any country.
What is to be done with them? Leave them without government? Extend
the power of the government over them? By what right? Government
derives its just powers from the consent of the governed, and that
consent they have not given. Whence does one-fourth of the population
get its right to govern the other three-fourths?

But what is to be done with the rights of minorities? Is the rule of
unanimity to be insisted on in the convention and in the government,
when it goes into operation? Unanimity is impracticable, for where
there are many men there will be differences of opinion. The rule of
unanimity gives to each individual a veto on the whole proceeding,
which was the grand defect of the Polish constitution. Each member of
the Polish Diet, which included the whole body of the nobility, had an
absolute veto, and could, alone, arrest the whole action of the
government. Will you substitute the rule of the majority, and say the
majority must govern? By what right? It is agreed to in the
convention. Unanimously, or only by a majority? The right of the
majority to have their will is, on the social compact theory, a
conventional right, and therefore cannot come into play before the
convention is completed, or the social compact is framed and accepted.
How, in settling the terms of the compact, will you proceed? By
majorities? But suppose a minority objects, and demands two-thirds,
three-fourths, or four-fifths, and votes against the majority rule,
which is carried only by a simple plurality of votes, will the
proceedings of the convention bind the dissenting minority? What gives
to the majority the right to govern the minority who dissent from its
action?

On the supposition that society has rights not derived from
individuals, and which are intrusted to the government, there is a good
reason why the majority should prevail within the legitimate sphere of
government, because the majority is the best representative practicable
of society itself; and if the constitution secures to minorities and
dissenting individuals their natural rights and their equal rights as
citizens, they have no just cause of complaint, for the majority in
such case has no power to tyrannize over them or to oppress them. But
the theory under examination denies that society has any rights except
such as it derives from individuals who all have equal rights.
According to it, society is itself conventional, and created by free