and more durable are the acquired ones, and the more solid and perfect is the institution also: so that if each citizen is nothing, and can do nothing, except through the others, and if the force acquired by the whole is equal or superior to the sum of the natural forces of all the individuals, one can say that the legislation has reached the highest possible point of perfection.

A difficulty presents itself here: an act can have the character of law, and be obligatory for the members of the community, only insofar as it is the work of the sovereign, and expresses the will of the majority. The legislator must therefore find the means to have his ideas adopted by the sovereign who does not understand them, or who finds them false or baneful. Sages who wish to speak to the vulgar in their own language instead of its own would not be understood by it: now, says Rousseau, there are a thousand kinds of ideas that it is impossible to translate into the language of the people. Views that are too general and objects that are too distant are equally beyond its reach; each individual, tasting no other plan of government than that which relates to his particular interest, perceives with difficulty the advantages he must draw from the continual privations that good laws impose.

Reasoning is powerless; force cannot be employed; it is therefore a necessity that he have recourse to an authority of another order, which can compel without violence, and persuade without convincing. Here Rousseau stops, as if he feared to explain his thought clearly, by letting us know without detour what this authority is that is foreign to reasoning and to force. One cannot doubt the meaning of his words, however, when one reads immediately:

“This is what has, in all ages, forced the fathers of nations to have recourse to the intervention of heaven and to honor the gods with their own wisdom, in order that the peoples, submissive to the laws of the State as to those of nature, and recognizing the same power in the formation of man and in that of the city, might obey with liberty and bear docilely the yoke of public felicity [29].”

Let us set aside the fathers of nations, who have nothing to do here, the modest philosophers who believe they honor the divinity by attributing their sublime conceptions to it, and the citizens who consent to bear in common the yoke of public felicity; let us examine Rousseau's thought, disengaging it from the pompous apparatus under which he presents it to us. What is it about? About having laws that displease it adopted by the majority of a people. How must a man who finds reasoning insufficient, and who cannot or will not make use of force, go about reaching this goal? He must lie, and deceive his credulous listeners; he must, by illusions or miracles, persuade them that he has received a mission from heaven; he must make them believe that the orders he brings them are dictated by the divinity, and that those who refuse to submit to them will suffer more or less severe penalties in this world or in another.

So this is what the expression of the general will reduces to! To the adoption, by a misguided multitude, of the opinions of an impostor! And as such a method involves neither discussion nor reasoning; as the success of the means depends on the ignorance of the majority and the silence or compliance of the minority; as enlightened men always form the small number, and are not easily deceived, it is easy to foresee that the consequence of the adoption of the proposed laws will be the massacre or proscription of the opponents; they will be unbelievers, atheists, enemies of the gods, perhaps even organs of the infernal powers; their existence would be incompatible with the duration of the new order of things; for, if they unmasked the impostor, they would overthrow his system.Since lying and fear are, in Rousseau’s eyes, legitimate means of having a system of legislation adopted by an ignorant population, one does not see why he limits himself to a particular kind of imposture or terror; why a charlatan who would threaten a stupid people with fire from heaven should be preferable to an army chief who would threaten a less ignorant people with the fire of his artillery: one can determine the expression of the general will just as well as the other. It is even rare that the two means do not go together: the lies are for the ignorant; the violence for the reasoners. Rousseau agrees, moreover, that it is not enough to lie, but that one must also have a great soul.

When the majority has adopted the laws that take away each man’s own forces to give him others that are foreign to him, and which he cannot use without the help of others; when the individual forces of each are dead and annihilated; when each citizen is nothing and can do nothing except through the others, and when each has thus acquired the greatest possible sum of liberty, there may be individuals who wish to be something by themselves, who desire to enjoy a little action without the help of others, and who tend to resuscitate a small part of their dead and annihilated forces: this tendency must be repressed by the whole body, so that the social contract is not an empty formula. This pact, in effect, contains the tacit engagement which alone can give force to the others, that whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body: which means nothing other, says Rousseau, than that he will be forced to be free: for such is the condition which, by giving each citizen to the fatherland, guarantees him from all personal dependence, and particularly from his own.

