Sovereignty is the absolute and perpetual power of a commonwealth, which the Latins call maiestas; the Greeks akra exousia, kurion arche, and kurion politeuma; and the Italians segnioria, a word they use for private persons as well as for those who have full control of the state, while the Hebrews call it tomech shévet – that is, the highest power of command. We must now formulate a definition of sovereignty because no jurist or political philosopher has defined it, even though it is the chief point, and the one that needs most to be explained, in a treatise on the commonwealth. Inasmuch as we have said that a commonwealth is a just government, with sovereign power, of several households and of that which they have in common, we need to clarify the meaning of sovereign power.

I have said that this power is perpetual, because it can happen that one or more people have absolute power given to them for some certain period of time, upon the expiration of which they are no more than private subjects. And even while they are in power, they cannot call themselves sovereign princes. They are but trustees and custodians of that power until such time as it pleases the people or the prince to take it back, for the latter always remains in lawful possession (qui en demeure tousiours saisi).

[211] Since there is nothing greater on earth, after God, than sovereign princes, and since they have been established by Him as His lieutenants for commanding other men, we need to be precise about their status (qualité) so that we may respect and revere their majesty in complete [212] obedience, and do them honor in our thoughts and in our speech. Contempt for one's sovereign prince is contempt toward God, of whom he is the earthly image. That is why God, speaking to Samuel, from whom the people had demanded a different prince, said “It is me that they have wronged.”

To be able to recognize such a person – that is, a sovereign – we have to know his attributes (marques, nota), which are properties not shared by subjects. For if they were shared, there would be no sovereign prince. Yet the best writers on this subject have not treated this point with the clarity it deserves, whether from flattery, fear, hatred, or forgetfulness.

We read that Samuel, after consecrating the king that God had designated, wrote a book about the rights of majesty. But the Hebrews have written that the kings suppressed his book so that they could tyrannize their subjects. Melanchthon thus went astray in thinking that the rights of majesty were the abuses and tyrannical practices that Samuel pointed out to the people in a speech.

Now that we have spoken of sovereignty, and of the rights and marks thereof, we have to see, in any given commonwealth, who has sovereignty in order to determine what its state is. If sovereignty lies in a single prince, we will call it monarchy; if all of the people have a share, we will say that the state is democratic (populaire); if it is only the lesser part of the people, we will hold that the state [252] is aristocratic. We will employ [only] these terms in order to avoid the confusion and obscurity arising from the variety of good or bad rulers which has prompted many to distinguish more than three kinds of state. For if that opinion prevailed, and the state of a commonwealth were determined by some standard of virtue or vice, there would be a world of them. But it is clear that to have true definitions and resolutions in any subject matter, one must fix not on accidents, which are innumerable, but on essential differences of form. Otherwise one could fall into an infinite labyrinth which does not admit of scientific knowledge. One would be coining types of state not only from the whole range of virtues and vices, but also from things that are morally indifferent, such as whether the monarch was chosen for his strength, or for his good looks, or for his height, or for his nobility [of birth], or for his wealth, which are all indifferent things.

Preface to the Fourth Edition

Since the former editions of the following discourse, many animadversions upon it have been published. Under the abuse with which some of them are accompanied, I have been comforted by finding myself joined to the City of Paris, and the National Assembly of France. I cannot think of employing my time in making any replies. Knowing that it has been the labour of my life to promote those interests of liberty, peace, and virtue, which I reckon the best interests of mankind, and believing that I have not laboured quite in vain, I feel a satisfaction that no opposition can take from me, and shall submit myself in silence to the judgment of the public without taking any other notice of the abuse I have met with than by mentioning the following instance of it.

In p. 195,I have adopted the words of Scripture, Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace and expressed my gratitude to God for having spared my life to see a ‘diffusion of knowledge that has undermined superstition and error, a vast kingdom spurning at slavery, and an arbitrary monarch led in triumph and surrendering himself to his subjects’. These words have occasioned a comparison of me (by Mr. Burke in his Reflections on the Revolution in France) to Hugh Peters, attended with an intimation that like him, I may not die in peace, and he has described me, p. 99, etc. as a barbarian delighted with blood, profaning Scripture, and exulting in the riot and slaughter at Versailles on the 6th of October last year.

Matthew vi. 10

Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. These words, being a part of the Lord's prayer, must be perfectly familiar to you. It is evident that by the kingdom mentioned in them is meant, not that absolute dominion of the Deity by which he does whatever he pleases in the Armies of Heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, but that moral kingdom which consists in the voluntary obedience of reasonable beings to his laws and, particularly, that kingdom of the Messiah which our Saviour came to establish.

