The passage in question is drawn from The Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau, in Book I, Chapter 6. The Social Contract was published in 1762 in Amsterdam in order to escape censorship in Rousseau's native France. It is one of the most influential political treatises ever written, and was one of the prime influences of the political movement that led to the French Revolution.
The Social Contract analyzes the contractual relationships that are required to provide a legitimate government. In Chapter 6, Rousseau argues that civil society is based on a contractual arrangement of rights between the governed and their rulers. Rousseau argues that in order to escape the state of nature, where physically strong men rule and all men are free but live in fear, men enter into this contractual agreement tacitly in order to avoid perishing. The main problem, according to Rousseau, is to find some form of association where one's person and goods are protected by the common force of the association, but where even being united in this association each man can still obey his own desires and remain as free as they were in the state of nature. In this relationship, individuals agree to accept certain duties or obligations in exchange for the benefits afforded to them by participating in society. The passage in question is the key to Rousseau's overall argument, for in it he clearly articulates that if the social contract between the governed and their rulers is broken, each man reverts to his natural rights in the state of nature. In other words, if one's ruler is violating one's rights, a person has no contractual obligation to that ruler any longer.
This passage endows men with the ability to rebel against their rulers if their rights are being violated, as such it is the key to Rousseau's entire argument in The Social Contract. This is what Rousseau is saying in the passage when he states that one can exit from the social
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