The legislator must not only propose liberty; he must also propose equality. One must not understand by this latter word that the degrees of power and wealth are absolutely the same; but that, as for power, it be above all violence, and never be exercised except in virtue of rank and laws; and as for wealth, that no citizen be so opulent as to be able to buy another, and none so poor as to be forced to sell himself. Nor must one understand by the word equality the exclusion of privileges, even hereditary ones: the law may well enact, says Rousseau, that there will be privileges, but it cannot give them by name to anyone; the families or individuals who are to be privileged must be chosen, not by the sovereign, but by the government. One can therefore, without violating equality, establish castes as in India; give to some a more or less extensive power over others; form a class of pariahs; one can give to a part of the population the privilege of exercising, to the exclusion of others, certain professions, certain branches of industry or commerce, or even certain public functions: one can even order that children may never take up other professions than that of their father, without violating equality in any way; it will suffice that power is never exercised except in virtue of rank and laws. As for the equality of wealth, which consists in no citizen being rich enough to be able to buy another, there is no other means of establishing it than to seek out what value is placed on his opinions by the basest, most despicable, most venal individual in the State; when this value has been determined, it will be necessary to level fortunes in such a way that no one has the means to buy this wretch. This perfection is difficult to attain; Rousseau even agrees that, in practice, it is a chimera, but it is a chimera toward which the legislator must strive with all his power.

A legislator is a rare man who appears only at long intervals, and who even needs to seize, to establish his laws, the precise instant when a people is ripe for legislation. The sovereign, who needs to make laws every day, cannot therefore hope to be constantly guided by a genius who deceives him for his own good. One can, with the help of a clever organization, find the means to obtain the expression of the general will without even consulting the majority. For this, it is enough to divide the sovereign into fractions, to make several fractions of the rich and powerful citizens, to put the multitude into a single class, and then to have them vote by classes and not by heads. By this means, it will happen that one will have obtained the expression of the general will, without it even having been necessary to consult the most numerous class, the one that contains the majority of citizens. If one does consult it, it will be only to render homage to its impotent sovereignty.

One might have objected to Rousseau that his social contract could not be obligatory for those who had not given their assent to it. He foresaw this objection, and, to answer it, he says that one is supposed to consent to it, when one does not manifest a contrary opinion. But, besides the fact that a supposition of consent is not the same thing as a consent, there remains another difficulty to resolve; it is to know what is the age at which one is supposed to have consented, and what rank is held in the State by persons who are incapable of consenting, or who refuse to do so. If the social contract is not obligatory for children, for the insane, for foreigners, or for those who do not wish to submit to it, the laws, which are only a consequence of this contract, must be much less obligatory still; they owe no protection to the persons of these classes; these persons owe no obedience to the laws. A child at birth must belong to no nation; having promised nothing to a State of which he is not a member, he owes neither tax nor military service, and in turn the State owes him nothing. It may also be a question whether women, who, in no country, have ever been part of the sovereign, must be subject to laws to which they have not consented, and if they do not find themselves in the state of nature within society itself. One cannot say, with regard to them, that they are supposed to have consented to the social contract and to the laws, since they are not admitted to manifest their consent.

Having expounded the principles and the extent of the social pact, it remains to examine the consequences to which one can arrive with the help of this system.

We see first that one can only admit it by proceeding from false supposition to false supposition, and that one even reaches a point where the false suppositions stop, because one finds oneself reduced to supposing the impossible, such as the consent of individuals who can have no will. Thus, one first supposes that all peoples were formed by a single act, and that each individual put his person and his goods in common; one then supposes that as each man reaches an age of reason, he gives his assent to the alleged contract that has already been supposed; one further supposes that in forming the supposed contract, or in giving his supposed assent, one has consented to find good all the laws that the majority would adopt; one finally supposes that the minority that rejects proposed laws, in reality wills them, since the approval is found in the supposed contract.

Rousseau knows only two positions for the human race: the state of nature, and the state in which the social contract places it. According to him, any people that does not admit this contract remains in the state of nature, and any people that violates it, falls back into it by that very fact. Thus, a nation may believe itself extremely civilized, while the individuals who compose it find themselves, with regard to one another, in the same position as those stupid and limited animals, whom the magic virtue of the social contract has not yet made into men. In the state of nature, no justice exists; man knows only instinct; his actions have no morality; he has an unlimited right to everything necessary to him, even to everything that tempts him and that he can attain [30]; he owes nothing to those to whom he has promised nothing; he recognizes as belonging to others only that which is useless to him [31].

But the social contract creates justice, gives morality to human actions, becomes the principle of laws, which are themselves the source of all rights. If the social contract is not formed, men remain in the state of nature; if it is violated, they fall back into it. But what happens then? Each one, says Rousseau, returns to his original rights, and resumes his natural liberty, while losing the conventional liberty for which he renounced it [32].

