 For if we say that lawful governments are formed on the authority of conventions, it will be asked, who gave these conventions their authority? If we grant that they derived their authority from the assent of the people, how came the people, it will be said, to exert such an authority at one period of society, and not at another? If we say it was necessity that recovered to the social man the full rights of his nature, it will be asked, who is to be the judge of this necessity? why certainly the people.