The Social Contract - 20zy
---Chapter xii:How Sovereign Authority Is Maintained---
★★★In moral matters the limits of the possible are less?
narrow than we think: it is our weaknesses, our vices,?
and our prejudices that reduce them(moral matters).?
-
Low minds do not believe in great men;?
worthless slaves smile in mockery at the word liberty.
---Chapter xiii : The Same Continued---
★complimentary免費(fèi)的/表示贊許的!
★complementary互補(bǔ)的!
Spread the population evenly★均勻地 through your territory,?
extend the same rights everywhere, and everywhere bring life?
and abundance: this is the way to make the state as strong?
and as well governed as possible.
-
Remember that town walls are always built from the ruins?
of houses that stood in fields.Whenever I see a palace being?
built in a capital city, I seem to see a whole country?
reduced to living in hovels茅舍.
---Chapter xiv : The Same Continued---
★If the people is grasping★貪婪的, faint-hearted懦弱的,?
and cowardly,fonder of leisure安逸 than of liberty, it will?
not hold out for long against constant pressure from?
the government;?
---Chapter xv:Deputies代表 or Representatives---
As soon as serving the public is no longer the main concern
of the citizens, and they prefer not to give service themselves,
but to use their purses錢包, the state is already near to ruin.?
-
Is there a battle to be fought?—they pay for troops and stay at home;
are public decisions to be made?—they choose deputies and
stay at home.?
-
Through being lazy and having money, they end
up with soldiers to oppress壓迫 their country and?
representatives to sell it.
Service done in person is changed into money because
people are busy with their trade or craft, greedily self-interested
for profit, lovers of comfort and material possessions
★★★Pay out money, and soon you will be in chains.
The word finance is for slaves, it is unknown in a real state.?
-
In a truly free state, the citizens do everything with?
their own hands, and nothing with money: far from paying?
in order to be exempted from their duties, they would pay?
in order to carry them out themselves.
I believe that taxes are more contrary to freedom than the
enforced labour of the corvee[法]強(qiáng)制勞役.? ??????
The people's deputies are not its representatives,?
therefore, nor can they be, but are only its?
agents; they cannot make definitive決定性的 decisions.
-
Any law that the people in person has not ratified認(rèn)可?
is void; it is not a law.?
-★★★
The people of England believes itself to be free; it is
quite wrong: it is free only during the elections of?
Members of Parliament. Once they are elected, the people?
is enslaved, it is nothing.
The idea of representation★表現(xiàn) is modern: it came from?
feudalism, that unjust and absurd form of government?
which degrades降低/貶低 the human race, and under which the?
name of man was dishonourable.(使“人”這個(gè)名字不光彩)
-
In the ancient republics, and even monarchies,
the people never had representatives: the word?
itself was unknown.?
-
It is a most remarkable thing that in Rome, where
the tribunes護(hù)民官 were so sacred, no one ever imagined that?
they might usurp the functions of the people, and that, even
surrounded as they were by so great a multitude, they never
once tried to hold a plebiscite平民表決 on their own authority.
Everything that is not natural has its disadvantages,?
and civil society more than anything else.
(而文明社會(huì)尤甚)
-
There are some unhappy situations in which one's?
liberty can be kept only at the expense of another's, and
the citizen can be perfectly free only if the slave is?
in complete servitude. Such was the position in ★Sparta.?
-???
As for you, the modern nations, you have no slaves, but are?
enslaved; you are paying for their freedom with yours. It is?
all very well to boast自夸 that this is an improvement; I find?
it cowardly rather than humane.
The moment that a people★民族?
provides itself with representatives,?
it is no longer free; it no longer exists.