The consequences of the violation of the social contract are so terrible that it is important to form a clear idea of the fact that produces them. One might be inclined to think that the government that does not fulfill its duties, or that makes itself guilty of oppression, violates the social contract. But this contract is prior to the act by which the government is instituted; the members of the government cannot therefore be among the contracting parties; it is absolutely, says Rousseau, only a commission, an employment in which, as simple officers of the sovereign, they exercise, in its name, the power of which it has made them depositories, and which it can limit, modify, and take back when it pleases. It is not, therefore, properly speaking, the attacks of governments that violate the social pact.

This pact can be violated in only two ways: if one or more individuals do not fulfill the engagements they have contracted toward the body; if the body does not fulfill the engagements it has contracted toward the individuals. The individuals violate their engagements if they can with impunity evade the execution of any law whatsoever; the body politic violates its own if it does not have the means or the power to oblige each individual to submit to the supreme direction of the general will: if it cannot prevent a member of the government, for example, from appropriating a part of the public fortune, or from oppressing a citizen.

When one of these events occurs, the social contract is therefore violated; each one returns to the state of nature, and has a right to everything he can attain. If a minister, for example, impunently puts his hand in the public treasury, then there is not a banker's clerk who cannot immediately put his hand in the till entrusted to his care. If a prince, to enlarge his domains, impunently usurps half of his neighbor's field, then the other half can immediately be seized by the first individual who comes along. If an agent of the public force impunently mistreats a citizen, then there is not a husband who cannot instantly mistreat his wife and his children, and even legitimately deprive them of all means of subsistence. If a powerful man can arbitrarily dissolve the bonds that unite him to his wife, then there are no wives who are not immediately released from the fidelity they owed their husbands. It is enough, in a word, for the social contract to suffer a violation, for every kind of order to be overthrown, for there to exist no more obligations or moral duties: each one resumes his natural liberty, and has a right to everything he can attain.

In morality and in legislation, one of the most infallible effects of false systems is to lead those who adopt them and who wish to be consistent, to give themselves over, in all security of conscience, to vice, crime, or tyranny: when one starts from a false principle, it is out of duty that one becomes an oppressor. If one arrives at some useful truth, it is because one ceases to reason well: one falls into inconsistencies, into contradictions; one becomes unfaithful to one's own system. It is impossible for it to be otherwise, since one can draw from a proposition only what it contains, and truth cannot emerge from error.

Rousseau, in his Social Contract, proposes two things: he wants to prove first that despotism or servitude can be founded only by violence and that nothing can render them legitimate; he wants to prove, second, that the social order, laws, and even moral duties, are founded only on a primitive pact. If his propositions on the social contract are just, all his reasonings against despotism and servitude are errors. If, on the contrary, his propositions against slavery are true, there is nothing true in his system of the social contract. We are about to see how the various propositions with which he wishes to establish these two systems mutually exclude each other.

Outside the social contract, man has an unlimited right to everything necessary to him, to everything that tempts him and that he can attain; he owes nothing to whom he has promised nothing; he recognizes as belonging to others only that which is useless to him: such are the maxims that Rousseau considers as self-evident truths. Let us suppose, then, that a man cultivates a field, builds a hut, and gathers his provisions there; another, who recognizes as belonging to others only that which is useless to him, wants to seize this field, this hut, these provisions; does he have the right? Yes, says Rousseau, if he can attain them. But, if the possessor is the stronger, does he not have the right to keep them? Doubtless, since he has a right to everything that tempts him and that he can attain. The right is therefore always on the side of the strongest, and as there can be no right without a corresponding obligation, it is a duty for the weaker to respect the rights of the stronger.

Thus reasons the author of the social pact, when he wishes to prove that this pact must be the foundation of laws and of all duties; but he reasons otherwise when he combats the system of slavery.

“The strongest,” he says, “is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he transforms his force into right, and obedience into duty. Hence the right of the strongest; a right seemingly taken ironically, and actually established as a principle (we have just seen an example). But will this word never be explained to us? Force is a physical power; I do not see what morality can result from its effects. To yield to force is an act of necessity, not of will; it is at most an act of prudence. In what sense can it be a duty?

“Let us suppose for a moment this alleged right. I say that nothing results from it but an inexplicable gibberish. For as soon as it is force that makes right, the effect changes with the cause; any 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, it is only a matter of managing to be the strongest. Now, what is a right that perishes when force ceases? If one must obey by force, one has no need to obey by duty, and if one is no longer forced to obey, one is no longer obliged to. One sees, then, that this word right adds nothing to force; it means nothing at all here... Let us agree, then, that force does not make right [33].”

