Second Decemvirate’s Seizure of Power in Rome

The Second Decemvirate’s Seizure of Power in Rome is Rousseau’s concrete example of government using its public authority to suppress popular assemblies and usurp sovereignty. The decemvirs’ extension of their term, followed by their ban on the comitia, shows how a government can present its hold on power as lawful while blocking the people from expressing whether they still consent to it.

The Danger of Governmental Usurpation

Rousseau presents the episode within a broader account of the government’s tendency to act against the Sovereign. Government, as a particular will, continually presses against the general will; as that pressure grows, the constitution changes, until the prince suppresses the Sovereign and breaks the social treaty. The seizure is therefore not an accidental disturbance from outside the political order but an expression of a defect inherent in government: its officials may convert delegated power into an attempt to rule in place of the people.

The Roman example makes this danger institutional and specific. The decemvirs had first been elected for one year, then stayed in office for a second. To perpetuate their power, they forbade the comitia to assemble. Their action joins an extension of tenure to a blockade of the venue where popular authority could be exercised: without an assembly, the people could not publicly re-establish the order the rulers were displacing.

Authority, Legality, and Silence

Rousseau emphasizes that usurpation need not begin with an openly declared rejection of law. A government clothed with public power can claim to preserve peace and observe its own rights, while preventing assemblies on the pretext that they would cause disorder. It can then treat the silence produced by fear or enforced non-assembly as evidence of support, and punish those who dare to speak. The decemvirs’ ban on the comitia exemplifies this wider mechanism: suppressing the people’s means of expression allows rulers to represent the absence of protest as consent.

The episode also clarifies why formal appearance alone cannot establish legitimacy. Rousseau warns that the distinction between a regular act and a seditious tumult, or between the will of a whole people and the clamour of a faction, can be manipulated by those who control public authority. The decemvirs’ continuation in office and prohibition of assembly show the stakes of that manipulation: the government can exploit procedural power to prevent the people from judging whether its authority remains compatible with the public good.

Assemblies as a Safeguard

Rousseau sets the decemvirs’ conduct against the purpose of periodic sovereign assemblies. Such meetings are designed to prevent or postpone government’s seizure of sovereign authority. If assemblies do not depend on a formal summons from the prince, he cannot stop them without openly declaring himself a lawbreaker and enemy of the State. Regular assembly thus makes popular sovereignty an exercised authority rather than a principle the government can quietly set aside.

The Roman episode gives this safeguard its urgency. When rulers can bar the assembly, they can preserve their position while depriving the people of the means to restore the social treaty. The decemvirs’ seizure is consequently more than a change in officeholding: it illustrates how control over whether the people may gather becomes control over whether they can act as Sovereign at all.