Convention Parliament

The Convention Parliament appears in Rousseau’s account as a historical example of a social-contract theory that binds ruler and people through reciprocal political obligations. Its charge against James II—that he had broken the original contract between king and people—shows how an appeal to contract could serve not merely to explain government’s origin, but to judge and challenge its conduct.

Place in the History of Contract Theory

Rousseau distinguishes two principal forms of definite social-contract theory: one makes society rest on an agreement between the people and the government; the other makes it rest on an agreement among all the individuals who compose the State. He presents political theory’s development as moving historically from the first form toward the second. The Convention Parliament belongs to the earlier, government-and-people model.

That model had medieval origins and was often supported by Old Testament precedents. It remained influential among major political writers of the sixteenth century and persisted into the seventeenth. Rousseau places the Convention Parliament within this longer history, using its declaration to show that the idea of an original political agreement could become an explicit constitutional claim.

The Accusation Against James II

The Convention Parliament accused James II of having endeavoured to subvert the kingdom’s constitution by breaking the original contract between king and people. The charge frames the king’s conduct as a breach of an existing reciprocal bond, rather than treating royal authority as unlimited or self-justifying. In Rousseau’s presentation, the parliamentary statement makes the contract theory visible in political action: the people’s relation to its ruler can be described in terms that permit judgment of the ruler’s performance.

The passage places this example alongside contrasting positions in seventeenth-century debate. Thomas Hobbes defended the contract theory in its second form, grounded in an agreement among individuals, while the Parliamentarian Algernon Sidney adhered to the idea of a contract between the people and government. The Convention Parliament’s accusation thus stands within a contested field of political argument, not as an isolated formulation.

Constitutional Meaning and Limits

Rousseau stresses that the people-government contract could support opposite conclusions. One interpretation holds that a people, having once surrendered itself to its rulers, must submit to whatever treatment they impose. But this is not, he says, the implication most commonly drawn from the theory. Its theologian-lawyer proponents understood a contract as creating mutual obligations and therefore regarded the ruler as bound to govern constitutionally.

On that reading, the Convention Parliament’s accusation expresses a limit on royal power: the king is answerable to the terms of the political relationship. Rousseau connects this reasoning to older appeals against violations of the realm’s established customs, which could be recast as demands that the ruler honour the original agreement. The example illustrates both the practical force and the ambiguity of contract language: it can justify submission, but it can also furnish grounds for requiring constitutional government.

Significance in Rousseau’s Argument

Rousseau uses the Convention Parliament as evidence in a historical classification of social-contract theories, rather than as an account of the Parliament’s proceedings or composition. Its role is to mark a clear instance of the first contract form and to show how a constitutional claim could be stated through the language of an agreement between king and people.

The example also clarifies the distinction between historical evidence and political right that governs Rousseau’s broader method. A recorded accusation can show how political actors invoked contract, but the existence of a claim or practice does not by itself establish a right. Rousseau’s wider project seeks principles on which legitimate society must rest; within that project, the Convention Parliament is a revealing illustration of an earlier theory, not the final measure of political legitimacy.