{121} Discourse on Political
Economy

{122} Rousseau’s essay “Political Economy” was first published in the fifth volume of the Encyclopédie, which appeared in November 1755. It acquired the title by which it is generally known, Discourse on Political Economy, when it was reprinted as a pamphlet in Geneva in 1758. Rousseau himself adopted the new title in authorized editions of his works. When he composed the essay, Rousseau was writing for his still close friend Denis Diderot; the two only began to disagree in 1757. The general view is that the text was written after Rousseau’s return to Paris from Geneva in October 1754. If it fails to repeat some of the radical arguments of the second Discourse, for example in its account of the origins of property, this is presumably because Rousseau thought an encyclopedia article should be based on generally accepted assumptions. Accounts of Rousseau’s political theory often fail to take account of the terms in which Rousseau presents amour propre and the general will in this essay, which is crucial for an understanding of the development of his political theory.

D.W.

{123} DISCOURSE ON POLITICAL ECONOMY¹

ECONOMY or OECONOMY (Morals and Politics).² This word is derived from , house, and , law, and originally signified merely the wise and legitimate government of the household for the common good of the entire family. The meaning of this term was later extended to the government of the large family, that is, the state. To distinguish these two usages, in the latter case it is called general or political economy, and in the former case it is called domestic or private economy. Only the first of these is the subject of this article. Regarding domestic economy, see FATHER OF THE FAMILY.

Even if there were as much similarity between the state and the family as many authors would have us believe, it would not follow as a consequence that the rules of conduct proper to one of these societies would be suitable to the other. They differ too much in size to be capable of being administered in the same fashion. Moreover, there will always be an extreme difference between domestic government, where the father can see everything for himself, and civil government, where the leader sees hardly anything unless through someone else’s eyes. For things to become equal in this regard, the talents, force, and all the faculties of the father would have to increase in proportion to the size of his family, and the soul of a powerful monarch would have to be, in comparison with that of an ordinary man, what the size of his empire is to that of the private individual’s patrimony.

But how could the government of the state be similar to that of the family, whose basis is so different? With the father being physically stronger than his children, paternal power is reasonably said to be established by nature for as long as his help is needed by them. In the large family, all of whose members are naturally equal, political authority, purely arbitrary as far as its establishment is conceived, can be founded only upon conventions, and the magistrate can command others only by virtue of the laws. The duties of the father are dictated to him by natural feelings and in a manner that seldom allows him to be disobedient. Leaders have no such similar rule and are not really bound to the people except in regard to what they have promised to do for them, promises that the people can rightfully demand they carry out. {124} Another even more important difference is that, since everything children have they receive from their father, it is obvious that all property rights belong to or emanate from him. It is quite the contrary in the case of the large family, where the general administration is established merely to ensure private property, which is antecedent to it. The chief purpose of the entire household’s labors is to maintain and increase the father’s patrimony so that he can someday disperse it among his children without reducing them to poverty. On the other hand, the wealth of the public treasury is merely a means—often very much misunderstood—of maintaining private individuals in peace and prosperity. In a word, the small family is destined to die off and be dissolved someday into many other families; on the other hand, the large family is made to last forever in the same condition, so that the first must grow in order to reproduce, whereas not only is it enough that the large family maintains itself, it is easily proved that any increase does it more harm than good.

For several reasons derived from the nature of things, in the family it is the father who should command. First, the authority of the father and mother ought not to be equal; on the contrary, there must be a single government, and when there are differences of opinion there must be one dominant voice that decides. Second, however slight we regard the handicaps that are peculiar to a wife, since they always occasion a period of inactivity for her, this is a sufficient reason for excluding her from this primacy. For when the balance is perfectly equal, a straw is enough to tip the scales. Moreover, a husband should oversee his wife’s conduct, for it is important to him to be assured that the children he is forced to recognize and nurture belong to no one but himself. The wife, who has nothing like this to fear, does not have the same right over her husband. Third, children ought to obey their father—initially out of necessity, later out of gratitude. After having their needs met by him for half their lives, they ought to devote the other half to seeing to his needs. Fourth, as far as domestic servants are concerned, they too owe him their services in exchange for the livelihood he provides them, unless they cancel their arrangement once it ceases to be to their advantage. I say nothing here of slavery, since it is contrary to nature and no right can authorize it.

None of this is to be found in political society. Far from the leader’s having a natural interest in the happiness of private individuals, it is not uncommon for him to seek his own happiness in the misery of others. If the magistracy is hereditary, often it is a child that is in command of men. If it is elective, a thousand inconveniences make themselves to be felt in the elections. In either case, one loses all the advantages of paternity. Were you to have but one leader, you are at the discretion of a master who has no reason to love you. Were you to have several, you must endure both their tyranny and their disagreements. In short, abuses are inevitable and their consequences devastating in every society where the public interest and the laws have no natural force and are constantly attacked by the personal interest and passions of the leader and his followers.

{125} Although the functions of the father of a family and those of a chief magistrate ought to tend toward the same goal, their paths are so different, their duty and rights so unlike, that one cannot confound them without forming false ideas about the fundamental laws of society and without falling into errors that are fatal to the human race. In effect, although nature’s voice is the best advice a good father could listen to in the fulfillment of his duty, for the magistrate it is merely a false guide that works constantly to divert him from his duties and that sooner or later leads to his downfall or to that of the state, unless he is restrained by the most sublime virtue. The only precaution necessary to the father of a family is that he protect himself from depravity and prevent his natural inclinations from becoming corrupt, whereas it is these very inclinations that corrupt the magistrate. To act properly, the former need only consult his heart; the latter becomes a traitor as soon as he listens to his. Even his own reason ought to be suspect to him, and the only rule he should follow is the public reason, which is the law. Thus, nature has made a multitude of good fathers of families, but it is doubtful that, since the beginning of the world, human wisdom has ever produced ten men capable of governing their peers.

It follows from all I have just put forward that one has good reason to distinguish public from private economy and that, since the state has nothing in common with the family except the obligation their respective leaders bear to render each of them happy, the same rules of conduct could not be suitable to both. I thought these few lines would suffice to overturn the odious system that Sir Filmer attempted to establish in a work titled Patriarcha, to which two famous men have already done too much honor by writing books to refute it.³ Besides, this error is very old, since Aristotle himself saw fit to combat it with arguments that can be found in Book One of his Politics.

I ask my readers also to distinguish carefully between the public economy about which I will be speaking and that I call government, and the supreme authority that I call sovereignty. This distinction consists in the one having the right of legislation and, in certain cases, in placing an obligation on the very body of the nation, while the other has only executive power and can place an obligation only upon private individuals. See POLITICS and SOVEREIGNTY.

Permit me to use for a moment a common comparison, inaccurate in many respects, but useful for making myself better understood.

The body politic, taken individually, can be considered to be like a body that is organized, living, and similar to that of a man. The sovereign power represents the head; the laws and customs are the brain, source of the nerves, and seat of the understanding, the will, and the senses, of which the judges {126} and magistrates are the organs; the commerce, industry, and agriculture are the mouth and stomach that prepare the common subsistence; the public finances are the blood that is discharged by a wise economy, performing the functions of the heart in order to distribute nourishment and life throughout the body; the citizens are the body and limbs that make the machine move, live, and work and that cannot be harmed in any part without a painful impression immediately being transmitted to the brain, if the animal is in a state of good health.

The life of both [the human body and the state] is the self common to the whole, the reciprocal sensibility, and the internal coordination of all the parts. What if this communication were to cease, if the formal unity were to disappear, and if contiguous parts were to be related to one another solely by their juxtaposition? The man is dead or the state is dissolved.

The body politic, therefore, is also a moral being that possesses a will; and this general will, which always tends toward the conservation and well-being of the whole and of each part and which is the source of the laws, is for all the members of the state, in their relations both to one another and to the state, the rule of what is just and what is unjust. This, by the way, is a truth that shows how absurd many writers have been for regarding as theft the cunning prescribed to the children of Sparta for obtaining their frugal meal, as if anything prescribed by law could fail to be lawful.⁴ See the word RIGHT for the source of this great and luminous principle, of which this article is an elucidation.⁵

It is important to observe that this rule of justice, which is entirely reliable when dealing with citizens, can be defective with regard to foreigners; and the reason for this is obvious. For the will of the state, however general it may be in relation to its members, is no longer so in relation to other states and to their members, but becomes for them a private and individual will that has its rule of justice in the law of nature, which brings us right back to the principle we have established. For then the great city of the world becomes the political body whose law of nature is always the general will and whose states and diverse peoples are merely private individuals.⁶

From these same distinctions, applied to each political society and to its members, are derived the most universal and most secure rules on whose basis one could judge a government to be good or bad, and in general of the morality of all human actions.

