第19章

The compact could bind only temporarily, and could at any moment be dissolved.Mr.Jefferson saw this, and very consistently maintained that one generation has no power to bind another; and, as if this was not enough, he asserted the right of revolution, and gave it as his opinion that in every nation a revolution once in every generation is desirable, that is, according to his reckoning, once every nineteen years.The doctrine that one generation has no power to bind its successor is not only a logical conclusion from the theory that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, since a generation cannot give its consent before it is born, but is very convenient for a nation that has contracted a large national debt; yet, perhaps, not so convenient to the public creditor, since the new generation may take it into its head not to assume or discharge the obligations of its predecessor, but to repudiate them.No man, certainly, can contract for any one but himself; and how then can the son be bound, without his own personal or individual consent, freely given, by the obligations entered into by his father?

The social compact is necessarily limited to the individuals who form it, and as necessarily, unless renewed, expires with them.

It thus creates no state, no political corporation, which survives in all its rights and powers, though individuals die.

The state is on this theory a voluntary association, and in principle, except that it is not a secret society, in no respect differs from the Carbonari, or the Knights of the Golden Circle.

When Orsini attempted to execute the sentence of death on the Emperor of the French, in obedience to the order of the Carbonari, of which the Emperor was a member, he was, if the theory of the origin of government in compact be true, no more an assassin than was the officer who executed on the gallows the rebel spies and incendiaries Beal and Kennedy.

Certain it is that the alleged social compact has in it no social or civil element.It does not and cannot create society.It can give only an aggregation of individuals, and society is not an aggregation nor even an organization of individuals.It is an organism, and individuals live in its life as well as it in theirs.There is a real living solidarity, which makes individuals members of the social body, and members one of another.

There is no society without individuals, and there are no individuals without society; but in society there is that which is not individual, and is more than all individuals.The social compact is an attempt to substitute for this real living solidarity, which gives to society at once unity of life and diversity of members, an artificial solidarity, a fictitious unity for a real unity, and membership by contract for real living membership, a cork leg for that which nature herself gives.

Real government has its ground in this real living solidarity, and represents the social element, which is not individual, but above all individuals, as man is above men.But the theory substitutes a simple agency for government, and makes each individual its principal.It is an abuse of language to call this agency a government.It has no one feature or element of government.It has only an artificial unity, based on diversity;its authority is only personal, individual, and in no sense a public authority, representing a public will, a public right, or a public interest.In no country could government be adopted and sustained if men were left to the wisdom or justness of their theories, or in the general affairs of life, acted on them.