NOTHING could be more erroneous than to attribute to Rousseau’s influence the formation of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man. As we shall endeavor to show, it was from America that the French learned of the idea of such a declaration. It was not from Rousseau the Americans derived their principles. In reality Rousseau’s political philosophy, which aimed at securing freedom and equality, was destructive to individual rights. He has the individual surrender all his rights, without retaining a remnant of them, to the sovereign people or volonté générale. By this contract the individual exchanges “his natural liberty and an unlimited right to all he holds and is able to obtain” for the civil liberty which is limited by the general will.1 Though Rousseau asserted liberty to be inalienable, though he believed that equality would be preserved by having all individuals alike sacrifice the sum total of their liberties to the sovereign of which each individual is a part, he nevertheless established a despot whose power is as autocratic as is that of the Leviathan of Hobbes. This tyrant is Demos. The views of Rousseau could not give rise to the Declaration of the Rights of Man because he holds that each individual, upon entering society, surrenders his natural rights completely, without retaining the least residuum. Rousseau’s volonté générale is almighty, and is not restricted by the rights of the individual. To lose sight of this is to oversee one of the cardinal points of his system. It was the English theorists, notably Milton and Locke, who had insisted upon the fact that the natural rights of the individual were inalienable. It was their view that gave rise to the Declaration of the Rights of Man, not Rousseau’s. Again the latter maintains that upon the sovereign people no law of any kind can be binding. Neither is any guarantee necessary, for the sovereign can never intend his own injury. Whatever the sovereign wishes ought to be. Obviously this view militates against any reservations of individual rights.
Yet though we cannot give Rousseau the credit of having given rise to this declaration, we must regard him as the apostle of a new social and political era. Though his works are full of contradictions and visionary ideas, probably no writer ever exerted a greater influence than he. That is largely due to the fact that he was the true child of his time. He was oppressed by the abuses and evils of the old régime and longed for a more natural condition of affairs. It is this desire for freedom which characterizes him as it does his contemporaries. It was this desire for liberty, for naturalness, which appealed to them. Most of them did not see the real consequence of his political system until the Reign of Terror opened their eyes to the fact that sovereign Demos may become as great a tyrant as any king. It is therefore safe to say that though the Contrat Social did not beget the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the enthusiasm with which the idea of such a declaration met in France was due in no small part to the writings of Rousseau. A brief consideration of his doctrines will, therefore, not be out of place.
“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. Many a person considers himself lord over his fellows, and yet is more of a slave than they. How has this change taken place? I know not. How can it be made legitimate? I believe I can answer that question.” Thus Rousseau begins his Contrat Social. These words define the purpose of that work.
“The strongest is not strong enough to remain master if he does not change his might into right, obedience into duty.” Might, says Rousseau, does not confer right. Since no man has a natural power over his fellows, there is no other foundation of lawful power among men except what arises from contract.1
He declares it to be absurd “to believe a man may give himself away gratuitously. Such an act is unlawful and void, because the person who performs it is devoid of good sense. To say a people may enslave themselves is to declare them to be insane; insanity does not give right.”2 “To renounce one’s liberty is to renounce the quality of being a man, the rights of humanity, and even its duties. No adequate compensation can be made to any person who has relinquished all. Such a renunciation is incompatible with the nature of man. To take away freedom of will is to remove all morality from one’s actions. It is a vain and contradictory agreement to stipulate absolute authority on the one hand and boundless obedience on the other. Is it not evident that one has not engaged in anything to any person from whom one has a right to exact anything?”3 Even though in these words Rousseau declared that an individual could not relinquish his liberty, with even more emphasis than Milton, Locke, or any other political philosopher, yet his attempt to preserve this freedom and equality intact was not successful because he confuses liberty with democracy.
When men have arrived at a point where the single efforts of individuals do not suffice to overcome the obstacles that are pernicious to men’s preservation in the natural state, this original condition can last no longer without leading to the destruction of the human race. Since men cannot produce new forces they must combine existing forces and have them work as a whole. This combination can be formed only when a number combine their efforts. How can this be achieved without sacrificing the strength and freedom of each individual? How can a “form of association be found which defends and protects with the entire combined force the person and property of each individual associated, and by which each, uniting himself to all, obeys but himself and remains as free as before”?1 The social contract is the solution of this problem.
