Book 2, Chapter 2 — That Sovereignty Is Indivisible

Sovereignty is indivisible for the same reason it is inalienable: a will is general or it is not. There is no such thing as a partially general will. When theorists divide sovereignty into legislative and executive, into the power of taxation and the power of justice, into foreign and domestic spheres, they are not analyzing sovereignty but confusing it with its instruments. The acts they mistake for parts of sovereignty — declaring war, making peace, levying taxes — are not acts of the sovereign in the strict sense; they are particular applications of laws, carried out by the government. They presuppose sovereign decisions but are not themselves sovereign.

The fairground image makes the error vivid. The juggler dismembers the child, throws the parts into the air, and reassembles the child alive — but the child was never actually dismembered; the dismemberment was an illusion. Similarly, political theorists appear to divide sovereignty into pieces, then reassemble a functioning state — but the sovereignty was never divided; what was divided were the functions of administration. The Sovereign remains one and whole throughout, or it is nothing.

Rousseau closes with a sharp note on Grotius and his translator Barbeyrac, both of whom he catches tangling themselves in their own sophistries — afraid to say too little for the people's rights and too much against the interests they needed to flatter. Grotius dedicated his book to Louis XIII; Barbeyrac his translation to George I. Both had to manage the contradiction between their theoretical principles and their political patrons. Truth, Rousseau observes, is no road to fortune, and the people distributes neither ambassadorships nor pensions.