{127} Every political society is composed of other smaller societies, of differing natures, each of which has its interests and maxims. But these societies, which everyone perceives (since they have an external and authorized form), are not the only ones really existing in the state. All the private individuals who are united by a common interest make up as many others, permanent or transitory, whose force is no less real for being less apparent, and the proper observation of whose various relationships is the true knowledge of mores. It is all these tacit or formal associations that modify in so many ways the appearances of the public will by the influence of their will. The will of these particular societies always has two relations: for the members of the association it is a general will; for the large society it is a particular will, which is quite often found to be upright in the first respect and vice-ridden in the second. Someone could be a devout priest or a brave soldier or a zealous man of action but a bad citizen. A deliberation can be advantageous to the small community and quite pernicious to the large community. It is true that, since particular societies are always subordinated to those that contain them, one should obey the latter rather than the former; the duties of the citizen take precedence over those of the senator, and those of the man over those of the citizen. But unfortunately, private interest is always found in inverse proportion to duty, and it increases to the extent that the association becomes narrower and the commitment less sacred. This is irrefutable proof that the most general will is also always the most just and that the voice of the populace is, in effect, the voice of God.⁷

It does not thence follow that public deliberations are always equitable; they could fail to be so when it is a question of matters involving foreigners. I have stated the reason for this. Thus, it is not impossible for a well-governed republic to wage an unjust war. Nor is it any less impossible for the council of a democracy to pass bad decrees and to condemn the innocent. But this will never happen unless the populace is seduced by private interests that certain clever men have managed to substitute for those of the state by means of personal trust and eloquence. Then the public resolution will be one thing and the general will another. So please do not offer me the democracy of Athens as a counterinstance, because Athens was not really a democracy but a highly tyrannical aristocracy, governed by learned men and orators.⁸ Examine carefully what goes on in any deliberation and you will see that the general will is always for the common good; however, quite often there is a secret schism, a tacit confederation, which causes the natural disposition of the assembly to be lost sight of for the sake of private purposes. Then the social body really is divided into other bodies whose members take on a general will that is good {128} and just as regards these new bodies, and bad as regards the whole from which each of them has cut itself off.

We see how easy it is to explain by means of these principles the apparent contradictions one notices in the conduct of many men who are filled with scruple and honor in some respects, while deceitful and unprincipled in others. They trample underfoot the most sacred duties and are faithful to the death to commitments that are often illegitimate. Thus, the most corrupt of men always pay some sort of homage to the public faith. Thus (as is noted in the article titled RIGHT) even bandits, who are the enemies of virtue in the large society, worship something like virtue in their lairs.

In establishing the general will as the first principle of public economy and as the fundamental rule of government, I did not believe it necessary to examine seriously whether the magistrates belong to the populace or the populace to the magistrates and whether in public affairs one should keep in mind the good of the state or that of the leaders. This question was decided long ago in one way in practice and in another in theory; and in general it would be great folly to hope that those who are in fact masters would prefer some interest other than their own. It would therefore be appropriate to divide public economy once again into popular and tyrannical. The former is that of every state where there reigns a unity of interest and will between the populace and the leaders. The latter necessarily exists wherever the government and the populace have different interests and, consequently, opposing wills. The maxims of the latter are inscribed at some length in the archives of history and in the satires of Machiavelli.⁹ The maxims of the former are found only in the writings of philosophers who dare to reclaim the rights of humanity.

1. The first and most important maxim of legitimate or popular government, that is to say, of a government that has the good of the populace for its object, is therefore, as I have said, to follow the general will in all things. But to follow the general will one must know it and, above all, properly distinguish it from the private will, beginning with oneself; a distinction that is always most difficult to make and only the most sublime virtue is capable of shedding enough light on it. Since one must be free in order to will, another no less formidable difficulty is how to secure both the public liberty and the authority of the government. Examine the motives that have brought men, united by their mutual needs in the large society,¹⁰ to unite themselves more closely by means of civil societies. You will find no other motive than that of securing the goods, life, and liberty of each member through the protection of all. For how can men be forced to defend the liberty of one of their number without infringing on the liberty of others? And how can the public needs be attended to without altering the private property of those who are forced {129} to contribute to it? Whatever sophisms one uses to whitewash all this, it is certain that I am no longer free if someone can constrain my will and that I am no longer master of my estate if someone else can get his hands on it. This difficulty, which must have seemed insurmountable, was removed with the first inspiration that taught man to imitate here below the immutable decrees of the divinity. By what inconceivable art could one have found the means to place men in subjection in order to make them free? To use the goods, the manual labor, even the very life of all its members in the service of the state without forcing them and without consulting them? To bind their will by their own consent? To force them to punish themselves when they do what they did not want to do? How is it possible that they obey and no one commands, that they serve and have no master, and yet are actually more free because, under what appears to be subjection, no one loses any of his liberty except what can be harmful to the liberty of another? These wonders are the work of the law. It is to the law alone that men owe justice and liberty. It is this healthy tool of the will of all that reestablishes as a civil right the natural equality among men. This is the heavenly way that dictates to each citizen the precepts of public reason and teaches him to act in accordance with the maxims of his own judgment and not to be at odds with himself. It is also with this voice alone that leaders should speak when they command; for no sooner does a man claim, independently of the laws, to subject another to his private will than he at once leaves the civil state and, in relation to the other man, places himself in the pure state of nature, where obedience is never prescribed except out of necessity.

The leader’s most pressing concern, as well as his most indispensable duty, is therefore to keep watch over the observance of the laws of which he is the minister and upon which all his authority is based. If he must make others observe them, then a fortiori he ought to observe them himself, since he enjoys all their favor. For his example is so powerful that even if the populace were willing to allow him to free himself from the yoke of the law, he ought to avoid taking advantage of such a dangerous prerogative—a prerogative others would in turn try to usurp, and often to his disadvantage. At bottom, since all the commitments of society are reciprocal in nature, it is impossible to put oneself outside the law without renouncing its advantages, and no one owes anything to someone who claims to owe nothing to anyone. For the same reason, no exception from the law will ever be accorded for any reason whatever in a well-policed government. Even the citizens who are most deserving of recognition by the homeland should be rewarded with honors but never with privileges. For the republic is on the verge of its ruin at the very moment someone can think it is a fine thing not to obey the laws. But if the nobility or the military or some other order within the state were ever to adopt such a maxim, everything would be irretrievably lost.

The power of the laws depends far more on the wisdom of the laws than on their severity, and the public will draws its greatest weight from the reason {130} that dictated it. It is for this reason that Plato regards it as a very important precaution always to place at the beginning of an edict a well-reasoned preamble that shows its justice and usefulness.¹¹ In effect, the first of the laws is to respect the laws. Harshness of punishments is merely a vain expedient dreamed up by small minds to substitute terror for the respect they cannot obtain. It has always been remarked that the countries where punishments are the most severe are also those where they are the most frequent, so that the cruelty of punishments is indicative of nothing but the multitude of lawbreakers, and when every criminal is punished with equal severity, the guilty are forced to commit crimes to escape punishment for their faults.¹²

But although the government is not the master of the law, it is not an insignificant thing to be its guarantor and to have a thousand ways of making people love it. The talent for reigning consists of nothing else but this. When one has force at hand, there is no art to making everyone tremble and not even very much to winning over people’s hearts, for experience has long taught the populace to be deeply grateful to its leaders for all the evils they do not do to it and to worship its leaders when it is not despised by them. An imbecile can, like anyone else, punish crimes; the real statesman knows how to prevent them. He extends his venerable rule over wills even more than over actions. If he could bring it about that everyone behaved correctly, he himself would have nothing left to do, and the masterpiece of his works would be to remain at his ease. At least it is certain that the greatest talent of leaders is to disguise their power in order to render it less odious and to manage the state so peacefully that it seems to have no need of managers.

I conclude therefore that just as the legislator’s first duty is to conform the laws to the general will, the first rule of the public economy is that the administration should be in conformity with the laws. This alone will be sufficient to keep the state from being poorly governed, if the legislator has paid the attention he should to everything that is required by the locale, climate, soil, mores, and surrounding areas, and all the particular relationships between the people that he had to institute. This is not to say that there does not still remain an infinity of administrative and economic details that are left to the wisdom of the government. But it always has two infallible rules for behaving correctly in these matters. The one is the spirit of the law that should help decide cases the law could not have foreseen. The other is the general will, source and supplement of all the laws and that ought always be consulted where there is no law. How, I will be asked, does one go about knowing the general will in the situation where it is not expressed? Must the whole nation be assembled at each unforeseen event? It will be all the more mistaken to assemble it, because it is not sure its decision would be the expression of the general will; because this means is unworkable for a large populace; because {131} it is rarely necessary when the government is well intentioned. For the leaders know very well that the general will is always on the side most favorable to the public interest, that is, the most equitable, so that it is necessary simply to be just to be assured of following the general will. Often, when this is flouted too openly, it makes its presence known despite the terrifying repression by the public authority. I look as close to home as I can for examples to follow in such a case. In China,¹³ the prince has as an unwavering maxim that he should side against his officials in every dispute that rises between them and the populace. Is bread expensive in one province? The intendant of that province is thrown in prison. Is there a civil disturbance in another? The governor is dismissed and each mandarin answers with his life for all the unpleasantness that takes place in his department. This is not to say that there is no subsequent examination of the affair in a regular trial. But on the basis of long experience, they anticipate the final judgment. There is rarely any injustice to rectify as a result of this; and the emperor, convinced that public clamor never arises without cause, always discerns among the seditious cries he punishes some just grievances that he remedies.