Everything Rousseau says here can be applied with perfect justice to the universal and unlimited right enjoyed by the man who is not bound by the social contract. Supposing for a moment this alleged right, I say that nothing results from it but an inexplicable gibberish. For as soon as it is force that makes right, the effect changes with the cause; any force that succeeds the first succeeds to its right... One sees, then, that this word right adds nothing to force; it means nothing at all here... Let us agree that force does not make right.

Rousseau's principles against despotism therefore overturn his principles in favor of the unlimited right of man in the state of nature. We are about to see how his maxims on the state of nature are the justification for slavery or even the most violent despotism.A skillful and audacious man, a Cromwell or a Caesar, does not recognize the social contract, or violates it; he seizes supreme power and enslaves his fellow citizens. What, according to Rousseau, is the first consequence of this usurpation, or of this violation of the social pact? It is that each one returns to his original rights and resumes his natural liberty. The usurper returns to his own, like all the others. But what are these original rights into which each individual returns? It is an unlimited right to everything that is necessary to him, to everything that tempts him and that he can attain. For the usurper, having returned to the state of nature, to have an unlimited right over the goods of the men he has enslaved, what are the necessary conditions? There are two: the first, that these goods tempt him; the second, that he can attain them. The same conditions give him an unlimited right over the lives of the citizens and even over the honor of their wives: it is enough that he feels desires and that he has the power to satisfy them.

“If the social contract is not admitted, or if it is violated, I recognize,” says Rousseau, “as belonging to others only that which is useless to me; I owe nothing to whom I have promised nothing.” This is precisely what a despot says to his subjects, a master to his slaves; and if this language is just in the mouth of the man of nature, if it is in conformity with his unlimited right, it would be difficult to see why it would be unjust or contrary to right in the mouth of a tyrant or a master of slaves: no more contracts exist between the ones than between the others.

Rousseau’s system on the unlimited rights enjoyed by men before the formation and after the dissolution of the social pact has this convenience for tyrants, that it justifies by a first attack all the attacks that may follow. When the first magistrate of a nation has surrounded himself with sufficient force to overcome the resistance that the citizens might oppose to him, there are no more possible crimes for him; all that he can do with impunity, he can do legitimately; the first blow he strikes against the social pact gives him an unlimited right to everything.

It follows from this that this supposed pact is good for nothing: as long as no individual has the force to oppress another, it is useless; it perishes as soon as force overcomes it, and then the strongest has a right to everything.

Before the formation and after the dissolution of the social contract, man having a right to everything he can attain, it follows that his actions have no morality, that he is subject to no duty, and that no property exists. But, as this contract, even when it exists, can have force only toward those who have formed or adopted it, it is clear that it is without force with regard to foreign nations and the members of which they are composed. Thus, when individuals unite in society, the act of association does indeed have the effect of establishing property with regard to one another; but it cannot establish it relative to foreigners. The State, says Rousseau, is master, with regard to its members, of all their goods by the social contract, which in the State serves as the basis for all rights; but it is so, with regard to other powers, only by the right of the first occupant that it holds from private individuals. This right of the first occupant is not in itself a true right; it is only a result of force.

These principles—that in the state of nature, man’s actions have no morality; that each has a right to everything he can attain; that no property exists; that one owes nothing to whom one has promised nothing (principles that Rousseau needs to prove the necessity of the social pact)—evidently authorize corsairs and pirates to seize the properties that fall into their hands. They equally authorize a victorious army to appropriate not only the goods that belong to the vanquished nation, and which compose the public domain, but also those that belong to private individuals. They authorize an individual to dispose of himself or even of his children in the manner he judges suitable; since, having no duties to fulfill, and his actions having no morality, he can neither violate a duty nor give himself over to an immoral action.

But these principles, evident in Rousseau’s eyes when he paints the picture of the state of nature and seeks to demonstrate the necessity of the social pact, seem to him manifest errors when he needs to combat the sophisms with the help of which some have sought to justify slavery. “What is good and in conformity with order,” he says, “is so by the nature of things and independently of human conventions. A man cannot make himself a slave voluntarily; for to renounce one’s liberty is to renounce one’s quality as a man, the rights of humanity, even one’s duties; a man cannot give his children irrevocably and without condition; for such a gift is contrary to the ends of nature, and exceeds the rights of paternity. The right of conquest has no other foundation than the law of the strongest; even in the midst of war, a just prince indeed seizes, in an enemy country, all that belongs to the public, but he respects the person and the goods of private individuals; he respects the rights upon which his own are founded.” Thus, here are rights and duties independent of any convention, and prior to the social pact.

