At the other extremity of the circle, unanimity recurs; this is the case when the citizens, having fallen into servitude, have lost both liberty and will.Fear and flattery then change votes into acclamation; deliberation ceases, and only worship or malediction is left.Such was the vile manner in which the senate expressed its views under the Emperors.It did so sometimes with absurd precautions.Tacitus observes that, under Otho, the senators, while they heaped curses on Vitellius, contrived at the same time to make a deafening noise, in order that, should he ever become their master, he might not know what each of them had said.
On these various considerations depend the rules by which the methods of counting votes and comparing opinions should be regulated, according as the general will is more or less easy to discover, and the State more or less in its decline.
There is but one law which, from its nature, needs unanimous consent.
This is the social compact; for civil association is the most voluntary of all acts.Every man being born free and his own master, no one, under any pretext whatsoever, can make any man subject without his consent.To decide that the son of a slave is born a slave is to decide that he is not born a man.
If then there are opponents when the social compact is made, their opposition does not invalidate the contract, but merely prevents them from being included in it.They are foreigners among citizens.When the State is instituted, residence constitutes consent; to dwell within its territory is to submit to the Sovereign.34Apart from this primitive contract, the vote of the majority always binds all the rest.This follows from the contract itself.But it is asked how a man can be both free and forced to conform to wills that are not his own.How are the opponents at once free and subject to laws they have not agreed to?
I retort that the question is wrongly put.The citizen gives his consent to all the laws, including those which are passed in spite of his opposition, and even those which punish him when he dares to break any of them.The constant will of all the members of the State is the general will; by virtue of it they are citizens and free.35 When in the popular assembly a law is proposed, what the people is asked is not exactly whether it approves or rejects the proposal, but whether it is in conformity with the general will, which is their will.Each man, in giving his vote, states his opinion on that point; and the general will is found by counting votes.When therefore the opinion that is contrary to my own prevails, this proves neither more nor less than that I was mistaken, and that what I thought to be the general will was not so.If my particular opinion had carried the day I should have achieved the opposite of what was my will; and it is in that case that I should not have been free.
This presupposes, indeed, that all the qualities of the general will still reside in the majority: when they cease to do so, whatever side a man may take, liberty is no longer possible.
In my earlier demonstration of how particular wills are substituted for the general will in public deliberation, I have adequately pointed out the practicable methods of avoiding this abuse; and I shall have more to say of them later on.I have also given the principles for determining the proportional number of votes for declaring that will.A difference of one vote destroys equality; a single opponent destroys unanimity; but between equality and unanimity, there are several grades of unequal division, at each of which this proportion may be fixed in accordance with the condition and the needs of the body politic.
There are two general rules that may serve to regulate this relation.
First, the more grave and important the questions discussed, the nearer should the opinion that is to prevail approach unanimity.Secondly, the more the matter in hand calls for speed, the smaller the prescribed difference in the numbers of votes may be allowed to become: where an instant decision has to be reached, a majority of one vote should be enough.The first of these two rules seems more in harmony with the laws, and the second with practical affairs.In any case, it is the combination of them that gives the best proportions for determining the majority necessary.3.ELECTIONS I N the elections of the prince and the magistrates, which are, as I have said, complex acts, there are two possible methods of procedure, choice and lot.Both have been employed in various republics, and a highly complicated mixture of the two still survives in the election of the Doge at Venice.
"Election by lot," says Montesquieu, "is democratic in nature." E3 I agree that it is so; but in what sense? "The lot," he goes on, "is a way of making choice that is unfair to nobody; it leaves each citizen a reasonable hope of serving his country." These are not reasons.
If we bear in mind that the election of rulers is a function of government, and not of Sovereignty, we shall see why the lot is the method more natural to democracy, in which the administration is better in proportion as the number of its acts is small.
In every real democracy, magistracy is not an advantage, but a burdensome charge which cannot justly be imposed on one individual rather than another.
The law alone can lay the charge on him on whom the lot falls.For, the conditions being then the same for all, and the choice not depending on any human will, there is no particular application to alter the universality of the law.
In an aristocracy, the prince chooses the prince, the government is preserved by itself, and voting is rightly ordered.
The instance of the election of the Doge of Venice confirms, instead of destroying, this distinction; the mixed form suits a mixed government.
For it is an error to take the government of Venice for a real aristocracy.