ousseau's view, it was essentially a contract of the people with one
another, an arrangement by means of which, out of many conflicting
individual wills, a common or general will could be formed. A government
might be instituted as the organ of this will, but it would, from the
nature of the case, be subordinate to the people from whom it derived
authority. The people were sovereign. The government was their delegate.

Whatever the differences of outlook that divide these theories, those
who from Locke to Rousseau and Paine worked with this order of ideas
agreed in conceiving political society as a restraint to which men
voluntarily submitted themselves for specific purposes. Political
institutions were the source of subjection and inequality. Before and
behind them stood the assemblage of free and equal individuals. But the
isolated individual was powerless. He had rights which were limited only
by the corresponding rights of others, but he could not, unless chance
gave him the upper hand, enforce them. Accordingly, he found it best to
enter into an arrangement with others for the mutual respect of rights;
and for this purpose he instituted a government to maintain his rights
within the community and to guard the community from assault from
without. It followed that the function of government was limited and
definable. It was to maintain the natural rights of man as accurately as
the conditions of society allowed, and to do naught beside. Any further
action employing the compulsory power of the State was of the nature of
an infringement of the understanding on which government rested. In
entering into the compact, the individual gave up so much of his rights
as was necessitated by the condition of submitting to a common rule--so
much, and no more. He gave up his natural rights and received in return
civil rights, something less complete, perhaps, but more effective as
resting on the guarantee of the collective power. If you would discover,
then, what the civil rights of man in society should be, you must
inquire what are the natural rights of man,[4] and how far they are
unavoidably modified in accommodating the conflicting claims of men
with one another. Any interference that goes beyond this necessary
accommodation is oppression. Civil rights should agree as nearly as
possible with natural rights, or, as Paine says, a civil right is a
natural right exchanged.

This conception of the relations of the State and the ind