All they have a right in their circumstances to claim may be no more
than that whatever be the mode in which the positive laws are enacted,
these laws must not be contrary to the natural laws that demand the
freedom of all the people and the equality that is conformable
thereto; and it must therefore be made possible for them to raise
themselves from this passive condition in the state to the condition
of active citizenship.
47. Dignities in the State and the Original Contract.
All these three powers in the state are dignities; and, as
necessarily arising out of the idea of the state and essential
generally to the foundation of its constitution, they are to be
regarded as political dignities. They imply the relation between a
universal sovereign as head of the state- which according to the
laws of freedom can be none other than the people itself united into a
nation- and the mass of the individuals of the nation as subjects. The
former member of the relation is the ruling power, whose function is
to govern (imperans); the latter is the ruled constituents of the
state, whose function is to obey (subditi).
The act by which a people is represented as constituting itself into
a state, is termed the original contract. This is properly only an
outward mode of representing the idea by which the rightfulness of the
process of organizing the constitution may be made conceivable.
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