ROUSSEAU—Although this politician, the paramount authority of the Democrats, makes the social edifice rest upon the general will, no one has so completely admitted the hypothesis of the entire passiveness of human nature in the presence of the lawgiver:
If it is true that a great prince is a rare thing, how
much more so must a great lawgiver be? The former has only
to follow the pattern proposed to him by the latter. This
latter is the engineer who invents the machine; the former
is merely the workman who sets it in motion.
And what part have men to act in all this? That of the machine, which is set in motion; or rather, are they not the brute matter of which the machine is made? Thus, between the legislator and the prince, between the prince and his subjects, there are the same relations as those that exist between the agricultural writer and the agriculturist, the agriculturist and the clod. At what a vast height, then, is the politician placed, who rules over legislators themselves and teaches them their trade in such imperative terms as the following:
Would you give consistency to the State? Bring the
extremes together as much as possible. Suffer neither
wealthy persons nor beggars. If the soil is poor and barren,
or the country too much confined for the inhabitants, turn
to industry and the arts, whose productions you will
exchange for the provisions which you require.... On a good
soil, if you are short of inhabitants, give all your
attention to agriculture, which multiplies men, and banish
the arts, which only serve to depopulate the country.... Pay
attention to extensive and convenient coasts. Cover the sea
with vessels, and you will have a brilliant and short
existence. If your seas wash only inaccessible rocks, let
the people be barbarous, and eat fish; they will live more
quietly, perhaps better, and most certainly more happily. In
short, besides those maxims which are common to all, every
people has its own particular circumstances, which demand a
legislation peculiar to itself.
It was thus that the Hebrews formerly, and the Arabs more
recently, had religion for their principal object; that of
the Athenians was literature; that of Carthage and Tyre,
commerce; of Rhodes, naval affairs; of Sparta, war; and of
Rome, virtue.
The author of the "Spirit of Laws" has shown the art by which the legislator should frame his institutions towards each of these objects.... But if the legislator, mistaking his object, should take up a principle different from that which arises from the nature of things; if one should tend to slavery, and the other to liberty; if one to wealth, and the other to population; one to peace, and the other to conquests; the laws will insensibly become enfeebled, the Constitution will be impaired, and the State will be subject to incessant agitations until it is destroyed, or becomes changed, and invincible Nature regains her empire.
But if Nature is sufficiently invincible to regain its empire, why does not Rousseau admit that it had no need of the legislator to gain its empire from the beginning?
Why does he not allow that by obeying their own impulse, men would of themselves apply agriculture to a fertile district, and commerce to extensive and commodious coasts without the interference of a Lycurgus, a Solon, or a Rousseau, who would undertake it at the risk of deceiving themselves?
Be that as it may, we see with what a terrible responsibility Rousseau invests inventors, institutors, conductors, and manipulators of societies. He is, therefore, very exacting with regard to them.