Roussseau day 1

A DISCOURSE



ON A SUBJECT PROPOSED BY THE ACADEMY OF DIJON:



WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF INEQUALITY AMONG MEN, 

AND IS IT AUTHORISED BY NATURAL LAW?



Jean Jacques Rousseau



1754



Translated by G. D. H. Cole, public domain



Rendered into HTML and text by Jon Roland of the Constitution Society



We should consider what is natural not in things

depraved but in those which are rightly ordered

according to nature. Aristotle, Politics, Bk. i, ch. 5



DEDICATION TO THE REPUBLIC OF GENEVA



MOST HONOURABLE, MAGNIFICENT AND SOVEREIGN LORDS, convinced that only a

virtuous citizen can confer on his country honours which it can accept,

I have been for thirty years past working to make myself worthy to offer

you some public homage; and, this fortunate opportunity supplementing in

some degree the insufficiency of my efforts, I have thought myself

entitled to follow in embracing it the dictates of the zeal which

inspires me, rather than the right which should have been my

authorisation. Having had the happiness to be born among you, how could

I reflect on the equality which nature has ordained between men, and the

inequality which they have introduced, without reflecting on the

profound wisdom by which both are in this State happily combined and

made to coincide, in the manner that is most in conformity with natural

law, and most favourable to society, to the maintenance of public order

and to the happiness of individuals? In my researches after the best

rules common sense can lay down for the constitution of a government, I

have been so struck at finding them all in actuality in your own, that

even had I not been born within your walls I should have thought it

indispensable for me to offer this picture of human society to that

people, which of all others seems to be possessed of its greatest

advantages, and to have best guarded against its abuses.



If I had had to make choice of the place of my birth, I should have

preferred a society which had an extent proportionate to the limits of

the human faculties; that is, to the possibility of being well governed:

in which every person being equal to his occupation, no one should be

obliged to commit to others the functions with which he was entrusted: a

State, in which all the individuals being well known to one another,

neither the secret machinations of vice, nor the modesty of virtue

should be able to escape the notice and judgment of the public; and in

which the pleasant custom of seeing and knowing one another should make

the love of country rather a love of the citizens than of its soil.



I should have wished to be born in a country in which the interest of

the Sovereign and that of the people must be single and identical; to

the end that all the movements of the machine might tend always to the

general happiness. And as this could not be the case, unless the

Sovereign and the people were one and the same person, it follows that I

should have wished to be born under a democratic government, wisely

tempered.



I should have wished to live and die free: that is, so far subject to

the laws that neither I, nor anybody else, should be able to cast off

their honourable yoke: the easy and salutary yoke which the haughtiest

necks bear with the greater docility, as they are made to bear no other.



I should have wished then that no one within the State should be able to

say he was above the law; and that no one without should be able to

dictate so that the State should be obliged to recognise his authority.

For, be the constitution of a government what it may, if there be within

its jurisdiction a single man who is not subject to the law, all the

rest are necessarily at his discretion. And if there be a national ruler

within, and a foreign ruler without, however they may divide their

authority, it is impossible that both should be duly obeyed, or that the

State should be well governed.



I should not have chosen to live in a republic of recent institution,

however excellent its laws; for fear the government, being perhaps

otherwise framed than the circumstances of the moment might require,

might disagree with the new citizens, or they with it, and the State run

the risk of overthrow and destruction almost as soon as it came into

being. For it is with liberty as it is with those solid and succulent

foods, or with those generous wines which are well adapted to nourish

and fortify robust constitutions that are used to them, but ruin and

intoxicate weak and delicate constitutions to which they are not suited.

