The sovereign people ruled in an unreformed House of Commons, and the "contract" theory was exhibited by ministers holding office on the strength of a majority in the Commons.
Rousseau's writings depicted, with a clearness that fascinated the reader, the contrast between the ideal state that man had lost and the present condition of society with its miseries and corruption; and by its explanation of the doctrines of a contract and the sovereignty of the people, suggested the way to end these miseries and corruptions.

The "Social Contract" became the text-book of the men who made the French Revolution, and if the success of the Revolution is due to the teaching of Rousseau more than to that of any other French philosopher, the crimes and mistakes of the Revolution are directly to be traced to his influence, and this in spite of Rousseau's deprecation of violence.[73] As there is a certain tendency in England to-day to attempt the resuscitation of Rousseau's theories of popular sovereignty and the natural rights of man, and as so distinguished a writer as Mr.Hilaire Belloc is at pains to invite the English working class to seek illumination from Rousseau and to proceed to democracy guided by the speculative political doctrines of the eighteenth century rather than on the tried experimental lines of representative government and an extended franchise, it is necessary to devote to Rousseau and his "Social Contract" more space than the subject deserves.
The "Social Contract" is full of inaccuracies in its references to history; it is often self-contradictory, and it has not even the merit of originality.

From Hobbes Rousseau borrowed the notion of authority in the State; from Locke the seat of this authority; the nature of the original pact and of citizenship from Spinoza; from the Huguenot Languet the doctrine of fraternity; and from Althusius the doctrine of the inalienability of citizenship.

Where Locke was content to maintain that the people collectively had the right to change the form of government, Rousseau would give the community continual exercise in sovereignty, while voting and representation are signs of democratic decadence in Rousseau's eyes.

The sovereign people governing, not through elected representatives but by public meeting, has only been found possible in small slave-ridden states.
At the Revolution France had to elect its deputies.