Government Versus Sovereign

I call public economy as government.

• This has only the right of execution, and is binding only on individuals.

I call the supreme authority as Sovereignty.

• This has the right of legislation, and in certain cases binds the body of the nation itself

The body politic, taken individually, may be considered as an organised, living body, resembling that of man.

• The sovereign power is the head.
• The laws and customs are the brain
  • This is:
    • seat of the understanding
    • the source of the nerves, will and senses
• The Judges and Magistrates are the organs
• Commerce, industry, and agriculture are the mouth and stomach which prepare the common subsistence
• The public income is the blood
• The prudent economy is the heart which distributes through the whole body nutriment and life
• The citizens are the body and the members, which make the machine live, move and work

No part of this machine can be damaged without the painful impression being at once conveyed to the brain, if the animal is in a state of health.

The life of both bodies is the self common to the whole, the reciprocal sensibility and internal correspondence of all the parts.

Where this communication ceases, where the formal unity disappears, and the contiguous parts belong to one another only by juxtaposition, the man is dead, or the State is dissolved.

The body politic, therefore, is also a moral that has a will.

This general will:

• tends always to the preservation and welfare of the whole and of every part.
• is the source of the laws

This rule of justice might be defective with regard to foreigners.

This is because the will of the State is general relative to its own members.

• But it is not general relative to other States and their members.

This will is an individual will for foreign States.

• This particular and individual will has its rule of justice in the law of nature.

This, however, enters equally into the principle here laid down; for in such a case,

This principle can extend into the great city of the world as the body politic.

• Its general will is always the law of nature.
• The different States and peoples are its individual members.

Every political society is composed of other smaller societies of different kinds.

• Each of which has its interests and its rules of conduct: but those societies which everybody perceives, because they have an external and authorised form, are not the only ones that actually exist in the State: all individuals who are united by a common interest compose as many others, either transitory or permanent, whose influence is none the less real because it is less apparent, and the proper observation of whose various relations is the true knowledge of public morals and manners.

The influence of all these tacit or formal associations causes, by the influence of their will, as many different modifications of the public will.

The will of these particular societies has always 2 relations:

1. A general will for the members of the association
2. A particular will for the great society

Society is often correct with regard to the general will, but wrong with the particular will.

An individual may be a devout priest, a brave soldier, or a zealous senator, and yet a bad citizen.

A particular resolution may be advantageous to the smaller community, but pernicious to the greater.

Particular societies being always subordinate to the general society in preference to others, the duty of a citizen takes precedence of that of a senator, and a man’s duty of that of a citizen:

But unhappily personal interest is always found in inverse ratio to duty, and increases in proportion as the association grows narrower, and the engagement less sacred; which irrefragably proves that the most general will is always the must just also, and that the voice of the people is in fact the voice of God.

It does not follow that the public decisions are always equitable; they may possibly, for reasons which I have given, not be so when they have to do with foreigners.

Thus it is not impossible that a Republic, though in itself well governed, should enter upon an unjust war. Nor is it less possible for the Council of a Democracy to pass unjust decrees, and condemn the innocent; but this never happens unless the people is seduced by private interests, which the credit or eloquence of some clever persons substitutes for those of the State; in which case the general will will be one thing, and the result of the public deliberation another.

This is not contradicted by the case of the Athenian Democracy; for Athens was in fact not a Democracy, but a very tyrannical Aristocracy, governed by philosophers and orators. Carefully determine what happens in every public deliberation, and it will be seen that the general will is always for the common good; but very often there is a secret division, a tacit confederacy, which, for particular ends, causes the natural disposition of the assembly to be set at nought. In such a case the body of society is really divided into other bodies, the members of which acquire a general will, which is good and just with respect to these new bodies, but unjust and bad with regard to the whole, from which each is thus dismembered.

These principles help explain those apparent contradictions, which are noticed in the conduct of many persons who are scrupulously honest in some respects, and cheats and scoundrels in others, who trample under foot the most sacred duties, and yet are faithful to the death to engagements that are often illegitimate.

Thus the most depraved of men always pay some sort of homage to public faith.

Even robbers, who are the enemies of virtue in the great society, pay some respect to the shadow of it in their secret caves.

In establishing the general will as the first principle of public economy, and the fundamental rule of government, I have not thought it necessary to inquire seriously whether the Magistrates belong to the people, or the people to the Magistrates; or whether in public affairs the good of the State should be taken into account, or only that of its rulers.

That question indeed has long been decided one way in theory, and another in practice; and in general it would be ridiculous to expect that those who are in fact masters will prefer any other interest to their own.

We can classify public economy as either:

1. Popular

Here the people and the rulers have united interest and will. The rules of this are found only in the writings of philosophers who proclaim the rights of humanity.

2. Tyrannical

Here, the people have different interests, and, consequently, opposing wills. The rules of this is in the archives of history, and in the satires of Macchiavelli.