Representation Of Wills.
But an impossibility confronts them at the outset; how to avoid imposing upon men any law without their consent. How shall all individual wills be consulted regarding each particular law? Rousseau did not hesitate; he pronounced great States to be illegitimate, and that it was necessary to divide society into small republics in order that, once at least, the will of each citizen might give its consent to the law. Even if that could be done, the problem would be far from being solved, so that the principle should appear fully exemplified, whatever tests might be applied to it. But still an impossibility had at length disappeared, and logical consistency was preserved. The political theorists of whom we are speaking, far more timid than Rousseau, have not dared to protest against the existence of large communities, but they have not feared to get over the impossibility by the aid of a new inconsistency. While they do not allow to individuals the right only to obey laws conformed to their will, they substitute for it the right only to obey laws which emanate from a power which has been constituted by their will; they have thought to pay respect to the principle, by basing the legitimacy of the law on the election of the legislative power. Thus the theory of representation, that is, of the representation of wills, has re-appeared, in spite of Rousseau's logical reasonings: for, so long as the will of man is recognized as the only legitimate sovereign for him, if the creation of a power be attempted by means of representation, the kind of representation that will really be attempted will be the representation of wills.
But this theory must be carried out, and reduced to practice. Now, after having annulled, so far as the creation of the law is concerned, so many individual wills, the least that could be expected is that all should be called upon to give their voice in the nomination of those who shall be commissioned to make laws. Universal suffrage was therefore the inevitable consequence of the principle already so violently perverted; it has been sometimes professed, but never actually adopted. Here then once more a new impossibility has occasioned a new inconsistency. Nowhere has the right of voting for the legislative power belonged to more than a fragment of society; women, at least, have always been excluded from it. Thus then, while the will has been recognized as the sole legitimate sovereign in every individual, a large number of individuals have not even taken any part in the creation of that factitious sovereignty which representation has given to all.
Theory Of Executive Power.
We might pursue these investigations, and we should find at every step some new deviation from the principle which, it is pretended, is always to be respected as forming the abiding basis on which the formation of governments depends. The most remarkable of these deviations is certainly the supremacy which is everywhere attributed to the majority over the minority. Who does not see that, when the principle of the absolute sovereignty of the individual over himself has been once admitted, this supremacy is entirely false? And if false, how is society possible?
I have said enough, I think, to shew that this alleged principle is powerless for the legitimate creation of the government of society, and that it must incessantly yield to necessity, and finally vanish altogether. I will now consider it from another point of view. I will suppose that the work has been accomplished, that a government has been constructed; and I inquire what will be the influence of this principle upon the government which, it is affirmed, is derived from it, and which has only been created by the suffrance of numerous inconsistencies. What right will the government have over individuals, by whose will alone, it is said, it possesses any legitimacy? Here, as elsewhere, it is necessary that the principle should again be referred to; it must determine the right of the government when it has been established, just as it must have guided its formation.
Two systems present themselves. According to the one, the individual wills which have created a legislative power have not thereby lost their inherent sovereignty; they have provided themselves with servants and not with masters; it is true they have created this power in order that it may command, but on condition that it shall obey. In itself, and in relation to those from whom it holds its commission, it is nothing but a kind of executive power, appointed to put in form the laws which it has received, and constantly subordinated to that other power which remains diffused among the individuals with whom it originally resided, and which, although without form and without voice, is nevertheless the only absolute and permanently legitimate authority. In fact, there is a sovereign, which not only does not govern, but which obeys, while there is a government which commands, but is not sovereign.