The stipulations of this contract are so constituted that the least change makes them void and ineffective. Though not explicitly pronounced, they are everywhere accepted tacitly. If the contract is broken, each individual receives his original rights and natural liberty again, losing the freedom which rested upon contract, to obtain which he relinquished his natural rights.
All these stipulations may be reduced to a single one, namely, the alienation of each person with all his rights to the entire community. If each gives up himself entirely the condition is alike for all and equality is preserved. No one is interested in rendering the relation which is the same for all, onerous to any one in particular. Inasmuch as each gives himself to all, he gives himself to no one in particular. Since each receives the same right over every other individual as he yields to him, he receives a compensation for what he loses, and more force to preserve what he possesses. “Each of us gives to the community his person and all his power under the supreme direction of the general will, and we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole body.”1 The social contract, says Rousseau, produces a moral and collective body composed of as many members as the assembly has voices. The association gives to the body resulting therefrom its unity, its common self (son moi commun), its life, and will. This public person is called republic or body politic. When passive it is a State; when active, sovereign; when compared with other like bodies, power. In regard to those associated, the name people is employed. Each individual is a citizen when considered as a participant in the sovereign authority, and a subject when submitting to the laws of the State.2
This contract between the individual and the State being mutual, binds the individual as a member of the sovereign to the other members, as member of the State to the sovereign. The sovereign cannot be bound toward himself; he can impose no law which he could not break. Inasmuch as the sovereign can consider himself only in one and the same relation, he is in the same situation as a private person contracting with himself. There is no sort of fundamental obligation for the body of the people, not even the social contract.3
The sovereign owes his existence to the sanctity of the contract. He can therefore never bind himself to anything which would cause an alteration of this contract. He can never alienate any portion of himself. He cannot submit to another sovereign. The violation of the fundamental compact by which he exists would be self-destruction.1
Rousseau regards freedom as unalienable because based on the equality of all. This equality itself results from the absolute reciprocity of the relinquishment each individual has made to the sovereign. Freedom is not given up even though natural rights are exchanged for civil rights. The association compels its members to be free, for if a single member of the body politic is harmed the whole body suffers. The sovereign’s interests are identical with those of each individual. There is no necessity for any guarantee to the subjects, that is, for a declaration of their rights which the sovereign must not transgress, for the body can impossibly wish to harm its members. The sovereign is always what he ought to be.2 “That which man loses by the social contract,” says Rousseau, “is his natural liberty and the unlimited right to all he possesses and is able to obtain. What he gains is civil liberty and property in all he possesses. . . . It is necessary to distinguish natural liberty, which has no limits but the power of the individual, from civil liberty which is limited by the general will; and possession which is the result of force, or the right of first occupancy, from property, which can only be founded upon a positive title.”3
Rousseau concludes his first book with the words which he declares to be the base of his system: “The fundamental compact does not destroy natural equality, but substitutes a moral and legitimate equality for the physical inequality nature may have put between men, so that though they be unequal in strength or intellect, they all become equal by convention and right.”4
In the second book of the Contrat Social Rousseau investigates the nature of sovereignty. He declares it to be the exercise of the general will. It can never be alienated. The sovereign, being a collective being, can only be represented by himself. The power may be transferred, but never the will.1 Sovereignty is not only unalienable, but also indivisible. It is the general will, not a particular will; the will of the body of the people, not of a part. It is only the general will that possesses sovereignty and makes the law. The will of a particular person is at most a decree.
To divide sovereignty in its object, says Rousseau, that is, into force and will; legislative and executive powers; rights of taxation, of justice, and of war; is to make of the sovereignty a fantastic being formed of related parts. The error arises from considering as parts of this authority what are only emanations from it. The rights which are held to be parts of sovereignty are subordinated to it. They all presuppose a supreme will which is only executed by them.2
“The general will,” Rousseau holds, “is always in the right and always tends to public utility. This is not saying that the decisions of the people are always equally right. Though any person always wishes for his best, it is not always possible to see what is best. The people cannot be corrupted, but they are often deceived. It is only then that they seem to wish what is evil.”3
The general will (volonté générale) must be distinguished from the will of all (volonté de tous). While the former aims at the common welfare, the other looks only to private interest and is but the sum of particular wills. If the extremes be taken from the sums of the individual wills, there remains the general will.
