The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Illustrations
• Introduction
• Rousseau’s Social Contract
• Prefatory Note.
• Book I.
• Introductory Note.
• Chapter I.: Subject of the First Book.
• Chapter II.: Primitive Societies.
• Chapter III.: The Right of the Strongest.
• Chapter IV.: Slavery.
• Chapter V.: That It Is Always Necessary to Go Back to a First Convention.
• Chapter VI.: The Social Pact.
• Chapter VII.: The Sovereign.
• Chapter VIII.: The Civil State.
• Chapter IX.: Real Property.
• Book II.
• Chapter I.: That Sovereignty Is Inalienable.
• Chapter II.: That Sovereignty Is Indivisible.
• Chapter III.: Whether the General Will Can Err.
• Chapter IV.: The Limits of the Sovereign Power.
• Chapter V.: The Right of Life and Death.
• Chapter VI.: The Law.
• Chapter VII.: The Legislator.
• Chapter VIII.: The People.
• Chapter IX.: The People (continued).
• Chapter X.: The People (continued.)
• Chapter XI.: The Different Systems of Legislation.
• Chapter XII.: Division of the Laws.
• Book III.
• Chapter I.: Government In General.
• Chapter II.: The Principle Which Constitutes the Different Forms of Government.
• Chapter III.: Classification of Governments.
• Chapter IV.: Democracy. *
• Chapter V.: Aristocracy.
• Chapter VI.: Monarchy.
• Chapter VII.: Mixed Governments.
• Chapter VIII.: That Every Form of Government Is Not Fit For Every Country.
• Chapter IX.: The Marks of a Good Government.
• Chapter X.: The Abuse of the Government and Its Tendency to Degenerate.
• Chapter XI.: The Dissolution of the Body Politic.
• Chapter XII.: How the Sovereign Authority Is Maintained.
• Chapter XIII.: How the Sovereign Authority Is Maintained —(continued).
• Chapter XIV.: How the Sovereign Authority Is Maintained — (continued.)
• Chapter XV.: Deputies Or Representatives.
• Chapter XVI.: That the Institution of the Government Is Not a Contract.
• Chapter XVII.: The Institution of the Government.
• Chapter XVIII.: Means of Preventing Usurpations of the Government.
• Book IV.
• Chapter I.: That the General Will Is Indestructible. *
• Chapter II.: Voting.
• Chapter III.: Elections.
• Chapter IV.: The Roman Comitia.
• Chapter V.: The Tribuneship.
• Chapter VI.: The Dictatorship.
• Chapter VII.: The Censorship.
• Chapter VIII.: Civil Religion.
• Chapter IX.: Conclusion.
• Sir Thomas More’s Utopia.
• Book I.
• Book II.
• Of Their Towns, Particularly of Amaurot.
• Of Their Magistrates.
• Of Their Trades, and Manner of Life.
• Of Their Traffic.
• Of the Traveling of the Utopians.
• Of Their Slaves, and of Their Marriages.
• Of Their Military Discipline.
• Of the Religions of the Utopians.
• Bacon’s New Atlantis.
• Campanella’s City of the Sun.

CHAPTER VI.

Monarchy.

We have hitherto considered the Prince as a moral and collective person united by the force of the laws, and as the depositary of the executive power in the State. We have now to consider this power concentrated in the hands of a natural person, of a real man, who alone has a right to dispose of it according to the laws. He is what is called a monarch or a king.

Quite the reverse of the other forms of administration, in which a collective being represents an individual, in this one an individual represents a collective being; so that the moral unity that constitutes it is at the same time a physical unity, in which all the powers that the law combines in the other with so much effort are combined naturally.

Thus the will of the people, the will of the Prince, the public force of the State, and the particular force of the government, all obey the same motive power; all the springs of the machine are in the same hand, everything works for the same end; there are no opposite movements that counteract one another, and no kind of constitution can be imagined in which a more considerable action is produced with less effort. Archimedes, quietly seated on the shore, and launching without difficulty a large vessel, represents to me a skillful monarch, governing from his cabinet his vast States, and, while he appears motionless, setting everything in motion.

