Rousseau_contrat-social

citizens increase and multiply most, is beyond question the best. The
government under which a people wanes and diminishes is the worst.
Calculators, it is left for you to count, to measure, to compare.[27]
10. THE ABUSE OF GOVERNMENT AND ITS TENDENCY TO
DEGENERATE
AS the particular will acts constantly in opposition to the general
will, the government continually exerts itself against the Sovereignty.
The greater this exertion becomes, the more the constitution changes;
and, as there is in this case no other corporate will to create an
equilibrium by resisting the will of the prince, sooner or later the
prince must inevitably suppress the Sovereign and break the social
treaty. This is the unavoidable and inherent defect which, from the very
birth of the body politic, tends ceaselessly to destroy it, as age and
death end by destroying the human body.
There are two general courses by which government degenerates: i.e.,
when it undergoes contraction, or when the State is dissolved.
Government undergoes contraction when it passes from the many to the
few, that is, from democracy to aristocracy, and from aristocracy to
royalty. To do so is its natural propensity.[28] If it took the backward
course from the few to the many, it could be said that it was relaxed;
but this inverse sequence is impossible.
Indeed, governments never change their form except when their energy is
exhausted and leaves them too weak to keep what they have. If a
government at once extended its sphere and relaxed its stringency, its
force would become absolutely nil, and it would persist still less. It
is therefore necessary to wind up the spring and tighten the hold as it
gives way: or else the State it sustains will come to grief.
The dissolution of the State may come about in either of two ways.
First, when the prince ceases to administer the State in accordance with
the laws, and usurps the Sovereign power. A remarkable change then
67