Sovereigns. Those to whom the will of the people has conferred the power necessary for governing society.

Man, in the state of nature, knows no sovereign . Each individual is equal to every other and enjoys the most perfect independence. In this state, there is no subordination other than that of the child to the father. Natural needs, and above all the necessity to combine forces in order to defend against the plots of their enemies, lead several men or several families to come together in order to create a single family called society . And thus, it is apprehended at once that as long as each individual continues to exercise his will—to use his strength and independence and to give free reign to his passions—the situation of each individual will be unhappier than if he lived alone. Consequently, one perceives that each man must renounce a part of his natural independence in order to submit to a will which represents that of all society and which is, so to speak, the common center and point of reunion for all individual wills and forces. Such is the origin of sovereigns . One sees that their power and their rights are founded only on the consent of the people; those who establish themselves by violence are only usurpers. Sovereigns become legitimate only when the consent of the people has confirmed the rights which they have seized.

Men maintain society only in order to be happier. Society elects its sovereigns only in order to more effectively guard its happiness and its preservation. The well-being of society depends on its security, its liberty, and its ability to procure these advantages. The sovereign must be a power sufficient to establish order and tranquility amongst the citizens, in order to insure their possessions, protect the weak against the plots of the strong, restrain the passions by punishment, and encourage the virtues with rewards. The right to make laws in society is called legislative power . See Legislation.

But the power the sovereign has to make laws is useless unless he has at the same time the power to execute them. The passions and interests of men are always opposed to the general good. It is only in the distance that the general good can be seen; there it appears contrary to men’s particular interests, which are ceaselessly in front of their own eyes. Therefore, the sovereign must be endowed with the force necessary to make each particular will obey the general laws, which are the will of all: this is what is called executive power .

The people have not always given the same expanse of power to their elected sovereign . Experiences throughout time have taught us that the greater the power of men, the more they carry their passions to the point of abuse. This consideration has driven some nations to maintain limits upon the power of those who are charged to govern. These limitations of sovereignty have varied, depending upon the circumstances, the people’s love of liberty being greater or lesser, and the degree of inconvenience to which they have been exposed under overly arbitrary sovereigns . It is these variables that have given birth to the different divisions that have been made concerning sovereignty and the different forms of government. In England, the legislative power resides in the king and in parliament. The latter body represents the nation which in this way, and in accordance with the British constitution, reserves for itself a portion of the sovereign power . However, the power to execute the laws has been reserved solely for the king. In the German Empire, the emperor can make laws only with the agreement of the states of the Empire. Nevertheless, the limitation of power must itself have certain boundaries. In order for the sovereign to work for the good of the state, it must be able to act and to take the measures necessary for this aim. Therefore, it would be a vice for a government to overly limit the powers placed in the hands of the sovereign . This vice is easily apprehended in the Swedish and Polish governments.

Certain other peoples have not acted expressly and authentically in order to stipulate the limits that are to be fixed upon their sovereigns . These peoples are content to impose the necessity of following the fundamental laws of the state, while entrusting the legislative and executive powers elsewhere. This is what is called absolute sovereignty . However, reason makes us see that there are always natural limits. A sovereign , even one that is absolute, does not have the right to touch the constitutive laws of a state, nor may it interfere with religion; it cannot alter the form of government, nor can it change the order of succession, at least without the formal authorization of the nation. Otherwise, the sovereign is always submitted to the laws of justice and to those of reason from which no human force may be exempt.

When an absolute sovereign assumes the right to change the fundamental laws of the country to its will—when it lays claim to an arbitrary power over the personage and possessions of its people—it becomes a despot. No people has either the willingness or the ability to grant a power of this nature to its sovereigns . If they have done so, nature and reason always allow the people to reclaim their rights against such a violation. See the article Power. Tyranny is nothing other than the exercise of despotism.

When sovereignty resides solely in one man, whether it is absolute or limited, it is called monarchy . When it resides in the people themselves, it is extended to all, and it is not susceptible to limitation, it is called democracy . This was the case in the city of the Athenians, in which sovereignty resided entirely in the people. Sovereignty is sometimes exercised by a body or an assembly which represents the people, as in republican states.

Regardless of the hands in which the sovereign power is placed, its only object should be to return [ rendre ] happiness to the people who submit to it. That which renders [ rend ] men unhappy is a clear usurpation and a reversal of the rights which man has never been able to renounce. The sovereign has a duty to provide security to its subjects; it is only in this regard that they are to submit to its authority. See Protection. It should establish order by salutary laws. It also must be authorized to change them as the necessity of circumstances demand. It should restrain those who wish to alienate others from their joy and possessions, their liberty, or their person. It has the right to establish tribunals and magistrates who pronounce justice and who punish the guilty in accordance with sure and invariable laws. These laws are called civil in order to distinguish them from natural laws and the fundamental laws from which the sovereign itself cannot depart. As it can change civil laws, some persons think that it should not be submitted to them. However, it is natural that the sovereign itself conform to the laws, as long as they are in force; doing so contributes to their being rendered respectable to the subjects.

After having guarded the internal security of the state, the sovereign should attend to its external security—this depends upon its wealth and military strength. In order to attain this aim, it has to manage the areas of agriculture, population, and commerce. It has to seek to maintain peace with its neighbors without neglecting either military discipline or the strength which renders the nation respectable to all those spoiling to bring it harm or to disturb its tranquility. From birth, sovereigns have the right to make war, to declare peace, and to form alliances, etc. See Peace, War, Capability.

Such are the principal rights of sovereignty, such are the rights of sovereigns . History supplies us with numerous examples of oppressive princes, broken laws, and rebellious subjects. If sovereigns are governed by reason, the people have no need to bind those sovereigns’ hands or to live in continual defiance of them. When the heads of nations are content to labor for the happiness of their subjects, they do not seek to trespass upon their rights. But by a fatal flaw of human nature, men continually attempt to overextend their power. In their prudence, the people have willed their opposition to some dikes [that restrain them]; in fact, it is only ambition and force that come to the brink of breaking or bypassing these dikes altogether. Sovereigns have an excessively great advantage over the people: the depravity of a single will in the sovereign is all that is necessary in order to endanger or even destroy the felicity of its subjects. In such a case, the people can rarely attain either the unanimity or the concurrence of will and force necessary in order to suppress the sovereign’s unjust plots.

It is a deathly error to the happiness of the people—and one to which sovereigns fall prey only too regularly—to think that sovereignty becomes debased from the moment that its rights are marked by limits. The heads of nations who labor for the felicity of their subjects, thereby assuring their love, find in them a prompt obeisance; these heads of nations will always be redoubtable to their enemies. Sir Temple said to Charles II: “A king of England who is the man of his people is the greatest king in the world. But if he aspires to be something more, then he becomes nothing.” The monarch responded: “I aspire to be a man of my people.” See the articles Power, Authority, Capability, Subjects, Tyrant.