But if there is no government which has more vigor, there is none in which the particular will has more sway and more easily governs others. Everything works for the same end, it is true; but this end is not the public welfare, and the very power of the administration turns continually to the prejudice of the State.

Kings wish to be absolute, and from afar men cry to them that the best way to become so is to make themselves beloved by their people. This maxim is very fine, and also very true in certain respects; unfortunately it will always be ridiculed in courts. Power which springs from the affections of the people is doubtless the greatest, but it is precarious and conditional; princes will never be satisfied with it. The best kings wish to have the power of being wicked if they please, without ceasing to be masters. A political preacher will tell them in vain that, the strength of the people being their own, it is their greatest interest that the people should be flourishing, numerous, and formidable; they know very well that that is not true. Their personal interest is, in the first place, that the people should be weak and miserable, and should never be able to resist them. Supposing all the subjects always perfectly submissive, I admit that it would then be the prince’s interest that the people should be powerful, in order that this power, being his own, might render him formidable to his neighbors; but as this interest is only secondary and subordinate, and as the two suppositions are incompatible, it is natural that princes should always give preference to the maxim which is most immediately useful to them. It is this that Samuel strongly represented to the Hebrews; it is this that Machiavelli clearly demonstrated. While pretending to give lessons to kings, he gave great ones to peoples. The “Prince” of Machiavelli is the book of republicans.*

We have found, by general considerations, that monarchy is suited only to large States, and we shall find this again by examining monarchy itself. The more numerous the public administrative body is, the more does the ratio of the Prince to the subjects diminish and approach equality, so that this ratio is unity or equality, even in a democracy. This same ratio increases in proportion as the government contracts, and is at its maximum when the government is in the hands of a single person. Then the distance between the Prince and the people is too great, and the State lacks cohesion. In order to unify it, then, intermediate orders, princes, grandees, and nobles, are required to fill them. Now, nothing at all of this kind is proper for a small State, which would be ruined by all these orders.

But if it is difficult for a great State to be well governed, it is much more so for it to be well governed by a single man; and every one knows what happens when the king appoints deputies.

One essential and inevitable defect, which will always render a monarchical government inferior to a republican one, is that in the latter the public voice hardly ever raises to the highest posts any but enlightened and capable men, who fill them honorably; whereas those who succeed in monarchies are most frequently only petty mischief-makers, petty knaves, petty intriguers, whose petty talents, which enable them to attain high posts in courts, only serve to show the public their ineptitude as soon as they have attained them. The people are much less mistaken about their choice than the prince is; and a man of real merit is almost as rare in a royal ministry as a fool at the head of a republican government. Therefore, when by some fortunate chance one of these born rulers takes the helm of affairs in a monarchy almost wrecked by such a fine set of ministers, it is quite astonishing what resources he finds, and his accession to power forms an epoch in a country.

In order that a monarchical State might be well governed, it would be necessary that its greatness or extent should be proportioned to the abilities of him that governs. It is easier to conquer than to rule. With a sufficient lever, the world may be moved by a finger; but to support it the shoulders of Hercules are required. However small a State may be, the prince is almost always too small for it. When, on the contrary, it happens that the State is too small for its chief, which is very rare, it is still badly governed, because the chief, always pursuing his own great designs, forgets the interests of the people, and renders them no less unhappy by the abuse of his transcendent abilities, than an inferior chief by his lack of talent. It would be necessary, so to speak, that a kingdom should be enlarged or contracted in every reign, according to the capacity of the prince; whereas, the talents of a senate having more definite limits, the State may have permanent boundaries, and the administration prosper equally well.

