out, it is clear that they are including both those who were presently residing in Rome and those who, having spread out across the empire, were only honorary.
There was a great difference between a citizen and a resident. According to the law de incolis,5 citizens were created and were given all the privileges of citizenship6 through birth alone. These privileges could not be acquired by length of residence. Under the consuls it was only the benefaction of the state, and under the emperors it was only their will, which could remedy in this case a defective descent.
It was the first privilege of a Roman citizen to be judged only by the people. The law Portia prohibited a citizen from being put to death. Even in the provinces, he was not subjected to the arbitrary power of a proconsul or a propraetor. The civis sum [I am a citizen] stopped these subaltern tyrants in their tracks. In Rome, says M. de Montesquieu, in his book The Spirit of the Laws, Book XI, Chapter XIX, as well as in Lacedemon, liberty for the citizens and servitude for the slaves was extreme.7 However, in spite of the privileges, the power, and the grandeur of these citizens—of whom Cicero was moved to write (or. pro M. Fonteio) an qui amplissimus Gallia cum infino cive Romano comparandus est?8—it seems to me that the government of that
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republic was constituted in such a way that in Rome one had a less precise idea of a citizen than in the canton of Zurich. To be convinced of this, it is only a matter of paying attention to what we are going to say in the rest of this article.
Hobbes does not distinguish between subject and citizen9—which is true, if you take the term subject in its strict sense and citizen in its broadest sense, and consider that the latter is to laws alone what the former is to a sovereign. They are both commanded, but one by a moral being and the other by a physical person. The term citizen fits neither those who live subjugated, nor those who live isolated. Whence it follows that those who live absolutely in the state of nature, as do sovereigns, and those who have completely renounced that state, as do slaves, cannot be regarded as citizens—unless one claims that there is no society based on reason where there is no being that is moral, immutable, and above the sovereign physical person. Overlooking this exception, Pufendorf divided his work on duties into two parts—one the duties of man, the other the duties of the citizen.10
Since the laws governing the free associations of families are not the same everywhere and since most societies have a hierarchical order constituted by dignities, the citizen can again be looked upon both in relation to the laws of his society and in relation to the rank he occupies in the hierarchical order. In the second case, there will be some difference between the citizen as magistrate and the citizen as bourgeois; and in the first, between the citizen of Amsterdam and of Basel.
While acknowledging the distinctions of civil societies and the order of citizens in each society, Aristotle nonetheless recognized as true citizens only those who have a role in the judiciary, and who could expect to pass from the state of simple bourgeois to the first ranks of the magistracy, which fits only pure democracies. It must be acknowledged that it is almost always someone who enjoys these prerogatives who is truly a public man, and that one has no clear distinction between subject and citizen unless the latter is
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supposed to be a public man, and unless the role of the former could never be anything but that of a private man, de quidam.11
In restricting the term citizen to those who have founded the state through the first union of families, and to their successors from father to son, Pufendorf introduces a frivolous distinction that sheds little light in his work and that can plunge a civil society into a great deal of trouble, by distinguishing the originary from the naturalized citizens via a misconceived notion of nobility. The citizens in their capacity as citizens, that is to say, in their societies, are all equally noble, because nobility comes not from ancestry but from the common right to the leading honors of the magistracy.
Since the moral, sovereign being is to the citizen what the physical despotic person is to the subject, and since the most perfect slave does not cede his whole being to his sovereign, a fortiori does the citizen have rights that he reserves to himself and from which he never desists. There are occasions in which he finds himself in line, I don’t say with his fellow citizens, but with the moral being who commands them all. This being has two titles: one private and the other public. The former should find no resistance, while the latter can experience resistance on the part of individuals, and even succumb to them in contestation. Since this moral being has properties, commitments, farms, farmers, etc., it is also necessary to distinguish in him, so to speak, the sovereign and the subject of sovereignty. In these cases, he is both judge and party. This is doubtless a drawback, but it affects all government in general, and by itself, it proves nothing for or against except by its rarity or its frequency. It is certain that subjects or citizens will be less exposed to injustices, to the extent that the sovereign being, physical or moral, is more rarely judge and party, on those occasions where he is attacked as a private individual.
In times of trouble, the citizen will take the side of the party that is for the established system. During the dissolution of a system, he will follow the party of his city if it is unanimous; if there is division in the city, he will embrace the party that is for the equality of its members and the liberty of all.
The more the citizens approach equality in ambition and in wealth, the more peaceful the state will be. This benefit seems to belong to pure democracy,
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exclusive of all other governments. But in even the most perfect democracy, complete equality among the members is a chimerical thing, and that is perhaps the principle of dissolution for that form of government—unless it is remedied by all the injustices of ostracism. It is with government in general as it is with animal life: each step in life is a step toward death. The best government is not the one that is immortal, but the one that lasts the longest and is the most peaceful.
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TRADING COMPANY. This term means an association formed for undertaking, implementing, or managing any commercial operations.
These companies are of two kinds, either private or privileged.
Private companies are normally formed by a small number of individuals who each furnish a portion of the capital, or simply their time and advice, and sometimes both, on the conditions agreed to in the partnership contract. These companies more commonly bear the denomination of firms [sociétés]. See SOCIÉTÉ [Society or Association].
Usage has nonetheless preserved the name company for private firms or partnerships when there are a large number of members, substantial capital, and enterprises distinguished by their risk or their scale. These sorts of company-firms are most often composed of persons from various occupations who, being inexperienced in trade, entrust the direction of operations to partners or to competent agents under a general plan. Although the operations of these companies receive no public preference over private operations, they are nonetheless always regarded askance in commercial locales, because any competition reduces profit. But that reason itself ought to make them very agreeable to the state, whose commerce can be extended and perfected only through the merchants’ competition.
Even in general, these companies are useful to traders because they extend a nation’s knowledge of,