It is no mean feat to have made peace and order reign in all parts of the republic; it is no small matter that the state is tranquil and the law is respected. But if one did nothing more, then there would be more appearance than reality in all that, and the government would have a difficult time making itself obeyed if it limited itself to obedience. If it is good to know how to use men as they are, it is better still to turn them into what one needs them to be. The most absolute authority is that which penetrates to the inner part of a man and is exerted no less on his will than on his actions. It is certain that in the long run people are what the government makes them: warriors, citizens, men when it so wishes; rabble and riffraff when it so pleases. And every prince who belittles his subjects dishonors himself by showing that he did not know how to turn them into something worthy of respect. Therefore, train men if you want to command them. If you want the laws obeyed, make them beloved, so that to get men to do what they should, they need only consider that they ought to do it. That was the great art of governments of old, in those remote times when philosophers gave laws to the peoples and merely used their authority to make them wise and happy. From this came the many sumptuary laws, the many regulations concerning mores, the many public maxims accepted or rejected with the greatest of care. Even the tyrants did not forget this important part of administration, and they took as many pains in corrupting the mores of their slaves as did the magistrates in correcting the mores of their fellow citizens. But our modern governments, which are under the impression they have done all there is to do when they have raised money, never imagine it to be either necessary or possible to go that far.

{132} 2. The second essential rule of public economy is no less important than the first. Do you want the general will to be accomplished? Make all private wills be in conformity with it. And since virtue is merely this conformity of the private to the general will, in a word, make virtue reign.

If politicians were less blinded by their ambition, they would see how impossible it is for any establishment whatever to function according to the principles on which it was instituted, if it is not directed in accordance with the law of duty. They would be aware of the fact that the greatest support for public authority lies in the hearts of the citizens, and that nothing can take the place of mores in the maintenance of the government. Not only is it only men of good character who know how to administer the laws, but it is essentially only upright men who know how to obey them. Anyone who gets the upper hand on remorse will not put off defying punishments that are less severe, less continuous forms of chastisement and that there is at least some hope of evading. And whatever precautions one takes, those who are on the lookout for impunity in order to do wrong hardly lack the means of eluding the law or escaping a penalty. Then, since all private interests are joined together against the general interest (which is no longer that of any individual), public vices have greater power to enervate the laws than the laws have to repress vices. And the corruption of the populace and the leaders at length extends to the government, however wise it may be. The worst of all abuses is to obey the laws in appearance only in order to transgress them in reality with security. Eventually the best laws become the most baneful. It would have been a hundred times better had they never existed. Then the laws would be one final resource that would be available when everything else had been tried. In such a situation it is pointless to add edicts upon edicts, regulations upon regulations. All that merely introduces additional abuses without correcting the abuses with which one began. The more you multiply laws, the more contemptible you make them. All the overseers you put in place are merely the latest crop of lawbreakers, who are destined either to join in with the veteran lawbreakers or to do their pillaging on their own. Before long the rewards of virtue become just like the rewards of highway robbery. Men of the vilest character are the ones held in the highest regard, whereas the more distinguished they are, the more they are held in contempt. Their infamy is manifest in their dignities, and they are dishonored by their honors. If they buy off the votes of leaders or the protection of women, it is so that they in their turn can sell justice, duty, and the state. And the populace, which fails to see that its own vices are the primary cause of its troubles, mutters and cries, groaning, “All my troubles come from no one but those I pay to protect me.”

At times like this, in place of the voice of duty that no longer speaks in men’s hearts, the leaders are forced to substitute the cry of terror or the lure of an apparent interest with which they deceive their dependents. At times like this, one must have recourse to all the disgusting little tricks they call {133} “state maxims” and “cabinet mysteries.” Whatever vigor there remains to the government is used by its members to bring down and to replace one another, while day-to-day business continues to be neglected or is dealt with only to the extent that personal interest demands it and in accordance with its dictates. Finally, the entire skill of these great politicians consists in so mesmerizing the eyes of those whose help they need, that each individual believes he is working for his own interest while he is working for theirs. I say “theirs,” if indeed it actually is the real interest of the leaders to annihilate the populace in order to place it in subjection and to destroy their own estate in order to secure its possession.

But when the citizens love their duty, and when those entrusted with public authority sincerely apply themselves to nurturing this love through their example and efforts, all difficulties vanish and administration takes on an easiness that enables it to dispense with that shady art whose murkiness constitutes its entire mystery. Those ambitious minds, so dangerous and so admired, all the great ministers whose glory is mingled with the people’s troubles, are not missed anymore. Public mores stand in for the genius of the leaders; and the more virtue reigns the less talents are needed. Ambition itself is better served by duty rather than by usurpation. Convinced that its leaders work exclusively for its happiness, the populace exempts them by its deference from working to strengthen their power. And history shows us in a thousand ways that the authority the populace accords to those it loves and by whom it is loved is a hundred times more absolute than all the tyranny of usurpers. This does not mean that the government should fear using its power, but that it should use it only in a legitimate manner. There are a thousand examples in history of ambitious or pusillanimous leaders who were ruined either by softness or pride, but there are no examples of someone for whom things went badly simply because he was equitable. But negligence should not be confused with moderation, nor mildness with weakness. To be just one must be severe. Putting up with wickedness when one has the right and the power to repress it is being wicked oneself.

It is not enough to say to the citizens: be good. They must be taught to be so; and example itself, which is in this respect the first lesson, is not the only means to be used. Love of country is the most effective, for as I have already said, every man is virtuous when his private will is in conformity with the general will in all things, and we willingly want what is wanted by the people we love.

It seems that the sentiment of humanity evaporates and weakens in being extended over the entire world and that we cannot be affected by the calamities in Tartary or Japan the way we are by those of a European people. Interest and commiseration must somehow be limited and restrained to be active. For since this inclination in us can be useful only to those with whom we have to live, it is a good thing that the humanity concentrated among fellow citizens takes on a new force through the habit of seeing each other and through the {134} common interest that unites them. It is certain that the greatest miracles of virtue have been produced by the love of country. In joining together the force of self-love [amour propre] and all the beauty of virtue, this sweet and lively sentiment takes on an energy that, without disfiguring it, makes it the most heroic of all the passions. This is the passion that produced so many immortal actions whose radiance dazzles our feeble eyes, and so many great men whose ancient virtues were thought to be fables once the love of country became the object of derision. We should not find this surprising. The ecstasies of tender hearts appear utterly fanciful to anyone who has not felt them. And the love of country, a hundred times more ardent and delightful than that of a mistress, likewise cannot be conceived except by being felt. But it is easy to observe, in all the hearts it inflames and in all the actions it inspires, that fiery and sublime ardor that the purest virtue is lacking when it is separated from the love of country. Let us dare to compare Socrates himself to Cato. The one was more a philosopher, the other more a citizen. Athens was already lost, and Socrates had no other country but the whole world. Cato always carried his country in the bottom of his heart. He lived only for it and could not outlive it. The virtue of Socrates is that of the wisest of men. But compared with Caesar and Pompey, Cato seems like a god among mortals. One teaches a few individuals, combats the sophists, and dies for the truth. The other defends the state, liberty, and the laws against the conquerors of the world, and finally leaves the earth when he no longer sees a country to serve. A worthy student of Socrates would be the most virtuous of his contemporaries. A worthy imitator of Cato would be the greatest. The virtue of the first would constitute his happiness; the second would seek his happiness in that of others. We ought to be taught by the one and led by the other, and that alone would decide our preference. For a people consisting of wise men has never been produced; however, it is not impossible to make a people happy.

