nts derive their just powers from the consent of the governed,
since a generation cannot give its consent before it is born, but is
very convenient for a nation that has contracted a large national debt;
yet, perhaps, not so convenient to the public creditor, since the new
generation may take it into its head not to assume or discharge the
obligations of its predecessor, but to repudiate them. No man,
certainly, can contract for any one but himself; and how then can the
son be bound, without his own personal or individual consent, freely
given, by the obligations entered into by his father?

The social compact is necessarily limited to the individuals who form
it, and as necessarily, unless renewed, expires with them. It thus
creates no state, no political corporation, which survives in all its
rights and powers, though individuals die. The state is on this theory
a voluntary association, and in principle, except that it is not a
secret society, in no respect differs from the Carbonari, or the
Knights of the Golden Circle. When Orsini attempted to execute the
sentence of death on the Emperor of the French, in obedience to the
order of the Carbonari, of which the Emperor was a member, he was, if
the theory of the origin of government in compact be true, no more an
assassin than was the officer who executed on the gallows the rebel
spies and incendiaries Beal and Kennedy.

Certain it is that the alleged social compact has in it no social or
civil element. It does not and cannot create society. It can give
only an aggregation of individuals, and society is not an aggregation
nor even an organization of individuals. It is an organism, and
individuals live in its life as well as it in theirs. There is a real
living solidarity, which makes individuals members of the social body,
and members one of another. There is no society without individuals,
and there are no individuals without society; but in society there is
that which is not individual, and is more than all individuals. The
social compact is an attempt to substitute for this real living
solidarity, which gives to society at once unity of life and diversity
of members, an artificial solidarity, a fictitious unity for a real
unity, and membership by contract for real living membership, a cork
leg for that which nature herself gives. Real government has its ground
in this real living solidarity, and represents the social element,
which is not individual, but above