If princes neglect to do all that they can to rule the various orders of their state; if they are careless in the choice of good advisers, or despise their salutary counsels; if they fail to make their own example a speaking voice; if they are idle in the establishment of the reign of God, and of reason, and of justice; if they fail to protect the innocent, to reward public services, and to chastise the guilty and disobedient; if they are not solicitous to foresee and to provide for the troubles which may arise, or to turn aside, by careful diplomacy, the storms which darken the horizon; if favour rather than merit dictates their choice of ministers for the high offices of the kingdom; if they do not immovably establish the state in its rightful power; if they do not on all occasions prefer public interests to private interests; then, however upright their life may otherwise be, they will be found far more guilty than those who actively transgress the commandments and the laws of God.  And if kings or magistrates make use of their power to commit any injustice or violence which they cannot commit as private persons, they commit a king’s or a magistrate’s sin, which has its source in their authority, and one for which the King of Kings will doubtless demand a searching account on the day of judgement.

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JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU

Confessions

Rousseau’s “Confessions” were written in England at Wootton, in Staffordshire, where he had taken refuge after his revolutionary ideas incurred the displeasure of the authorities in France.  They were first published in 1782.  From this refuge he was pursued from place to place by his delusions through miserable years, until he died, near Paris, on July 2, 1778.  In no circumstances or relation of his life was Rousseau a pleasant spectacle.  The “Confessions,” unexpurgated, are often revolting to any sane mind, and have been proved to be untrustworthy even as a record of fact.  But almost incredible baseness was coupled with extraordinary gifts, and it is impossible to overestimate Rousseau’s influence upon the modern world, and upon its literature and its whole point of view and way of thinking. (Rousseau, biography:  see FICTION.)

I am undertaking a task for which there is no example, and one which will find no imitator.  It is to exhibit a man in the whole truth of nature; and the man whom I shall reveal is myself.  Myself alone; for I verily believe I am like no other living man.  In this book I have hidden nothing evil and added nothing good; and I challenge any man to say, having unveiled his heart with equal sincerity, “I am better than he.”

I was born at Geneva in 1712, son of Isaac Rousseau, watchmaker, and of Susanne, his wife.  My birth, the first of my misfortunes, cost my mother her life, and I came into the world so weakly that I was not expected to live.  My father’s sister lavished on me the tenderest care, and he, disconsolate, loved me with extreme affection.