Читать книгу Encyclopedic Liberty - Jean Le Rond d'Alembert - Страница 24

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Citizen ^†

(Citoyen)

*CITIZEN (Ancient and modern history, Public law) is someone who is a member of a free association¹ of many families, who shares in the rights of this association, and who benefits from its liberties.² See SOCIÉTÉ [Society or Association], CITÉ [City], VILLE FRANCHE [Free Town], FRANCHISES [Liberties]. Someone who resides in such a society for certain business, and who has to go away after his business is done is not a citizen of this society; he is only a temporary subject. Someone who makes it his usual abode, but who plays no role in these rights and liberties, is also not a citizen. Someone who has been divested of these rights and liberties has ceased to be a citizen. Strictly speaking, one only accords this title to women, young children, and servants as family members of a citizen, but they are not truly citizens.

One may identify two types of citizens, the originary and the naturalized. The originary are those who are born citizens. The naturalized are those to whom society allows participation in these rights and liberties, even though they were not born among them.

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The Athenians were very cautious about according the title of citizen of their city to foreigners; they invested much more dignity in this than did the Romans. With them, the title of citizen never came to be held in contempt; but from their high opinion of it, they have not reaped what is perhaps its greatest benefit, namely, that of growing by means of all those who have aspired to it. There were not many citizens in Athens who were not born to parents who were citizens. When a young man had reached the age of twenty, he was registered in the ληξιαρχικον γραμματειον;³ the state counted him among its members. In an adoption ceremony, they made him recite, while facing the sky, the following oath: Arma non dehonestabo; nec adstantem, quisquis ille fuerit, socium relinquam; pugnabo quoque pro focis et aris, solus et cum multis; patriam nec turbabo, nec prodam; navigabo contrà quamcumque destinatus fuero regionem; solemnitates perpetuas observabo; receptis consuetudinibus parebo, et quascumque adhuc populus prudenter statuerit, amplectar; et si quis leges susceptas sustulerit, nisi comprobaverit, non permittam; tuebor denique, solus et cum reliquis omnibus, atque patria sacra colam. Dii Cognitores, Agrauli, Enyalius, Mars, Jupiter, Floreo, Augesco duci. Plut. In peric.⁴ Notice a prudenter [a prudent man] who, in abandoning judgment on the new laws to each individual, was capable of causing much trouble. Otherwise, this oath is very noble and very wise.

One became a citizen of Athens, however, through adoption by a citizen, and through the consent of the people: but this benefit was not widespread.

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If one was not judged to be a citizen before twenty years of age, one was considered to no longer be one when advanced age prevented him from attending to public functions. It was the same for the exiles and the banished, unless they had become so through ostracism; those who had suffered that judgment were only sent away.

To constitute a true Roman citizen, three things were needed: to have one’s residence in Rome, to be a member of one of the thirty-five tribes, and to be able to attain the honors of the republic. Those who through concession but not birth possessed some of the rights of a citizen were strictly speaking only honorary. See CITÉ [City], JURISPRUDENCE.

When people say that there were more than four million Roman citizens in the census Augustus carried 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.