The members of this body are called magistrates or “kings,” that is to say “governors,” and the whole body bears the name “prince.” 19 Thus those who hold that the act, by which a people puts itself under a prince, is not a contract, are certainly right. It is simply and solely a commission, an employment, in which the rulers, mere officials of the Sovereign, exercise in their own name the power of which it makes them depositaries. This power it can limit, modify or recover at pleasure; for the alienation of such a right is incompatible with the nature of the social body, and contrary to the end of association.

I call then “government,” or supreme administration, the legitimate exercise of the executive power, and prince or magistrate the man or the body entrusted with that administration.