If the natural relations that exist between individuals, or between men and things, produce neither duties nor obligations, how would the relations that result from a convention produce them? If the sole fact that a certain individual gave birth to another imposes no duty on either of them; if the fact that a certain individual has given to a certain thing the qualities proper to satisfy his needs is not a reason proper to assure him its enjoyment, how could the fact that two or more individuals have made a convention between them produce obligations for the ones and for the others? In society, all rights rest on laws; laws rest on the social pact; but the social pact, on what does it rest? Is this system not like that of the Indians, who make the earth rest on an elephant, the elephant on a tortoise, and the tortoise on nothing?

One day people will be surprised that there were peoples who, being deprived of neither intelligence nor enlightenment, sought rules of conduct in a system so incoherent, and I will not fear to say so insane. But, when one has examined the principles they took for a guide, one will no longer be surprised to see them march from excess to excess, and establish the most violent despotism in believing they were founding liberty.

In expounding Rousseau’s system, I have not examined the consequences he draws from it relative to government. I have also neglected a multitude of errors of detail; I will be obliged to return to them when I have to speak of government, or of some particular branches of legislation.

There is another system that has some analogy with the one I have just expounded, and which is not much better founded, although its consequences are less fatal; it is that which consists in supposing that a contract exists between the citizens and the members of the government, and that the duties of the ones and the others result from this contract. It is when I have to speak of government that I will expound this system, which consists, like the preceding one, in a series of consequences drawn from a false supposition.

Writers who have rejected Rousseau’s system, because of the absurdities to which it leads, have not, however, been able to renounce the idea of a primitive convention; according to them, property exists only by convention, and the evil that results from the attacks made upon it consists entirely in the violation of the contract; peoples themselves are united in society only by convention; finally, all laws are only conventions. These various systems are but modifications of that of J.-J. Rousseau; they are vaguer, without being truer.

But if we remove from society, from property, from laws, and from governments the support of primitive conventions, on what shall we make them rest? Is the world not going to be plunged into confusion and disorder, when it no longer has the foundations upon which we have established it? Let them be reassured; our planet and many others sustain themselves well enough, without our needing to lend a hand and give them supports; societies, governments, laws, properties, and even families will sustain themselves likewise, by the force that is inherent in their nature; and if, in all that, there were ever something that could not maintain itself by a power of its own, it is because it would be good for that thing to fall.

Having set aside from the science of legislation the social contract and primitive conventions, one will perhaps ask how societies were formed. If it is a theological question whose solution is requested, each can resolve it by consulting the books that are the basis of his belief. If it is, on the contrary, a question of fact, that is, a historical question, it is insoluble; history furnishes no light in this regard. Wherever men have been encountered, they have been seen united in groups and in families; but no one has ever observed the manner in which these groups were formed.

There is an error of language that I must point out here, because it influences ideas, and because it is sometimes committed even by persons who do not adopt Rousseau’s systems. One often says: men came together in society for such and such an object; or else, men did not come together in society for such a purpose. One seems to believe, in expressing oneself thus, either that all peoples were formed, as Rousseau says, by a positive contract, all of whose clauses are still obligatory; or else that numerous and civilized peoples can conduct themselves wisely only insofar as they never lose sight of the motives that made, several thousand years ago, a few barbarian tribes act.

Men do not come into the world to do this or that thing: they arrive there, like plants, without a goal, without a motive; they are born members of a certain nation, as they are born children of certain fathers and certain mothers, without having done anything for it. They speak one language rather than another; they are subject to certain laws or a certain form of government, not because they have judged it proper to make a choice, but because it was impossible for it to be otherwise. One is born a citizen of the United States, as one is born Greek or Turk; one has no more choice in one case than in the other. Each one thus finds himself attached to a determined place, by his birth, by his language, by his family relations, by his affections, by his religious opinions, by the profession he exercises, by the properties he possesses, and by a host of other bonds; individuals can sometimes pass from one people to another: but a civilized nation holds as strongly to the soil on which it has developed as a forest holds to the earth in which it has cast its roots.

These facts are truths so clear that they are trivial; yet, they are continually belied by language; they are so even by writers who deal with the moral sciences: let one judge, from that, the state in which these sciences still find themselves.