Does Majority Consent Make You Free? Voltaire, Rousseau & the General Will

[classical music] On the morning of the 10th of March 1762 in the city of Toulouse, a cloth merchant of 63 was brought out into a public square and tied to a cartwheel.

He had his arms and legs broken with an iron bar.

Then the executioner strangled him, and the body was burned.

That was the sentence as the law prescribed it.

It is called breaking on the wheel, and it was a standard punishment in France for the crime he had been convicted of.

Twice, under torture the day before and again on the scaffold, he was asked to name his accomplices.

Both times, he said that there had been no crime, and that therefore, there were no accomplices.

He went on saying it until he could not speak.

His name was Jean Calas.

He was a Protestant in a Catholic city, in a country where Protestant worship had no legal standing at all.

On the evening of the 13th of October 1761, his eldest son, Marc-Antoine, had been found hanged in the family shop.

Now, suicide was a crime in French law, and it was punished on the corpse.

The body of a man who killed himself was dragged face down through the streets and hung up by the feet.

The family, wanting to spare him that, first said that an intruder had done it.

That story came apart within a day.

And when it came apart, the city supplied a better one.

The father had murdered the son to stop him converting to the Catholic Church.

There was no evidence for it.

What there was, was a crowd outside the house, a rumor that hardened within hours, and a city that had an annual procession commemorating its deliverance from its own Protestants two centuries before.

The lower court convicted him.

The Parlement of Toulouse, and, and remember from last week that a parlement is a court, not a legislature.

The Parlement sat as the appeal and voted to condemn on the 9th of March.

The sentence was carried out the following morning.

The property was confiscated, the daughters were placed in a convent, and the surviving sons got out of the country to Geneva.

Twenty miles from Geneva, at a house called La Delice, and then at an estate in Ferney, a writer of sixty-eight heard the story.

[classical music] On the morning of the 10th of March 1762 in the city of Toulouse, a cloth merchant of 63 was brought out into a public square and tied to a cartwheel.

He had his arms and legs broken with an iron bar.

Then the executioner strangled him, and the body was burned.

That was the sentence as the law prescribed it.

It is called breaking on the wheel, and it was a standard punishment in France for the crime he had been convicted of.

Twice, under torture the day before and again on the scaffold, he was asked to name his accomplices.

Both times, he said that there had been no crime, and that therefore, there were no accomplices.

He went on saying it until he could not speak.

His name was Jean Calas.

He was a Protestant in a Catholic city, in a country where Protestant worship had no legal standing at all.

On the evening of the 13th of October 1761, his eldest son, Marc-Antoine, had been found hanged in the family shop.

Now, suicide was a crime in French law, and it was punished on the corpse.

The body of a man who killed himself was dragged face down through the streets and hung up by the feet.

The family, wanting to spare him that, first said that an intruder had done it.

That story came apart within a day.

And when it came apart, the city supplied a better one.

The father had murdered the son to stop him converting to the Catholic Church.

There was no evidence for it.

What there was, was a crowd outside the house, a rumor that hardened within hours, and a city that had an annual procession commemorating its deliverance from its own Protestants two centuries before.

The lower court convicted him.

The Parlement of Toulouse, and, and remember from last week that a parlement is a court, not a legislature.

The Parlement sat as the appeal and voted to condemn on the 9th of March.

The sentence was carried out the following morning.

The property was confiscated, the daughters were placed in a convent, and the surviving sons got out of the country to Geneva.

Twenty miles from Geneva, at a house called La Delice, and then at an estate in Ferney, a writer of sixty-eight heard the story.