Peoples once accustomed to masters are not in a condition to do without

them. If they attempt to shake off the yoke, they still more estrange

themselves from freedom, as, by mistaking for it an unbridled license to

which it is diametrically opposed, they nearly always manage, by their

revolutions, to hand themselves over to seducers, who only make their

chains heavier than before. The Roman people itself, a model for all

free peoples, was wholly incapable of governing itself when it escaped

from the oppression of the Tarquins. Debased by slavery, and the

ignominious tasks which had been imposed upon it, it was at first no

better than a stupid mob, which it was necessary to control and govern

with the greatest wisdom; in order that, being accustomed by degrees to

breathe the health-giving air of liberty, minds which had been enervated

or rather brutalised under tyranny, might gradually acquire that

severity of morals and spirit of fortitude which made it at length the

people of all most worthy of respect. I should, then, have sought out

for my country some peaceful and happy Republic, of an antiquity that

lost itself, as it were, in the night of time: which had experienced

only such shocks as served to manifest and strengthen the courage and

patriotism of its subjects; and whose citizens, long accustomed to a

wise independence, were not only free, but worthy to be so.



I should have wished to choose myself a country, diverted, by a

fortunate impotence, from the brutal love of conquest, and secured, by a

still more fortunate situation, from the fear of becoming itself the

conquest of other States: a free city situated between several nations,

none of which should have any interest in attacking it, while each had

an interest in preventing it from being attacked by the others; in

short, a Republic which should have nothing to tempt the ambition of its

neighbours, but might reasonably depend on their assistance in case of

need. It follows that a republican State so happily situated could have

nothing to fear but from itself; and that, if its members trained

themselves to the use of arms, it would be rather to keep alive that

military ardour and courageous spirit which are so proper among freemen,

and tend to keep up their taste for liberty, than from the necessity of

providing for their defence.



I should have sought a country, in which the right of legislation was

vested in all the citizens; for who can judge better than they of the

conditions under which they had best dwell together in the same society?

Not that I should have approved of Plebiscita, like those among the

Romans; in which the rulers in the State, and those most interested in

its preservation, were excluded from the deliberations on which in many

cases its security depended; and in which, by the most absurd

inconsistency, the magistrates were deprived of rights which the meanest

citizens enjoyed.



On the contrary, I should have desired that, in order to prevent

self-interested and ill-conceived projects, and all such dangerous

innovations as finally ruined the Athenians, each man should not be at

liberty to propose new laws at pleasure; but that this right should

belong exclusively to the magistrates; and that even they should use it

with so much caution, the people, on its side, be so reserved in giving

its consent to such laws, and the promulgation of them be attended with

so much solemnity, that before the constitution could be upset by them,

there might be time enough for all to be convinced, that it is above all

the great antiquity of the laws which makes them sacred and venerable,

that men soon learn to despise laws which they see daily altered, and

that States, by accustoming themselves to neglect their ancient customs

under the pretext of improvement, often introduce greater evils than

those they endeavour to remove.



I should have particularly avoided, as necessarily ill-governed, a

Republic in which the people, imagining themselves in a position to do

without magistrates, or at least to leave them with only a precarious

authority, should imprudently have kept for themselves the

administration of civil affairs and the execution of their own laws.

Such must have been the rude constitution of primitive governments,

directly emerging from a state of nature; and this was another of the

vices that contributed to the downfall of the Republic of Athens.



But I should have chosen a community in which the individuals, content

with sanctioning their laws, and deciding the most important public

affairs in general assembly and on the motion of the rulers, had

established honoured tribunals, carefully distinguished the several

departments, and elected year by year some of the most capable and

upright of their fellow-citizens to administer justice and govern the

State; a community, in short, in which the virtue of the magistrates

thus bearing witness to the wisdom of the people, each class

reciprocally did the other honour. If in such a case any fatal

misunderstandings arose to disturb the public peace, even these

intervals of blindness and error would bear the marks of moderation,

mutual esteem, and a common respect for the laws; which are sure signs

and pledges of a reconciliation as lasting as sincere. Such are the

advantages, most honourable, magnificent and sovereign lords, which I

should have sought in the country in which I should have chosen to be

born. And if providence had added to all these a delightful situation, a

temperate climate, a fertile soil, and the most beautiful countryside

under Heaven, I should have desired only, to complete my felicity, the

peaceful enjoyment of all these blessings, in the bosom of this happy

country; to live at peace in the sweet society of my fellow-citizens,

and practising towards them, from their own example, the duties of

friendship, humanity, and every other virtue, to leave behind me the

honourable memory of a good man, and an upright and virtuous patriot.



