of kings was severely questioned, while
the theory that government is an insti-
tution of the people clearly emerged.
John Locke, writing only a few years
later, was very careful to indicate that
governors can be only the trustees of the
public will.7 He considered governors,
the executives of government, to have
no more power than that exercised at
the will of the legislature.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Le Con-
trat Social more explicitly opposed the
theory of government by contract. Leg-
islators, in his thinking necessary to
guide and inform the general will of the
sovereign state toward the good of the
society, are of the people and are "com-
missioned" to exercise only the general
will. Full sovereignty remains in the
people and can neither be sold nor given
away.
Rousseau believed that only power
could be delegated, never will. He
thought that it was through the exercise
of the general will that all power became
authority. Following this thought, it
would be beyond the power of a gover-
nor to exercise his personal will or even
to act by prerogative, that is, where the
society is silent and its will unknown.
It is by Rousseau's definition of govern-
ment that one understands Rousseau's
failure to recognize the existence of a
government contract. "Government,"
he stated, "is an intermediate body set
up to serve as a means of communica-
tions between subjects and sovereign,
and it is charged with the execution of
the laws and the maintenance of liberty,
both civil and political."8 In other
7 J. locke, Second Treatise on Civil Gov-
ernment, in social contract (1962).
8 3 J. rousseau, Du contrat social Ou
principes Du droit politique 273 (Gar-
nier Frerer ed. 1962).
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words, to Rousseau, government was the
legitimate exercise of the executive
power where the creation of an execu-
tive and the legitimacy of his power
were both in accordance solely with the
general will and for the good of the
state. Rousseau admitted that mon-
archy might be most effective, but he
considered quite important the problem
of endowing monarchs with all the vir-
tues they ought to have. Unlike Mon-
tesquieu, Rousseau was unafraid of his
contemporaries and literary censors who
were eager to accuse and. have convicted
the enlightened authors of high treason.
By further asserting that monarchs are
inevitably subject to corruption, Rous-
seau dealt a deathblow to the concept
of government by contract.
With the demise of the idea that
government arises from the solemn
binding obligations which are estab-
lished by original contract between a
people and their king, came the slow
birth of a new idea based upon the
concept that the origins of government
arose out of the delegation of the
people's sovereign power. Whereas the
compact theory may have originally
implied an ideal situation wherein all
members of a society sit around a mas-
sive table and form an "original com-
pact" to which all present give their
explicit consent,9 to conceive of the
social compact as this alone is to refuse
to cross the bridge between theory and
the actual world, and may unfortunately
yield an absolute denial of any validity
in this theory which flourished for more
than a hundred and fifty years.
David Hume assured his readers in
Of the Original Contract that "human
9 Contract and compact are used inter-
changeably. See J. gough, the social con-
tract: A critical study of its develop-
ment (1957).
3
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