the sovereign must be taken tacitly to confirm, and it retains its authority. But as the true sovereign is not any law but the general will, no law, even the most fundamental, can be exempt from liability to repeal. Even the social pact itself might legitimately be dissolved, by agreement of all the citizens assembled. (_Ib_.) (Whether unanimity is necessary for the purpose is not specified.) Without such assemblies there can be no exercise of the general will (which, as before stated, cannot be represented), and consequently no freedom. The English people, e.g., is quite mistaken in thinking itself free. It is only free while the election of members of Parliament is going on. As soon as they are elected, it is in bondage, it is nothing. In the short moments of its freedom it makes such a bad use of it that it well deserves to lose it. (III, xv.) 73. It appears from the above that, according to Rousseau, the general will, which is the true sovereign, can only be exercised in assemblies of the whole people. On the other hand, he does not hold that an act of such an assembly is necessarily an act of the general will. After telling us that the 'general will is always right, and always tends to the public good,' he adds, 'but it does not follow that the deliberations of the people have always the same rectitude.... There is often a great difference between the will of all and the general will. The latter only looks to the common interest; the other looks to private interests, and is only a sum of the wills of individuals.' (II, iii.) Again (II, iv.), 'that which generalises the will is not so much the number of voices as the common interest which unites them.' He holds apparently that in the assembly of the whole people, if they had sufficient information, and if no minor combinations of particular interests were formed within the entire body, the difference between the wills of individuals would neutralise each other, and the vote of the whole body would express the true general will. But in fact in all assemblies there is at least a liability to lack of information and to the formation of cliques; and hence it cannot be held that the vote of the assembly necessarily expresses the general will. Rousseau, however, does not go so far as to say that unless the law is actually such as contributes to the common good, it is not an expression of the general will. The general will, according to him, always aims at or wills the common good, but is liable to be mistaken as to the means of attaining it.' It is always right, but the judgment which guides it is not always enlightened.... Individuals see the good which they reject; the public wills the good which it does not see.' (II, vi.) Hence the need of a guide in the shape of a great lawgiver. Apparently, however, the possible lack of enlightenment on the part of the general will does not, in Rousseau's view, prevent its decisions from being for the public good. In discussing the