Do we want people to be virtuous? Let us begin then by making them love their country. But how can they love it, if their country means nothing more to them than it does to foreigners and if it allots to them only what it cannot refuse to anyone? It would be worse still if they did not enjoy even civil welfare, and if their goods, their life, or their liberty were at the discretion of powerful men, without it being possible or permitted for them to dare to invoke the laws. In such circumstances, subjected to the duties of the civil state without enjoying even the rights of the state of nature and without being able to use their strength to defend themselves, they would as a result be in the worst condition in which free men can find themselves, and the word country could have only an odious or ridiculous meaning for them. There is no point to believing that one can strike or cut off an arm without pain being transmitted to the head. And it is no more believable that the general will would permit a member of the state, whoever he might be, to injure or destroy another member than that the fingers of a man in his right mind would put {135} out his eyes. Individual welfare is so closely linked to the public confederation that, were it not for the fact that one must take account of human frailty, this convention would be dissolved by right if just one citizen within the state were to perish who could have been saved, if just one citizen were wrongly held in prison, and if a single court case were to be lost because of an obvious injustice. For when these fundamental conventions are violated, it is no longer apparent what right or what interest could maintain the populace in the social union, unless it is restrained by force alone, which brings about the dissolution of the civil state.

In effect, is it not the commitment of the body of the nation to provide for the maintenance of the humblest of its members with as much care as for that of all others? And is the welfare of a citizen any less the common cause than the welfare of the entire state? If someone were to tell us that it is good that one person should perish for all, I would admire this saying were it to come from the lips of a worthy and virtuous patriot who dedicates himself willingly and out of duty to die for the welfare of his country. But if this means that the government is permitted to sacrifice an innocent person for the welfare of the multitude, I hold this maxim to be one of the most despicable that tyranny has ever invented, the most false that one might propose, the most dangerous that one might accept, and the most directly opposed to the fundamental laws of society. For far from it being the case that one individual should die for all, all have committed their goods and their lives in defense of each of them, so that individual weakness would always be protected by public force, and each member by the entire state. After conjuring up an image of the attrition of the people, one after another, press the partisans of this maxim to explain better what they mean by the body of the state, and you will see that eventually they will reduce it to a small number of men who are not the people but the officers of the people, and who, having obliged themselves by a personal oath to perish for its welfare, maintain they prove by this that it is the people’s place to die for them.

Does anyone want to find examples of the protection that the state owes its members and of the respect it owes their persons? These examples are to be found only among the world’s most illustrious and courageous nations, and it is almost exclusively among free peoples where one knows what a man is worth. It is commonly known how great was the perplexity in which the whole republic of Sparta found itself, when there arose the question of punishing a guilty citizen. In Macedonia, a human life was such an important matter that, in all his grandeur, Alexander, that powerful monarch, would not have dared to put to death in cold blood a Macedonian criminal unless the accused had appeared to defend himself before his fellow citizens and had been condemned by them. But the Romans were preeminent among all the peoples of the earth for the government’s deference toward private individuals and for its scrupulous attention to respecting the inviolable rights of all the members of the state. Nothing was as sacred as the life of the simple citizens. There needed {136} to be no less than the assembly of the entire people in order to condemn one of them. Neither the senate itself nor the consuls, in all their majesty, had the right to do this. And among the most powerful people in the world the crime and punishment of a citizen was a public affliction. It also appeared so harsh to shed blood for any crime whatever, that by the Lex Porcia the death penalty was converted to exile for all those who wished to outlive the loss of so sweet a country. Everything in Rome and in the armies betokened that love of fellow citizens for one another and that respect for the Roman name that stirred up the courage and animated the virtue of whoever had the honor to bear it. The hat of a citizen freed from slavery, the civic crown of him who had saved the life of another, these were things that were viewed with the greatest pleasure in the midst of the celebrations of their military triumphs. And it is worth noting that of the crowns with which in time of war one honors noble actions, only the civic crown and that of the victors were made of grass and leaves, all the rest being made of gold. Thus it was that Rome was virtuous and became the mistress of the world. Ambitious leaders! A shepherd governs his dogs and his flocks, and he is but the humblest of men. If it is a fine thing to command, it is when those who obey us can honor us. Therefore respect your fellow citizens and you will make yourselves respectable. Respect liberty and your power will increase daily. Never go beyond your rights, and eventually they will be limitless.

Let the homeland, therefore, show itself as the common mother of all citizens. Let the advantages they enjoy in their homeland endear it to them. Let the government leave them a large enough part of the public administration so that they can feel that they are at home. And let the laws be in their eyes nothing but the guarantors of the common liberty. These rights, fine as they all are, belong to all men. But without appearing to attack them directly, the bad will of the leaders easily reduces their effect to nothing. The law that is abused at the same time serves the powerful as an offensive weapon and as a shield against the weak, and the pretext of the public good is always the most dangerous scourge of the people. What is most necessary and perhaps most difficult in government is rigorous integrity in dispensing justice to all and especially in protecting the poor against the tyranny of the rich. The greatest evil is already done when there are poor people to defend and rich ones to keep in check. It is only at intermediate levels of wealth that the full force of the laws is exerted. Laws are equally powerless against the wealth of the rich and against the wretched state of the poor. The first eludes them; the second escapes them. The one breaks through the net and the other slips through.

Consequently, one of the most important items of business for government is to prevent extreme inequality of fortunes, not by appropriating wealth from its owners but by denying everyone the means of acquiring it, and not by building hospitals for the poor but by protecting citizens from becoming poor. Men unequally distributed over the territory and crowded into one place while other areas are underpopulated; arts of pleasure and pure skill favored {137} over useful and demanding crafts; agriculture sacrificed to commerce; the tax farmer¹⁴ made necessary by the bad administration of state funds; finally, venality pushed to such excess that esteem is measured in gold coins and the virtues themselves are sold for money—such are the most readily apparent causes of opulence and destitution, of the substitution of private interest for the public interest, of the mutual hatred of citizens, of their indifference to the common cause, of the corruption of the people, and of the enfeebling of all of governmental power. Such, as a consequence, are the ills that are difficult to treat once they make themselves felt but that a wise administration ought to prevent in order to maintain, along with good mores, respect for the laws, love of country, and the vitality of the general will.

But all these precautions will be insufficient without going further still. I end this part of the public economy where I ought to have started it. A homeland cannot subsist without liberty, nor can liberty without virtue, nor can virtue without citizens. You will have everything if you train citizens; without this you will merely have wicked slaves, beginning with the leaders of the state. But training citizens is not to be accomplished in one day, and turning them into men requires that they be taught as children. Somebody will say to me that anyone who has men to govern should not seek outside their nature a perfection of which they are incapable, that he should not desire to destroy their passions, and that the execution of such a project would be no more desirable than it is possible. I will agree more strongly with all of this because a man who had no passion would certainly be a very bad citizen. But one must agree that even though men cannot be taught to love nothing, it is not impossible for them to learn to love one object rather than another and what is truly beautiful rather than what is deformed. If, for example, they are trained early enough never to consider their own persons except in terms of being related to the body of the state, and, if I may put it like this, not to perceive their own existence except as part of the state’s existence, they will eventually come to identify themselves in some way with this larger whole, to feel themselves to be members of the country, to love it with that exquisite sentiment that every isolated man feels only for himself, to elevate their soul perpetually toward this great object, and thus to transform into a sublime virtue this dangerous disposition from which arises all our vices. Not only does philosophy demonstrate the possibility of these new instructions,¹⁵ but history furnishes us with a thousand striking examples. If they are so rare {138} among us, it is because no one is concerned about whether there are any citizens, and still less does anyone give any thought to take steps early enough to train them. It is too late to alter our natural inclinations when they have taken their course and habit has been joined with self-love [amour propre]. It is too late to draw us out of ourselves, once the human self concentrated in our hearts has acquired that disreputable activity that absorbs all virtue and constitutes the life of mean-spirited people. How could love of homeland develop in the midst of so many other passions that choke it? And what is left for fellow citizens of a heart already dividing its affections among greed, a mistress, and vanity?

It is from the first moment of life that one must learn to deserve to live; and since at birth one shares the rights of citizens, the moment of our own birth should be the beginning of the exercise of our duties. If there are laws for those of mature age, there should also be some for the very young that teach them to obey others. And just as each man’s reason is not allowed to be the sole arbiter of his duties, so all the more the education of children should not be abandoned to the lights and prejudices of their fathers, since it is of even more importance to the state than it is to their fathers.¹⁶ For, according to the natural course of things, the death of the father often deprives him of the ultimate benefits of this education, but sooner or later the country feels its effects. The state endures; the family breaks up. Now if the public authority, in taking the fathers’ place and charging itself with this important function, acquires their rights by fulfilling their duties, the fathers have that much less reason to complain, because strictly speaking, in this regard, they are merely changing a name and will have in common, under the name “citizens,” the same authority over their children they exercised separately under the name “fathers,” and will be obeyed no less well when they speak in the name of the law than they were when they spoke in the name of nature. Public education, under the rules prescribed by the government and under the authorities put in place by the sovereign, is therefore one of the fundamental maxims of popular or legitimate government. If children are raised in common and in the bosom of equality, if they are imbued with the laws of the state and the maxims of the general will, if they are instructed to respect them above all things, if they are surrounded by examples and objects that constantly speak to them of the tender mother¹⁷ who nourishes them, of the love she bears for them, of the inestimable benefits they receive from her, and in turn of the debt they owe her, undoubtedly they thus will learn to cherish one another as brothers, never to want anything but what the society wants, to substitute the actions of men and of citizens for the sterile and vain babbling of sophists, {139} and to become one day the defenders and the fathers of the country whose children they will have been for so long.

