DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.52538#0087
77
this absolute delegation of all executive power to the govern-
ment for a period of time, without means of holding the gov-
ernment in check during that time :
‘ ‘ The government itself, which is only the mode which
the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable
to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it.
Witness the present Mexican war, the work of comparatively few
individuals using the standing government as their tool, for in
the outset the people would never have consented to such a
measure.”*
b. Principle of Majority-Government False.
Rousseau thought to get over this danger of the perver-
sion of government to serve individual ends by excluding from
his ideal state all exercise of the individual will. It is one of
the conditions of the framing of the social contract that the
individual will shall sink itself entirely in the common will
(volonte general). What this common will is, what consti-
tutes it and how it is to be arrived at, Rosseau does not explain.
He does not appear to have meant it to be in any sense
synonymous with the will of all or the majority (volonte de
tous), yet he writes :
‘ ‘ Plus les deliberations sont important etgrave, plus 1’avis,
qui l’emporte doit approcher de 1’unanimite.”f
It seems difficult to eliminate the individual element or
to obtain more than government by majority, and the con-
stitution of Rousseau's compacted State is after all scarcely less
framed for perfect beings than the ‘ ‘ impossible ’ ’ democratic
constitution. In America the principle has always prevailed
that the majority carries the day. Thoreau does not consider
this to be based upon any moral law, but upon the purely
brutal “ might is right”—
“ Majority rules—not because most likely to be in the
right, but because they are physically the strongest. A gov-
ernment in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be
based on justice even as men understand it.”J
* Miscellanies, p. 132.
t Contrat Social, p. 146.
i Miscellanies, p. 133.
this absolute delegation of all executive power to the govern-
ment for a period of time, without means of holding the gov-
ernment in check during that time :
‘ ‘ The government itself, which is only the mode which
the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable
to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it.
Witness the present Mexican war, the work of comparatively few
individuals using the standing government as their tool, for in
the outset the people would never have consented to such a
measure.”*
b. Principle of Majority-Government False.
Rousseau thought to get over this danger of the perver-
sion of government to serve individual ends by excluding from
his ideal state all exercise of the individual will. It is one of
the conditions of the framing of the social contract that the
individual will shall sink itself entirely in the common will
(volonte general). What this common will is, what consti-
tutes it and how it is to be arrived at, Rosseau does not explain.
He does not appear to have meant it to be in any sense
synonymous with the will of all or the majority (volonte de
tous), yet he writes :
‘ ‘ Plus les deliberations sont important etgrave, plus 1’avis,
qui l’emporte doit approcher de 1’unanimite.”f
It seems difficult to eliminate the individual element or
to obtain more than government by majority, and the con-
stitution of Rousseau's compacted State is after all scarcely less
framed for perfect beings than the ‘ ‘ impossible ’ ’ democratic
constitution. In America the principle has always prevailed
that the majority carries the day. Thoreau does not consider
this to be based upon any moral law, but upon the purely
brutal “ might is right”—
“ Majority rules—not because most likely to be in the
right, but because they are physically the strongest. A gov-
ernment in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be
based on justice even as men understand it.”J
* Miscellanies, p. 132.
t Contrat Social, p. 146.
i Miscellanies, p. 133.