Rousseau_contrat-social

interest changes and finds opponents: opinion is no longer unanimous;
the general will ceases to be the will of all; contradictory views and
debates arise; and the best advice is not taken without question.
Finally, when the State, on the eve of ruin, maintains only a vain,
illusory and formal existence, when in every heart the social bond is
broken, and the meanest interest brazenly lays hold of the sacred name
of "public good," the general will becomes mute: all men, guided by
secret motives, no more give their views as citizens than if the State
had never been; and iniquitous decrees directed solely to private
interest get passed under the name of laws.
Does it follow from this that the general will is exterminated or
corrupted? Not at all: it is always constant, unalterable and pure; but
it is subordinated to other wills which encroach upon its sphere. Each
man, in detaching his interest from the common interest, sees clearly
that he cannot entirely separate them; but his share in the public
mishaps seems to him negligible beside the exclusive good he aims at
making his own. Apart from this particular good, he wills the general
good in his own interest, as strongly as any one else. Even in selling
his vote for money, he does not extinguish in himself the general will,
but only eludes it. The fault he commits is that of changing the state
of the question, and answering something different from what he is
asked. Instead of saying, by his vote, "It is to the advantage of the
State," he says, "It is of advantage to this or that man or party that
this or that view should prevail." Thus the law of public order in
assemblies is not so much to maintain in them the general will as to
secure that the question be always put to it, and the answer always
given by it.
I could here set down many reflections on the simple right of voting in
every act of Sovereignty -- a right which no one can take from the
citizens -- and also on the right of stating views, making proposals,
dividing and discussing, which the government is always most careful to
leave solely to its members, but this important subject would need a
treatise to itself, and it is impossible to say everything in a single
work.
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