I will not discuss the authorities destined to preside over this education, which certainly is the state’s most important business. Clearly, if such marks of public confidence were lightly granted, if this sublime function were not, for those who had honorably fulfilled all the others, the reward for their labors, the honorable and sweet repose of their old age and the high point of all their honors, the entire undertaking would be useless and the education unsuccessful. For wherever the lesson is unsupported by authority, or the precept by example, instruction remains fruitless, and even virtue loses its influence in the mouth of him who does not practice it. But let illustrious warriors who are bent under the weight of their laurels preach courage; let upright judges, whose hair has turned white in the wearing of the purple¹⁸ and in service in the courts, teach justice. Both of these groups will thus train virtuous successors and will transmit from age to age to the generations that follow the experience and talents of leaders, the courage and virtue of citizens, and the aspiration¹⁹ common to all of living and dying for one’s country.

I know of but three peoples who in an earlier era practiced public education, namely, the Cretans, the Lacedaemonians, and the ancient Persians. Among all three it was the greatest success and brought about marvels among the latter two. Since the world was divided into nations too large to be governed well, this method has not been practicable. And other reasons the reader can easily see have also prevented it from being tried by any modern people. It is quite remarkable that the Romans were able to do without it. But Rome was for five hundred years a continual miracle that the world cannot hope to see again. The virtue of the Romans, engendered by the horror of tyranny and the crimes of tyrants and by an inborn love of country, made all their homes into as many schools for citizens. And the unlimited power of fathers over their children placed so much severity in private enforcement that the father, more feared than the magistrates, was the censor of mores and the avenger of laws in his domestic tribunal.

In this way an attentive and well-intentioned government, constantly vigilant to maintain or restore love of country and good mores among the people, anticipates far in advance the evils that sooner or later result from citizens’ indifference to the fate of the republic and restricts within narrow limits that personal interest that so isolates private individuals that the state is weakened by their power and has nothing to hope for from their good will. Anywhere {140} the populace loves its country, respects its laws, and lives simply, little else remains to do to make it happy. And in public administration, where fortune plays less of a role than it does in the fate of private individuals, wisdom is so close to happiness that these two objects are blended together.

3. It is not enough to have citizens and to protect them; it is also necessary to give some thought to their subsistence. And seeing to the public needs is an obvious consequence of the general will and the third essential duty of the government. This duty is not, as should be apparent, to fill the granaries of private individuals and to exempt these people from working, but rather to maintain abundance so within their reach that, to acquire it, labor is always necessary and never useless. It also extends to all the operations regarding the preservation of the public treasury and the expenditures of the public administration. Thus, after having discussed the general economy in relation to the government of persons, it remains for us to consider it in relation to the administration of goods.

This section offers no fewer difficulties to resolve or contradictions to overcome than the preceding one. Certainly the right to property is the most sacred of all the citizens’ rights and more important in certain respects than liberty itself, either because it is more intimately linked with the preservation of life or because, possessions being easier to usurp and more difficult to defend than one’s person, more respect needs to be given to what can more easily be seized, or finally because property is the true foundation of civil society and the true guarantee of the citizens’ commitments.²⁰ For if goods were not answerable for persons, nothing would be so easy as eluding one’s duties and scoffing at the laws. On the other hand, it is no less certain that the maintenance of the state and of the government demands costs and expenditures. And since anyone agreeing to the end cannot refuse the means, it follows that the members of the society should contribute their goods toward its preservation. In addition, it is difficult to protect the security of the property of private individuals in one respect without undermining it in another. And it is impossible for all the regulations bearing on inheritance, wills, and contracts not to restrict the citizens in certain respects regarding the disposition of their estate, and consequently regarding their right to property.

But besides what I have already said about the unanimity that reigns between the authority of the law and the liberty of the citizen, there is, in relation to the disposition of goods, an important point to be made that eliminates several difficulties. It is, as Pufendorf has shown, that by the nature of the right to property, it does not extend beyond the life of the property owner, and the moment a man dies his estate no longer belongs to him.²¹ Thus, {141} prescribing to him the conditions under which he can dispose of it is actually less an apparent alteration of his right than it is a real extension of it.

In general, although the institution of the laws that govern the power of private individuals in the disposition of their own estate belongs only to the sovereign, the spirit of the laws that the government must follow in carrying them out is that, from father to son and from relative to relative, the family’s goods should leave the family and be alienated as little as possible. There is good reason for this in favor of children, to whom the right to property would be quite useless, were the father to leave them nothing and who, moreover, having often contributed by their labor to the acquisition of the father’s goods, are associated in their own right with his right. But another reason, more remote and no less important, is that nothing is more baneful to mores and to the republic than continual changes of status and fortune among the citizens, changes that are the proof and the source of a thousand disorders that overturn and confuse everything, and because of which those who were raised for one thing and find themselves destined for another—neither those who rise nor those who fall—cannot acquire the maxims or the knowledge suitable to their new status, and much less fulfill its duties. I turn now to the matter of public finances.

If the populace were to govern itself and there were nothing interposed between the administration of the state and the citizens, they would only have to tax themselves when circumstances made it necessary, in proportion to the public needs and the abilities of private individuals. And since no one would ever lose sight either of the collection or the use of funds, neither fraud nor abuse could slip into the management of them. The state would never be weighed down with debts, nor would the populace be crushed by taxes; or at least the assurance of how it would be used would console the people for the burden of the tax. But things cannot happen this way; and however limited a state may be, the civil society is always too populous to be capable of being governed by all its members. Public funds must necessarily pass through the hands of the leaders, who all have, over and above the interest of the state, their own private interest, which is not the last to be heard. The populace, for its part, perceiving the leaders’ greed and ridiculous expenditures more than the public needs, grumbles about seeing itself despoiled of essentials to furnish someone else with superfluities. And when once these maneuvers have embittered it to a certain degree, the most honorable administration would utterly fail to reestablish confidence. In such circumstances, if contributions are voluntary, they produce nothing. If they are forced, they are illegitimate. And the difficulty of a just and wise economy lies in the cruel alternatives of allowing the state to perish or attacking the sacred right to property that is its underpinning.

The first thing to be done by the founder of a republic, after the establishment of the laws, is to find a sufficient fund for the maintenance of the judges and other officers and for all public expenditures. This fund is called {142} aerarium, or fisc, if it consists of money and public domain if it consists of lands. And the latter is far preferable to the former for reasons that are not hard to see. Anyone who has reflected enough on this matter could hardly be of any other opinion than that of Bodin, who views the public domain as the most upright and the most secure of all the means of providing for the needs of the state.²² It is worth noting that Romulus’ first concern in the division of lands was to set aside a third of the land for this use. I confess that it is not impossible for the proceeds of a badly administered public domain to be reduced to nothing. But it is not of the essence of the domain to be administered poorly.

Prior to any use of this fund, it ought to be assigned, or accepted by the assembly of the people or the estates of the country, which should then determine its use. After this solemnity, which renders this fund inalienable, it changes its nature, as it were, and its revenues become so sacred that diverting the least amount to the detriment of its destination is not only the most infamous of all thefts but a crime of high treason. It is a great dishonor for Rome that the integrity of the quaestor Cato was felt worthy of remark and that an emperor, on rewarding a singer’s talent with a few crowns, needed to add that the money came from his family’s property and not from the state’s. But if there are not many like Galba, where will we find Catos? And once vice is no longer a cause for dishonor, what leaders will be scrupulous enough to refrain from getting their hands on the public funds left to their discretion and not eventually fool themselves by pretending to confuse their vain and scandalous dissipations with the glory of the state and the means of extending their own authority with those of increasing the state’s power? It is above all in this delicate part of the administration that virtue is the only effective instrument and that the integrity of the official is the only restraint capable of containing his greed. Account books and all the ledgers of financial managers seem less to reveal their infidelities than to cover them up. And prudence is never as prompt at imagining new precautions as knaves are at eluding them. Therefore forget about the ledgers and papers, and place the finances in faithful hands; this is the only way to have them faithfully administered.

Once the public fund is established, the leaders of the state are rightfully its administrators, for this administration constitutes a part of the government, always an essential part, though not always equally so. Its influence increases in proportion to the decrease of the influence of the other parts of the government. One could say that a government has reached its final degree of corruption when the only source of strength it has left is money. And since every government constantly tends to grow weaker, this reason alone shows why no state can subsist if its revenues do not constantly increase.

