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.
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