, or into his own verbal notion, and tells us what is to be
found in that, whereas we need to be told the marks and qualities that
distinguish the object which the word is meant to recall. Hence arises
his habit of setting himself questions, with reference to which we
cannot say that the answers are not true, but only that the questions
themselves were never worth asking. Here is an instance of his method
of supposing that to draw something from a verbal notion is to find
out something corresponding to fact. "We can distinguish in the
magistrate three essentially different wills: 1st, the will peculiar
to him as an individual, which only tends to his own particular
advantage; 2nd, the common will of the magistrates, which refers only
to the advantage of the prince [_i.e._ the government], and this we
may name corporate will, which is general in relation to the
government, and particular in relation to the state of which the
government is a part; 3rd, the will of the people or sovereign will,
which is general, as well in relation to the state considered as a
whole, as in relation to the government considered as part of the
whole."[202] It might be hard to prove that all this is not true, but
then it is unreal and comes to nothing, as we see if we take the
trouble to turn it into real matter. Thus a member of the British
House of Commons, who is a magistrate in Rousseau's sense, has three
essentially different wills: first, as a man, Mr. So-and-so; second,
his corporate will, as member of the chamber, and this will is general
in relation to the legislature, but particular in relation to the
whole body of electors and peers; third, his will as a member of the
great electoral body, which is a general will alike in relation to the
electoral body and to the legislature. An English publicist is
perfectly welcome to make assertions of this kind, if he chooses to do
so, and nobody will take the trouble to deny them. But they are
nonsense. They do not correspond to the real composition of a member
of parliament, nor do they shed the smallest light upon any part
either of the theory of government in general, or the working of our
own government in particular. Almost the same kind of observation
might be made of the famous dogmatic statements about sovereignty.
"Sovereignty, being only the exercise of the general will, can never
be alienated, and the sovereign, who is only a collective being, can
only be represented by himself: the