The first experience of the force of this argument is also the first sign of the interior disorder of the state. And the wise administrator, in giving {143} thought to finding money in order to see to present need, does not neglect to seek the distant cause of this new need, just as a sailor, on seeing water flood his vessel, does not forget, while working the pumps, to take steps to find and plug the leak.

From this rule flows the most important maxim of the administration of finances, which is to work with much greater care to prevent needs than to augment revenues. However diligent one might be, help that comes only after the misfortune took place, and more slowly, always leaves the state in distress. While one gives thought to the remedy for one problem, another problem is already making itself felt, and the resources themselves produce new difficulties. Thus in the end the nation is thrown into debt, the populace is downtrodden, the government loses all its vigor and it spends a great deal of money doing not much of anything. I believe it was from this great and well-established maxim that the marvels of ancient governments flowed, which did more with their parsimony than ours do with all their resources. And it is perhaps from this that the commonest meaning of the word economy is derived, which denotes more the wise management of what one has than the means of acquiring what one does not have.

Independently of the public domain, which supplies funds to the state in proportion to the probity of those who supervise it, were one to have sufficient knowledge of the whole force of the general administration, especially when it confines itself to legitimate means, one would be astonished at the resources leaders have available for anticipating all the public needs without touching the goods of private individuals. Since they are the masters of the state’s entire commerce, nothing is easier for them than to direct it in a manner that provides for everything, often without them appearing to have been involved. The distribution of commodities, money, and merchandise in just proportions according to time and place is the true secret of the government’s finances and the source of their riches, provided those who administer them know how to be farsighted enough and on occasion to take an apparent present loss to really obtain immense profits at some time in the distant future. When one sees a government paying duties instead of receiving them for the export of grain in years of plenty and for its import in years of scarcity, one needs to have such facts right before one’s eyes to believe them true; and they would have merited being classed as fantastical fictions if they had happened long ago. Suppose that, to prevent scarcity in bad years, one were to propose the establishment of public warehouses. In many countries, would not the maintenance of so useful an establishment serve as a pretext for new taxes? In Geneva, such granaries, established and maintained by a wise administration, are a public resource in bad years and the state’s chief revenue at all times. “It nourishes and enriches”²³ is the fine and just inscription one reads on the facade of the building. To show here the economic system of a good government, I have {144} often turned my eyes toward that of this republic, delighted to find in my homeland an example of the wisdom and happiness I would like to see reign in every country.

If one examines how the needs of a state grow, one will find that this often arises in the same way as do those of private individuals—less by a true necessity than by an increase in useless desires—and that expenditures are often increased simply in order to have a pretext for increasing income. Thus, the state would sometimes gain if it gave up on being rich, and such apparent wealth is essentially more burdensome than poverty itself. It is true one can hope to hold peoples in a stricter subordination by giving them with one hand what one has taken away from them with the other, and this was the style of politics Joseph used with the Egyptians. But this vain sophism is all the more fatal to the state in that the money does not return to the same hands it left. Such maxims only serve to enrich the idle with spoils taken from useful men.

The taste for conquests is one of the most obvious and dangerous causes of this increase. This taste, often engendered by another sort of ambition than the one it seems to proclaim, is not always what it appears to be, and its true motive is not the seeming desire to expand the nation but rather the hidden desire to increase the authority of the leaders at home, with the help of the increase in the army and under the cover of the diversion created in the minds of citizens by wartime objectives.

What is at least very certain is that no one is as oppressed or as miserable as a conquering people, and even their successes serve only to increase their miseries. Even if history did not teach us this, reason would suffice to show us that the larger a state is, the heavier and more burdensome will its expenditures become. For all the provinces are required to furnish their share of the expenses of the general administration, and, in addition, each province is required to spend the same amount for its own particular administration as it would if it were independent. Add to this the fact that all fortunes are made in one place and consumed in another. This eventually upsets the equilibrium of production and consumption, impoverishing a great deal of the country to enrich a single city.

Another source of the increase in public needs is linked to the preceding one. There may come a time when the citizens, no longer considering themselves interested in the common cause, would cease to be the defenders of the homeland, and when the magistrates would prefer to command mercenaries rather than free men, if only to use the former at a suitable time and place to subjugate the latter more effectively. Such was the state of Rome at the end of the Republic and under the emperors. For all the victories of the first Romans, just like those of Alexander, had been won by brave citizens who knew how to give their blood to their country in time of need, but never sold it. Marius was the first who, in the Jugurthine War, dishonored the legions by introducing free men, vagabonds, and other mercenaries. Having become enemies of the {145} peoples whom they were assigned to make happy, the tyrants established regular standing armies, in appearance to contain foreigners and in fact to oppress the inhabitants. To raise these troops, farmers had to be taken away from their land; the lack of their services decreased the quality of the provisions, and maintaining these troops required the imposition of taxes, which in turn increased food prices. This first disorder caused the people to murmur. Repressing them required the troops to be multiplied and, consequently, the misery to be augmented. And the more despair increased, the more one was constrained to increase it again to prevent its effects. Nevertheless, these mercenaries, whose value could be determined on the basis of the price at which they sold themselves, were proud of their debasement, held in contempt the laws by which they were protected, as well as their fellow citizens whose bread they ate, and believed it a greater honor to be Caesar’s henchmen than Rome’s defenders. And sworn as they were to blind obedience, their task was to have their swords raised against their fellow citizens, ready to slaughter them all at the first signal. It would not be difficult to show that this was one of the principal causes of the ruin of the Roman Empire.

The invention of artillery and fortifications has in our times forced the sovereigns of Europe to reestablish the use of regular standing troops to guard their fortresses. Yet however legitimate the motives, there is reason to fear that the effect will be no less fatal. It will be no less necessary to depopulate the rural areas in order to raise armies and garrisons. To maintain them it will be no less necessary to oppress the peoples. And these dangerous establishments have in recent times been growing so rapidly in all of our part of the world that no one can foresee anything but the imminent depopulation of Europe and, sooner or later, the ruin of the people who inhabit it.

Be that as it may, it should be noted that such institutions necessarily subvert the true economic system, which draws the principle revenue of the state from the public domain, leaving only the troublesome expedient of subsidies and taxes, which remain for me to discuss.

It should be remembered here that the foundation of the social compact is property and its first stipulation is that each person should be maintained in the peaceful enjoyment of what belongs to him.²⁴ It is true that by the same treaty each person at least tacitly obliges himself to pay taxes to meet public needs. But since this commitment cannot undo the fundamental law and since it presumes that the taxpayers acknowledge the evidence of need, it is clear that to be legitimate, this taxation should be voluntary. I do not mean that it should be based on the wills of individual citizens, as if it were necessary to have the consent of each citizen, who should pay only as much as he pleases. This would be directly contrary to the spirit of the confederation. Rather, {146} it should be through the general will, by majority vote, and on the basis of proportional rates that leave no room for an arbitrary assessment.²⁵

This truth (that taxes can be legitimately established only by the consent of the people or its representatives) has generally been recognized by all the philosophers and jurists who have acquired any reputation in matters of political right, including even Bodin.²⁶ While some of them have established maxims that appear contrary, it is easy to see the private motives that moved them to do so. In any case, they stipulate so many conditions and restrictions that it all boils down to exactly the same thing. For whether the people can refuse it or whether the sovereign should not demand it is a matter of indifference as far as right is concerned. And if it is only a question of force, it is utterly pointless to inquire what is or is not legitimate.

The contributions levied on the people are of two kinds: real taxes (levied on things) and personal taxes (paid by the head). Both are called taxes or subsidies. When the people set the overall amount it pays, it is called a subsidy; when it grants the entire proceeds of a duty, it is a tax. In The Spirit of the Laws, we find that a head tax is more in keeping with servitude, while a real tax is more suited to liberty.²⁷ This would be incontestable, were each person’s share of a head tax equal. For nothing would be more disproportionate than such a tax. It is especially in an exacting observance of proportions that the spirit of liberty consists. But if a head tax is exactly proportioned to the means of private individuals (as the tax in France known as the capitation could be) and is thus at once both real and personal, it is the most equitable and, as a result, the one best suited to free men. At first these proportions appear quite easy to observe because, being relative to each person’s position in the world, the evidence is always public. But besides the fact that greed, influence peddling, and fraud know how to leave no evidence behind, it is rare that an account is taken of all the elements that should enter into these calculations. First, one ought to consider the relationship of quantities according to which, all things being equal, someone who has ten times more goods than someone else should pay ten times more. Second, one ought to consider the relationship of use, that is, the distinction between what is necessary and what is superfluous. Someone who has only the bare necessities of life should not pay anything at all. The tax on someone who has superfluities can, in time of need, be extended to everything over and above the necessities of life. To this he will declare that, given his rank, what would be superfluous for a man of inferior standing is a necessity for him. But that is a lie. For a man of superior standing has two legs, just like a cowherd and, like the cowherd, has only one stomach. Moreover, this alleged necessity of life is so little necessary to his standing that, if he knew how to renounce these things for some worthy cause, he could only be {147} respected more. The people would prostrate themselves before a minister who would go on foot to the council because he had sold his carriages when the state had a pressing need. Finally, the law does not demand magnificence of anyone, and propriety is never a reason to go against right.