Rousseau considers freedom and equality the greatest good. Every system of legislation should have their realization for its end. Liberty is necessary because the dependence of any individual reduces the force of the State. Equality is necessary because liberty cannot subsist without it. By equality it is not necessary to assume that degrees of power and wealth be absolutely the same. But power must never become violence, and must never be exercised except by virtue of office and the law. No citizen should be so rich as to be able to purchase another, nor so poor as to be compelled to sell himself.1
In the third book of the Contrat Social Rousseau enters upon a consideration of government. He declares every free action to result from a moral and a physical cause. The first determines upon the action, the second executes it. The body politic possesses both power and will. The latter constitutes the legislative, the former the executive, function. Without their cooperation nothing can happen in the State.2
The legislative power belongs to the people and can belong to them alone. The executive power cannot in the same way belong to the whole body. The executive power has to do only with private acts, which are not laws, and therefore not acts of sovereignty. “The public force requires an agent who unites it and puts it into action according to the directions of the general will, who connects State and sovereign and performs in some sort in the public person what the union of body and soul does in man. This is the government of the State, which is often confounded with the sovereign, whose servant it is.”3
Government is “a body intermediate between the State and its subjects, established for their mutual correspondence, charged with the execution of the laws and the maintenance of civil and political liberty.”1 “The act by which a people submits to its chiefs is not a contract, but a commission by which, as simple officers of the sovereign, they exercise in his name the power whose depositors they are and which the sovereign may limit, modify, and resume whenever he pleases. The alienation of such a right being incompatible with the nature of the social body, is contrary to the purpose of the association.”2
“Government or supreme administration is the legitimate exercise of the executive power, and the prince or magistrate is the man or body charged with the administration.”3
Rousseau declares that as the sovereignty cannot be alienated, so it cannot be represented. It is the general will, and a will cannot be represented. “The deputies of the people are not their representatives; they are but agents (commissaires), and may not conclude anything definitely. Every law is void which the people do not ratify in person, and is no law. The English believe themselves to be free. They deceive themselves. They are free only during the time they elect members of Parliament. When these are elected they are slaves; they are nothing.”4
He defines the law as the declaration of the general will. This definition found its way into the French Declaration of the Rights of Man.
Rousseau’s ideal is a pure democracy. According to him it is not sufficient that a people assent to a code of laws or institute a special form of government. There must be regular and periodical assemblies of the people in which they take an active part in public affairs. These popular assemblies should be the more frequent if the government is very powerful.1 When the people assemble as the sovereign authority, the executive power is suspended. The person of the meanest citizen is then of equal sanctity and inviolability with that of the highest officer. When the sovereign is present there are no longer representatives.2
The political doctrines of Rousseau were not new. His political philosophy was eclectic. From Locke he learned that men are free and equal. From Hobbes he borrowed his principle of absolutism, but while Hobbes ascribed absolute power to the prince, Rousseau puts it into the hands of the people. The doctrine of the sovereignty of the people had not been forgotten since put forth by the ancients. Rousseau’s view of this doctrine resembles that of Althusius in many particulars. One cannot determine what Rousseau owes to Althusius, for while he mentions the names of persons whom he attacks, such as that of Grotius, he passes over in silence the names of those to whom he is indebted. The English political philosophers had declared the supreme authority to lie in the people. But they held the power of the people to be latent and to break forth only in case of tyranny. Rousseau regards the power of the people as being constantly in activity. They are the real sovereign.
While other writers had regarded the people as being only in passive possession of sovereignty, Rousseau considers them to be constantly exercising their sovereign power. Herein he differs from Milton, Sidney, Locke, and others.
In his Considerations on the Government of Poland, written in 1772, Rousseau endeavors to carry his principles into practical effect. There is nothing in that pamphlet that concerns us here.
There is no suggestion of a Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen to be found in any of Rousseau’s writings. Indeed, as we have seen, such a declaration is not in accord with his political philosophy. He does not believe that individuals reserve rights when they agree to form political society. On the contrary, they surrender all their natural rights to the sovereign volonté générale.
On the other hand, the enthusiasm with which Frenchmen hailed the American idea of a Declaration of the Rights of Man was in no small part due to the influence of Rousseau’s writings. He had familiarized them with the doctrines of the sovereignty of the people, of liberty and equality. Though he conceived these ideas in a different sense from what the Americans did, the difference in conception probably escaped most Frenchmen.
The great mistake of Rousseau is the error committed by all writers who believed in the contract theory. Like them Rousseau proceeds from the individual to the State. His view is entirely unhistorical. He fails to see that the State is an organism; that a collection of individuals can never become a unity.1