Read "The Social Contract" by Jean-Jacques Rousseau online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Foederis aequas Dicamus leges. - Virgil, Aeneid XI
I mean to inquire if, in the civil order, there can be any sure and legitimate rule of administration, men being taken as they are and laws as they might be. In this inquiry I shall endeavour always to unite what right sanctions with what is prescribed by interest, in order that justice and utility may in no case be divided.