Rousseau_contrat-social

e-establishment of order; with the result that he takes advantage of a
silence he does not allow to be broken, or of irregularities he causes
to be committed, to assume that he has the support of those whom fear
prevents from speaking, and to punish those who dare to speak. Thus it
was that the decemvirs, first elected for one year and then kept on in
office for a second, tried to perpetuate their power by forbidding the
comitia to assemble; and by this easy method every government in the
world, once clothed with the public power, sooner or later usurps the
sovereign authority.
The periodical assemblies of which I have already spoken are designed to
prevent or postpone this calamity, above all when they need no formal
summoning; for in that case, the prince cannot stop them without openly
declaring himself a law-breaker and an enemy of the State.
The opening of these assemblies, whose sole object is the maintenance of
the social treaty, should always take the form of putting two
propositions that may not be suppressed, which should be voted on
separately.
The first is: "Does it please the Sovereign to preserve the present form
of government?"
The second is: "Does it please the people to leave its administration in
the hands of those who are actually in charge of it?"
I am here assuming what I think I have shown; that there is in the State
no fundamental law that cannot be revoked, not excluding the social
compact itself; for if all the citizens assembled of one accord to break
the compact, it is impossible to doubt that it would be very
legitimately broken. Grotius even thinks that each man can renounce his
membership of his own State, and recover his natural liberty and his
goods on leaving the country.[33] It would be indeed absurd if all the
citizens in assembly could not do what each can do by himself.
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