But, if less fortunate or too late grown wise, I had seen myself reduced

to end an infirm and languishing life in other climates, vainly

regretting that peaceful repose which I had forfeited in the imprudence

of youth, I should at least have entertained the same feelings in my

heart, though denied the opportunity of making use of them in my native

country. Filled with a tender and disinterested love for my distant

fellow-citizens, I should have addressed them from my heart, much in the

following terms.



"My dear fellow-citizens, or rather my brothers, since the ties of

blood, as well as the laws, unite almost all of us, it gives me pleasure

that I cannot think of you, without thinking, at the same time, of all

the blessings you enjoy, and of which none of you, perhaps, more deeply

feels the value than I who have lost them. The more I reflect on your

civil and political condition, the less can I conceive that the nature

of human affairs could admit of a better. In all other governments, when

there is a question of ensuring the greatest good of the State, nothing

gets beyond projects and ideas, or at best bare possibilities. But as

for you, your happiness is complete, and you have nothing to do but

enjoy it; you require nothing more to be made perfectly happy, than to

know how to be satisfied with being so. Your sovereignty, acquired or

recovered by the sword, and maintained for two centuries past by your

valour and wisdom, is at length fully and universally acknowledged. Your

boundaries are fixed, your rights confirmed and your repose secured by

honourable treaties. Your constitution is excellent, being not only

dictated by the profoundest wisdom, but guaranteed by great and friendly

powers. Your State enjoys perfect tranquillity; you have neither wars

nor conquerors to fear; you have no other master than the wise laws you

have yourselves made; and these are administered by upright magistrates

of your own choosing. You are neither so wealthy as to be enervated by

effeminacy, and thence to lose, in the pursuit of frivolous pleasures,

the taste for real happiness and solid virtue; nor poor enough to

require more assistance from abroad than your own industry is sufficient

to procure you. In the meantime the precious privilege of liberty, which

in great nations is maintained only by submission to the most exorbitant

impositions, costs you hardly anything for its preservation.



May a Republic, so wisely and happily constituted, last for ever, for an

example to other nations, and for the felicity of its own citizens! This

is the only prayer you have left to make, the only precaution that

remains to be taken. It depends, for the future, on yourselves alone

(not to make you happy, for your ancestors have saved you that trouble),

but to render that happiness lasting, by your wisdom in its enjoyment.

It is on your constant union, your obedience to the laws, and your

respect for their ministers, that your preservation depends. If there

remains among you the smallest trace of bitterness or distrust, hasten

to destroy it, as an accursed leaven which sooner or later must bring

misfortune and ruin on the State. I conjure you all to look into your

hearts, and to hearken to the secret voice of conscience. Is there any

among you who can find, throughout the universe, a more upright, more

enlightened and more honourable body than your magistracy? Do not all

its members set you an example of moderation, of simplicity of manners,

of respect for the laws, and of the most sincere harmony? Place,

therefore, without reserve, in such wise superiors, that salutary

confidence which reason ever owes to virtue. Consider that they are your

own choice, that they justify that choice, and that the honours due to

those whom you have dignified are necessarily yours by reflexion. Not

one of you is so ignorant as not to know that, when the laws lose their

force and those who defend them their authority, security and liberty

are universally impossible. Why, therefore, should you hesitate to do

that cheerfully and with just confidence which you would all along have

been bound to do by your true interest, your duty and reason itself?



Let not a culpable and pernicious indifference to the maintenance of the

constitution ever induce you to neglect, in case of need, the prudent

advice of the most enlightened and zealous of your fellow-citizens; but

let equity, moderation and firmness of resolution continue to regulate

all your proceedings, and to exhibit you to the whole universe as the

example of a valiant and modest people, jealous equally of their honour

and of their liberty. Beware particularly, as the last piece of advice I

shall give you, of sinister constructions and venomous rumours, the

secret motives of which are often more dangerous than the actions at

which they are levelled. A whole house will be awake and take the first

alarm given by a good and trusty watch-dog, who barks only at the

approach of thieves; but we hate the importunity of those noisy curs,

which are perpetually disturbing the public repose, and whose continual

ill-timed warnings prevent our attending to them, when they may perhaps

be necessary."