![]() ![]() 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 ![]()
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