A third relationship that is never taken into account, although it always ought to be reckoned the chief concern, is that of the utility each person derives from the social confederation that provides powerful protection for the immense possessions of the rich and hardly allows a poor wretch to enjoy the cottage he built with his own hands. Are not all the advantages of society for the powerful and the rich? Are not all the lucrative posts filled by them alone? Are not all the privileges and exemptions reserved for them alone? And is not the public authority entirely in their favor? When a man of high standing steals from his creditors or commits other acts of knavery, is he not always certain of impunity? Are not the assaults, the acts of violence he commits, even the murders and assassinations he is guilty of, are not these things hushed up and after six months not given a thought? If this same man is robbed, the entire police force is immediately put in motion, and woe to the innocent persons he suspects. Does he have to pass through a dangerous area? Security guards are mobilized to protect him. Has the axle of his carriage broken? Everyone flies to his aid. Is there a noisy disturbance outside his door? He says one word and everyone is silent. Does a crowd get in his way? He makes a gesture and everyone steps aside for him. Does a wagon driver block his route? His servants are ready to beat him up. And fifty honest pedestrians going about their business will be crushed rather than that some lazy scoundrel’s coach should be delayed. All this respect costs him not a penny; it is the right of a rich man, not the price of riches. How different a picture is to be painted of the poor man! The more humanity owes him, the more society refuses him. All doors are closed to him, even when he has a right to open them. And if sometimes he obtains justice, it is with greater difficulty than the rich man would have obtaining a pardon. If there is an unpleasant job to do or troops to be raised, he is the first to be called on. Besides his own burden, he always bears the one from which his more wealthy neighbor has the influence to get himself exempted. At the least accident that happens to him, everyone avoids him. If his humble cart tips over, far from being helped by anyone, I count him lucky if he avoids the insults of the smart-aleck servants of some young duke who is passing by. In short, any free assistance escapes him when he needs it, precisely because he has nothing with which to pay for it. But I take him for a lost man, if he has the misfortune of having an honest soul, a beautiful daughter, and a powerful neighbor.

Another no less important point to make is that the losses of poor men are much more difficult to recoup than those of the rich and that the difficulty of acquiring always grows in proportion to need. Nothing comes from nothing; it is just as true in business as it is in physics. Money breeds money, and the first pistole is sometimes harder to earn than the second million. But there is {148} still more. All the money the poor man hands over is forever lost to him; it remains in or returns to the hands of the rich. And since the proceeds of the taxes sooner or later pass only to those men who take part in the government or who are closely connected with it, they have, even in paying their share, a clear interest in increasing taxes.

Let us summarize in a few words the social contract between the two estates. “You need me, for I am rich and you are poor. Let us come to an agreement between ourselves. I will permit you to have the honor of serving me, provided you give me what little you have left in return for the trouble I will be taking to command you.”

If all these things are carefully combined, we will find that in order to levy taxes in an equitable and truly proportionate way, the imposition should not be made merely in proportion to the goods belonging to the contributors but in a proportion consisting in the difference of their conditions and in the superfluity of their goods. This terribly important and difficult operation is accomplished every day by multitudes of honest clerks who know their arithmetic; but a Plato or a Montesquieu would not have dared to undertake such a task without trembling and imploring heaven for enlightenment and integrity.

Another disadvantage of the personal tax is that it makes itself felt too much and is levied with too much severity. This does not prevent its being subject to many instances of nonpayment, since it is much easier to hide one’s head than one’s possessions from the tax rolls and from prosecution.

Of all the other kinds of tax assessment, the land tax or real tax has always passed for the most advantageous in countries where more thought is given to both the quantity of the proceeds and the certainty of raising the required funds than to causing the least annoyance to the people. Some people have even dared to say that the peasant must be burdened in order to rouse him from his idleness and that he would do nothing if he did not have to pay anything. But among all the peoples of the world experience contradicts this ridiculous maxim. It is in Holland and England, where the farmer pays very little, and above all in China, where he pays nothing, that the land is best cultivated. On the other hand, wherever the worker finds himself taxed in proportion to the product of his fields, he lets them lie fallow or else harvests just as much from them as he needs in order to live. For to him who loses the fruit of his labors, doing nothing pays well. Imposing a fine on work is a rather unusual method of abolishing idleness.

Taxes on land or on grain, especially when they are excessive, result in two disadvantages that are so terrible that they cannot in the long run avoid depopulating and ruining every country where they are established.

The first comes from the lack of circulation of currency, for commerce and industry draw all the money from the rural areas into the capitals; and because the tax destroys the proportion that might otherwise obtain between the needs of the farmer and the price of his grain, money constantly arrives {149} and never returns. The richer the city, the more miserable the rural areas. The proceeds from the tax pass from the hands of the prince or the financier into those of artists and merchants. And the farmer, who never receives anything more than the smallest part of the proceeds, is eventually exhausted by always paying the same amount and always receiving less. How could a man live if he had veins and no arteries, or if the arteries carried blood only to within four inches of his heart? Chardin says that in Persia the king’s duties on commodities are also paid in commodities. This custom, which, Herodotus tells us, was practiced previously in the same country as far back as Darius, could prevent the evil of which I have been speaking. But unless the intendants, directors, commissioners, and warehouse security guards in Persia are a breed apart from what they are everywhere else, I am hard pressed to believe that the smallest part of all these products reaches the king, that the grain does not rot in the granaries, and that fire does not consume the greater part of the warehouses.²⁸

The second disadvantage comes from an apparent advantage, which lets the problems become aggravated before they are noticed, namely that grain is a commodity whose price is not increased by taxes in the countries where it is produced, so that despite its absolute necessity, the quantity is diminished without the price being increased. This is what causes many people to die of hunger, even though grain remains cheap, and the farmer is the only one to bear the burden of the tax, which he has been unable to recoup in his selling price. It must be noted that one should not reason about a real tax the way one would about duties on all merchandise that in turn raise the price on all these goods and that are paid not so much by the sellers as by the buyers. For these duties, however heavy they may be, are still voluntary and are paid by the shopkeeper only in proportion to the quantity he buys. And since he buys only in proportion to his sales, he applies the law to private individuals.²⁹ But the farmer, who is required to pay at a fixed rate for the land he cultivates, whether he sells or not, is not in a position to wait until he gets the price he wants for his produce. And even if he were not to sell it to support himself, he would be forced to sell it to be able to pay the tax, so that sometimes it is the enormity of the assessment that keeps the produce at a low price.

Note too that the resources of commerce and industry, far from making the tax more endurable through an abundance of money, only make it more burdensome. I will not dwell upon a very obvious point, namely that, although a greater or lesser quantity of money in a state can give it more or less credit outside the state, it in no way alters the real fortune of the citizens and does not make them any more or less prosperous. But I must make two important remarks. First, unless the state has more commodities than it can use and the {150} abundance of money comes from an export trade, only the commercial towns are aware of this abundance, and the peasant only becomes relatively poorer. Second, since the price of everything increases with the increase in money, taxes must be increased proportionately, so that the farmer finds himself under a greater burden without having greater resources.

It should be noted that the tax on lands is actually a tax on its product. While everyone agrees that nothing is so dangerous as a tax on grain paid by the buyer, how is it we do not see that it is a hundred times worse if this tax is paid by the farmer himself? Is this not an attack on the very source of the state’s subsistence? Is it not the most direct method possible of depopulating the homeland and thus in the long run of ruining it? For there is no worse scarcity for a nation than that of men.

Only the true statesman can raise his sights when it comes to taxes above the financial objective of increasing revenue. Only he can transform onerous burdens into useful regulations of public administration. Only he can make the people wonder whether such laws have for their purpose the good of the nation rather than the revenue raised by taxes.

Duties on the importation of foreign merchandise that the local people are eager to have but that the homeland does not need; on the exportation of agricultural produce of which the homeland has none to spare and that foreigners cannot do without; on the product of useless and excessively lucrative arts; on the importation into towns of pure luxuries; and in general on all luxury items, these will all achieve this twofold purpose. It is by means of such taxes, which ease the burden of poverty and place the onus on wealth, that one must prevent the continual increase in the inequality of fortunes, the subjection of a multitude of workers and useless servants to the rich, the multiplication of idle people in the cities, and the depopulation of rural areas.

