The Social Contract - 15
---Chapter xii : The Categories of Law---
★composite 混合成的
In addition to these three categories of law there is a fourth,
which is the most important of all; it is not graven in
marble大理石 or bronze, but in citizens' hearts;
-
in it lies the true constitution of the state;
-
when other laws decay or become extinct it revives or replaces
them, it maintains in the nation the spirit of its constitution,
and imperceptibly changes the force of authority into the
force of habit.
-
I refer to moral standards, to custom, and above all
to public opinion: a part of law that is unknown to our
political theorists.
===BOOK III===
---Chapter i : Government in General---
！！！
I SHOULD warn my readers that this chapter must be read
without haste匆忙, and that I am ignorant of the art of making
myself clear to those who do not wish to concentrate.
What, then, is government? It is an intermediate★中间的 body set
up between subjects and sovereign to ensure their mutual
correspondence★交流/通信, and is entrusted with the execution
of laws and with the maintenance of liberty, both social
and political.
The members of this body are called officers or kings that is
to say governors, and the body as a whole has the name of ruler.
Those who maintain [★that the act by which a people
submits to the authority of chiefs is not a
contract★]are perfectly correct.
那些认为众人向首领屈从的行为不是一种契约的人是完全正确的.
★incompatible 不相配的/合不来的
If the sovereign
insists on governing, or the officers of government insist on
making laws, or the subjects refuse to obey, control is replaced
by disorder, will and force no longer act in harmony, and the
state disintegrates破裂, falling into despotism砖制 or anarchy无秩序.
Let us suppose that the state is composed of
ten thousand citizens.
-
In other words, each member of the state has
only one ten-thousandth share of the sovereign
authority, although he is entirely subject to it.
-
If the population consists of a hundred thousand men, the
position of the subject stays unaltered, each submitting
equally to the whole authority of the laws, while the power
of his vote is reduced to one hundred-thousandth, and his
influence over the creation of law is ten times less.
-★★★
Whence it follows that the larger the state becomes, the
more liberty decreases.
The smaller the relationship between the wills of individuals
and the general will, that is, between moral standards
and the law, the greater the force of restraint should be.
-
If, therefore, the government is to be a good one, it
must be proportionately stronger according as the size
of the population increases.
From another point of view, since any increase in the size of
a state gives those who are entrusted with public authority
greater temptation, and greater opportunities, to abuse their
power, it follows that the greater the strength possessed by the
government for the restraint of the people, the greater should
be the strength that is possessed by the sovereign in its turn, in
order to restrain the government.
