State does not suffice; other fixed
and periodical assemblies are necessary which cannot be abolished or
extended, so arranged that on a given day the people may be legitimately
convoked by the law, no other formal conviction being requisite. . . The
moment the people are thus assembled the jurisdiction of the government
is to cease, and the executive power is to be suspended," society
commencing anew, while citizens, restored to their primitive
independence, may reconstitute at will, for any period they determine,
the provisional contract to which they have assented only for a
determined time. "The opening of these assemblies, whose sole object
is to maintain the social compact, should always take place with two
propositions, never suppressed, and which are to be voted on separately;
the first one, whether the sovereign( people) is willing to maintain
the actual form of the government; the second, whether the people are
willing to leave its administration in the hands of those actually
performing its duties."--Thus, "the act by which a people is subject
to its chiefs is absolutely only a commission, a service in which, as
simple officers of their sovereign, they exercise in his name the power
of which he has made them depositories, and which he may modify, limit
and resume at pleasure."[3418] Not only does it always reserve to itself
"the legislative power which belongs to it and which can belong only to
it," but again, it delegates and withdraws the executive power according
to its fancy. Those who exercise it are its employees. "It may establish
and depose them when it pleases." In relation to it they have no rights.
"It is not a matter of contract with them but one of obedience;"
they have "no conditions" to prescribe; they cannot demand of it the
fulfillment of any engagement.--It is useless to raise the objection
that, according to this, every man of spirit or of culture will decline
our offices, and that our chiefs will bear the character of lackeys.
We will not leave them the freedom of accepting or declining office;
we impose it on them authoritatively. "In every true democracy the
magistrature is not an advantage but an onerous burden, not to
be assigned to one more than to another." We can lay hands on our
magistrates, take them by the collar and set them on their benches in
spite of themselves. By fair means or foul they are the working subjects
(corveables) of the State, in a lower condition than a valet or a