The most obvious inconvenience of the government of a single person is the lack of that uninterrupted succession which forms in the two others a continuous connection. One king being dead, another is necessary; elections leave dangerous intervals; they are stormy; and unless the citizens are of a disinterestedness, an integrity, which this government hardly admits of, intrigue and corruption intermingle with it. It would be hard for a man to whom the State has been sold not to sell it in his turn, and indemnify himself out of the helpless for the money which the powerful have extorted from him. Sooner or later everything becomes venal under such an administration, and the peace which is then enjoyed under a king is worse than the disorder of an interregnum.

What has been done to prevent these evils? Crowns have been made hereditary in certain families; and an order of succession has been established which prevents any dispute on the demise of kings; that is to say, the inconvenience of regencies being substituted for that of elections, an appearance of tranquillity has been preferred to a wise administration, and men have preferred to risk having as their chiefs children, monsters, and imbeciles, rather than have a dispute about the choice of good kings. They have not considered that in thus exposing themselves to the risk of this alternative, they put almost all the chances against themselves. That was a very sensible answer of Dionysius the younger, to whom his father, in reproaching him with a dishonorable action, said: “Have I set you the example in this?” “Ah!” replied the son, “your father was not a king.”

All things conspire to deprive of justice and reason a man brought up to govern others. Much trouble is taken, so it is said, to teach young princes the art of reigning; this education does not appear to profit them. It would be better to begin by teaching them the art of obeying. The greatest kings that history has celebrated were not trained to rule; that is a science which men are never less masters of than after excessive study of it, and it is better acquired by obeying than by ruling. Nam utilissimus idem ac brevissimus bonarum malarumque rerum delectus, cogitare quid aut nolueris sub alio principe, aut volueris.

A result of this want of cohesion is the instability of royal government, which, being regulated sometimes on one plan, sometimes on another, according to the character of the reigning prince or that of the persons who reign for him, cannot long pursue a fixed aim or a consistent course of conduct, a variableness which always makes the State fluctuate between maxim and maxim, project and project, and which does not exist in other governments, where the Prince is always the same. So we see that, in general, if there is more cunning in a court, there is more wisdom in a senate, and that republics pursue their ends by more steadfast and regular methods; whereas every revolution in a royal ministry produces one in the State, the maxim common to all ministers, and to almost all kings, being to reverse in every respect the acts of their predecessors.

From this same want of cohesion is obtained the solution of a sophism very familiar to royal politicians; this is not only to compare civil government with domestic government, and the prince with the father of a family, an error already refuted, but, further, to ascribe freely to this magistrate all the virtues which he might have occasion for, and always to suppose that the prince is what he ought to be — on which supposition royal government is manifestly preferable to every other, because it is incontestably the strongest, and because it only lacks a corporate will more conformable to the general will to be also the best.

But if, according to Plato, a king by nature is so rare a personage, how many times will nature and fortune conspire to crown him? And if the royal education necessarily corrupts those who receive it, what should be expected from a succession of men trained to rule? It is, then, voluntary self-deception to confuse royal government with that of a good king. To see what this government is in itself, we must consider it under incapable or wicked princes; for such will come to the throne, or the throne will make them such.

These difficulties have not escaped our authors, but they have not been embarrassed by them. The remedy, they say, is to obey without murmuring; God gives bad kings in his wrath, and we must endure them as chastisements of heaven. Such talk is doubtless edifying, but I am inclined to think it would be more appropriate in a pulpit than in a book on politics. What should we say of a physician who promises miracles, and whose whole art consists in exhorting the sick man to be patient? We know well that when we have a bad government it must be endured; the question is to find a good one.

[* ]Machiavelli was an honorable man and a good citizen, but, attached to the house of the Medici, he was forced, during the oppression of his country, to conceal his love for liberty. The mere choice of his execrable hero sufficiently manifests his secret intention; and the opposition between the maxims of his book the “Prince” and those of his “Discourses on Titus Livius” and his “History of Florence,” shows that this profound politician has had hitherto only superficial or corrupt readers. The court of Rome has strictly prohibited his book, I certainly believe it, for it is that court which he most clearly depicts.