It is important to place a proportion between the price of things and the duties imposed on them such that the greediness of private individuals is not too strongly tempted to commit fraud by the size of the profits. Moreover, smuggling must be made difficult by singling out merchandise that is more difficult to conceal. Finally, it is appropriate for the tax to be paid by the one who consumes the thing taxed rather than the one who sells it, for the quantity of the duties with which he would be charged would provide him with greater temptations and means of committing fraud. This is the usual practice in China, the country where the taxes are the heaviest and the best paid in the world. The merchant pays nothing. Only the buyer pays the duty, without any murmuring or sedition resulting, for since the provisions necessary for life, such as rice and grain, are completely exempt, the people are not oppressed and the tax falls only on the wealthy. Moreover, all these precautions ought to be dictated not so much by the fear of smuggling as by the attention the government ought to pay to protecting private individuals from the seduction of illegitimate profits, which, after having turned them into bad citizens, would waste no time turning them into dishonest people.

{151} Let heavy taxes be levied on livery servants, on carriages, on mirrors, chandeliers, and furnishings, on fabrics and gilding, on the courtyards and gardens of large homes, on public entertainment of all kinds, on the idle professions, such as those of buffoons, singers, and actors, and, in short, on that population of objects of luxury, amusement, and idleness that catch everyone’s eye and that can scarcely be hidden, since their whole purpose is to be on display and they would be useless if they should fail to be seen.

There is no cause for fear that the proceeds of such taxes would be unpredictable, because they are imposed only on things that are not absolutely necessary. It shows a poor knowledge of men to believe that men who have once been seduced by luxury can ever renounce it. They would a hundred times rather renounce necessities, preferring to die of hunger rather than of shame. The increase in their expenditure is only a new reason for sustaining it, since the vanity of displaying oneself as wealthy will take advantage both of the price of the thing and of the expense of the tax. As long as there are rich people, they will want to distinguish themselves from poor people, and the state cannot contrive a revenue less onerous and more secure than one based on this distinction.

For the same reason, industry would have nothing to suffer from an economic order that enriched the public finances, revitalized agriculture by relieving the farmer, and imperceptibly brought all fortunes closer to that intermediate level of wealth that constitutes the true strength of a state. I confess it could happen that these taxes might contribute to making some fashions come and go more quickly, but it would never happen without substituting others on which the worker would earn a profit without the public treasury taking a loss. In short, suppose the spirit of the government were constantly to levy all taxes on the superfluities of the rich; one of two things must happen. Either the rich would renounce their superfluous expenditures and instead spend their money usefully, which would redound to the profit of the state, in which case, the imposition of taxes would have produced the effect of the best sumptuary laws. The expenses of the state will of necessity have diminished along with those of private individuals; and any fall in government revenue would be more than offset by a reduction in prices. Or, if the rich do not cut back on any of their extravagances, the public treasury would have, in tax proceeds on these extravagances, the resources it was seeking in order to provide for the real needs of the state. In the first case, the public treasury is enriched by the reduction in its expenditures. In the second case, it is enriched by the useless expenditures of private individuals.

Let us add to all this an important distinction in the matter of political right and to which governments, eager to do everything by themselves, should pay great attention. I have said that since personal taxes and taxes on absolute necessities attack the right to property and consequently the true foundation of public society, they are always subject to dangerous consequences if they are not established with the express consent of the people or its representatives. It {152} is not the same for duties on things whose use one can decide to give up. For then, since the private individual is not at all absolutely constrained to pay, his contribution can be reckoned as voluntary. Thus the individual consent of each of the contributors takes the place of the general consent and even presupposes it in a certain way. For why would the people be opposed to any tax that falls only on whoever wants to pay it?³⁰ It would appear to me evident that if something is neither proscribed by the laws nor contrary to mores but is something that the government can forbid, it can then permit it on payment of a duty. If, for example, the government can forbid the use of carriages, a fortiori it can impose a tax on carriages, a wise and useful way to condemn their use without terminating it. Then one can view the tax as a type of fine whose proceeds compensate for the abuse it punishes.

Someone may perhaps object that since those whom Bodin calls impostors,³¹ that is, those who impose or invent the taxes, are in the class of the rich, they will not take care to spare others at their own expense and to burden themselves in order to relieve the poor. But such ideas must be rejected. If in each nation those to whom the sovereign commits the government of the people were, in virtue of their position, the enemies of the people, it would not be worth the trouble to inquire what they should do to make the people happy.³²

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¹ [As will become evident, by the term political economy, Rousseau does not mean “economics” in the modern sense (which appears in both French and English only in the nineteenth century).]

² [“Morals” (la morale) and “Politics” refer to the broader entries within the Encyclopédie that cover the fields of which “Economics” forms part. In the same way, Rousseau’s article “Allegro” falls within the larger field of “Music.” “Morals” here means the theory of mores; it refers both to what we would call “morality” and what we would call “sociology”—the study of people’s behavior.]

³ [Robert Filmer’s posthumous Patriarcha was published in 1680 and was promptly refuted by John Locke and Algernon Sidney (though Locke’s Two Treatises of Government were not published until 1689 and Sidney’s Discourses Concerning Government until 1698).]

⁴ [Spartan children were encouraged to steal food, provided they were not caught; if they were caught, they were punished. Rousseau is here following Hobbes, De Cive, ch. 6, §16.]

⁵ [Diderot’s article “Natural Right” in the Encyclopédie does indeed seem to be the source of Rousseau’s theory of the general will.]

⁶ [This account of the law of nature as a universal general will is taken straight from Diderot’s article “Natural Right.”]

⁷ [Vox populi, vox dei (the voice of the people is the voice of God) is a traditional saying first recorded in a letter of Alcuin, AD 798.]

⁸ [Athens provides the classic example of a public deliberation resulting in the condemnation of an innocent man in the trial of Socrates.]

⁹ [Rousseau held that Machiavelli’s Prince is a satirical text, designed to encourage hatred of tyranny, not a handbook for tyrants.]

¹⁰ [The community of all human beings.]

¹¹ [Plato, Laws, bk. 4, 723c.]

¹² [Cf. Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, bk. 6, chs. 9, 12, 14.]

¹³ [ In other words, Rousseau can find no examples of good government in contemporary French political life and has to go to far distant China for his examples.]

¹⁴ [Rousseau’s word is publicain (as in the King James Bible’s “publicans and sinners”) meaning “tax collector.” In France the right to collect a tax was generally sold—a system that provided money up front for the government. So most tax collectors were also tax farmers—people who had bought the right to “farm” the tax, i.e., to put money into it with a view to maximizing their return.]

¹⁵ [Rousseau’s word is directions. According to an eighteenth-century dictionary, this is normally found in the plural only as a translation of the English word “directions” meaning “instructions” (in the singular it means “management,” a word that also rarely occurs in the plural). Rousseau had hesitated, and in the manuscript he tried out three alternatives before he settled on directions: “transformations,” “changes,” “metamorphoses.”]

¹⁶ [Cf. Montaigne, Essays, bk. 2, ch. 25, and Plato, Republic and Laws.]

¹⁷ [The mother here is la patrie, “the homeland.”]

¹⁸ [The color purple signified authority in ancient Greece and Rome; French judges did not wear purple, but the term was used figuratively of anyone exercising authority, particularly royal authority.]

¹⁹ [In eighteenth-century French, Rousseau’s word emulation refers to competition that is to be encouraged; competition to be discouraged is rivalry. In English “emulation” can have negative as well as positive connotations, whereas “aspiration” (a word unavailable to Rousseau since in eighteenth-century French it was used only in a religious context) is always positive.]

²⁰ [The statement that property is the true foundation of civil society hardly fits with the argument of the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality or the Social Contract; but it is the sort of Lockean argument a reader of the Encyclopédie might expect.]

²¹ [Pufendorf, Of the Law of Nature and Nations (1672), bk. 4, ch. 10, §4.]

²² [Jean Bodin, The Six Books of the Republic (1576), bk. 6, ch. 2.]

²³ [Rousseau gives the Latin: “Alit et ditat.”]

²⁴ [Locke, Two Treatises, Second Treatise, ch. 11, §134.]

²⁵ [In his draft Rousseau wrote in the margin here “See Locke.”]

²⁶ [Locke, Two Treatises, 2, ch. 11, §140; Bodin, Six Books of the Republic, bk. 6, ch. 2.]

²⁷ [Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, bk. 13, ch. 14.]

²⁸ [I don’t think that Rousseau means that the grain literally rots or the warehouses literally burn down, rather losses are written off to rot and fire when what is really going on is theft.]

²⁹ [He passes on the tax to the consumer.]

³⁰ [It follows from this argument that the American colonists were not entitled to object to the Tea Act of 1773.]

³¹ [Bodin, Six Books of the Republic, bk. 6, ch. 2.]

³² [Rousseau is of course being ironic here, i.e., he thinks most governments are the enemies of the people and have no interest in making them happy.]