As soon as this need ceases, the natural bond is dissolved. The most ancient of all societies, and the only one that is natural is the family: and even so the children remain attached to the father only so long as they need him for their preservation.

Before coming to that, I have to prove what I have just asserted. Nevertheless, this right does not come from nature, and must therefore be founded on conventions. If I took into account only force, and the effects derived from it, I should say: “As long as a people is compelled to obey, and obeys, it does well as soon as it can shake off the yoke, and shakes it off, it does still better for, regaining its liberty by the same right as took it away, either it is justified in resuming it, or there was no justification for those who took it away.” But the social order is a sacred right which is the basis of all other rights. What can make it legitimate? That question I think I can answer. How did this change come about? I do not know. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they. Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains. If I were a prince or a legislator, I should not waste time in saying what wants doing I should do it, or hold my peace.Īs I was born a citizen of a free State, and a member of the Sovereign, I feel that, however feeble the influence my voice can have on public affairs, the right of voting on them makes it my duty to study them: and I am happy, when I reflect upon governments, to find my inquiries always furnish me with new reasons for loving that of my own country. I answer that I am neither, and that is why I do so. I enter upon my task without proving the importance of the subject I shall be asked if I am a prince or a legislator, to write on politics.

In this inquiry I shall endeavour always to unite what right sanctions with what is prescribed by interest, in order that justice and utility may in no case be divided.

I mean to inquire if, in the civil order, there can be any sure and legitimate rule of administration, men being taken as they are and laws as they might be. Book One of Jean Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract

The social contract rousseau