The same kingdom is undoubtedly here meant with that which we are told in the Gospel history the apostles went about preaching every where and declaring to be at hand, which the Jews at the time this prayer was framed were impatiently expecting, and which in their religious services they were continually praying for in the words, May his kingdom reign. May the Messiah come, and deliver his people.

This kingdom is described in the prophecy of Daniel under the character of a kingdom which the God of heaven was to set up in the time of the fourth temporal kingdom upon earth (or the Roman empire) and which was to be given to the Son of Man, and to increase gradually till it broke in pieces all other kingdoms, and filled the whole earth.

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Having reason to hope I should be attended to in the American States and thinking I saw an opening there favourable to the improvement and best interests of mankind, I have been induced to convey thither the sentiments and advice contained in the following Observations. They were, therefore, originally intended only for America. The danger of a spurious edition has now obliged me to publish them in my own country.

I should be inexcusable did I not take this opportunity to express my gratitude to a distinguished writer (the Count de Mirabeau) for his translation of these Observations into French, and for the support and kind civility with which it has been accompanied …

I think it necessary to add that I have expressed myself in some respects too strongly in the conclusion of the following Observations. By accounts from persons the best informed, I have lately been assured that no such dissentions exist among the American States as have been given out in this country, that the new governments are in general well settled, and the people happy under them, and that, in particular, a conviction is becoming universal of the necessity of giving more strength to that power which forms and which is to conduct and maintain their union.

Sect. I

Of the Nature of Civil Liberty, and the Essentials of a Free Government

With respect to Liberty in general there are two questions to be considered:

First, what it is? and secondly, how far it is of value? There is no difficulty in answering the first of these questions. To be free, is ‘to be able to act or forbear acting, as we think best’ or ‘to be masters of our own resolutions and conduct’. It may be pretended that it is not desirable to be thus free, but, without doubt, this it is to be free, and this is what all mean when they say of themselves or others that they are free.

I have observed that all the different kinds of liberty run up into the general idea of self-government. The liberty of men as agents is that power of self-determination which all agents, as such, possess. Their liberty as moral agents is their power of self-government in their moral conduct. Their liberty as religious agents is their power of selfgovernment in religion. And their liberty as members of communities associated for the purposes of civil government is their power of selfgovernment in all their civil concerns. It is liberty in the last of these views of it that is the subject of my present enquiry, and it may, in other words, be defined to be ‘the power of a state to govern itself by its own will’.

General Introduction

The first of the following tracts was published in the beginning of the year 1776 and the second in the beginning of last year.

The principal design of the first part of the second tract was … to remove the misapprehensions of my sentiments on civil liberty and government into which some had fallen. It gives me concern to find that it has not answered that end in the degree I wished. I am still charged with maintaining opinions which tend to subvert all civil authority. I paid little regard to this charge while it was confined to the advocates for the principles which have produced the present war; but as it seems lately to have been given the public from the authority of a writer of the first character, it is impossible I should not be impressed by it; and I find myself under a necessity of taking farther notice of it.

There are two accounts, directly opposite to one another, which have been given of the origin of civil government. One of them is that ‘civil government is an expedient contrived by human prudence for gaining security against oppression, and that, consequently, the power of civil governors is a delegation or trust from the people for accomplishing this end’.

The other account is that ‘civil government is an ordinance of the Deity, by which the body of mankind are given up to the will of a few, and, consequently, that it is a trust from the Deity, in the exercise of which civil governors are accountable only to him’.

Numberless are the calamities to which we are liable in this world. There are few of us who have not some share of trouble allotted us, either in our persons, or families, or fortunes. But, if happily exempted from troubles of this kind, there are troubles of a public nature which are very shocking and which at present throw a dark cloud over all our views and hopes. In such circumstances we are necessarily led to look out for consolation. It would be dreadful to suffer under present evils and to be under a necessity perhaps of looking forward to future greater evils, without any considerations that have a tendency to abate anxiety and mitigate pain. But this is not our condition. There are many springs of comfort to which in the worst circumstances we may have recourse, and which will help to reconcile us to our lot, and to give us patience and fortitude. Most of them, however, are of little moment compared with the two following; I mean, ‘the consideration of the perfect government of the deity’, and ‘the prospect of a future better state’. These are the grand springs of consolation amidst the evils of life and wretched is the person who, either from scepticism, or inattention, or viciousness of character, loses the hope and satisfaction which they are fitted to afford.