ABSTRACT
In a letter to Marcet de Mézières of 24 July 1762, Rousseau states that the principles of government established in the Social Contract can be reduced to just two: ‘The first, that legitimately sovereignty always belongs to the people; the second, that aristocracy is the best of all forms of government’. 1 Book 2 centres on the first of these principles, and Book 3 on the second. It is the people who are to exercise supreme power in the state rather than kings, tyrants or even parliaments. In fact, sovereignty is nothing but the exercise of the general will of the people, or, more exactly, the direction of the common force of the united citizenry by principles that issue from their general will.
