46. The Legislative Power and the Members of the State.
The legislative power, viewed in its rational principle, can only
belong to the united will of the people. For, as all right ought to
proceed from this power, it is necessary that its laws should be
unable to do wrong to any one whatever. Now, if any one individual
determines anything in the state in contradistinction to another, it
is always possible that he may perpetrate a wrong on that other; but
this is never possible when all determine and decree what is to be Law
to themselves. Volenti non fit injuria. Hence it is only the united
and consenting will of all the people- in so far as each of them
determines the same thing about all, and all determine the same
thing about each- that ought to have the power of enacting law in
the state.
The members of a civil society thus united for the purpose of
legislation, and thereby constituting a state, are called its
citizens; and there are three juridical attributes that inseparably
belong to them by right. These are: 1. constitutional freedom, as
the right of every citizen to have to obey no other law than that to
which he has given his consent or approval; 2. civil equality, as
the right of the citizen to recognise no one as a superior among the
people in relation to himself, except in so far as such a one is as
subject to his moral power to impose obligations, as that other has
power to impose obligations upon him; and 3.
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