The king, in fact, sovereign, father, and universal guardian, manages local affairs through his delegates, and intervenes in private affairs through his favors or lettres-de-cachet (royal orders of imprisonment). Such an example and such a course followed for fifty years excites the imagination. No other instrument is more useful for carrying large reforms out at one time. Hence, far from restricting the central power the economists are desirous of extending its action. Instead of setting up new dikes against it they interest themselves only in destroying what is left of the old dikes still interfering with it. "The system of counter-forces in a government," says Quesnay and his disciples, "is a fatal idea. . . The speculations on which the system of counter-balance is founded are chimerical. . . . Let the government have a full comprehension of its duties and be left free. . . The State must govern according to the essential laws of order, and in this case unlimited power is requisite." On the approach of the Revolution the same doctrine reappears, except in the substitution of one term for another term. In the place of the sovereignty of the king the "Contrat social" substitutes the sovereignty of the people. The latter, however, is much more absolute than the former, and, in the democratic convent which Rousseau constructs, on Spartan and Roman model, the individual is nothing and the State everything. In effect, "the clauses of the social contract reduce themselves to one, namely, the total transfer of each associate with all his rights to the community."[3420] Every one surrenders himself entirely, "just as he stands, he and all his forces, of which his property forms a portion." There is no exception nor reservation; whatever he may have been previously and whatever may have belonged to him is no longer his own. Henceforth whatever he becomes or whatever he may possess devolves on him only through the delegation of the social body, the universal proprietor and absolute master. All rights must be vested in the State and none in the individual; otherwise there would be litigation between them, and, "as there is no common superior to decide between them" their litigation would never end. One the contrary, through the complete donation which each one makes of himself, "the unity is as perfect as possible;" having renounced himself "he has no further claim to make." This being admitted let us trace the consequences.--