191 



But the most incredulous may be readily convinced of the justice of the 

 opinion, if he will follow us in a critical examination of some of the 

 theories referred to and of the arguments adduced in their support. 



Among these the most conspicuous is the doctrine of sovereignty as gen- 

 erally received in modern times, and to this we will first devote our atten- 

 tion. This doctrine will be found to rest for its plausibility upon certain 

 -purely logical fallacies ; and it will, therefore, require no special knowl- 

 edge of political science to investigate its claims to credibility. On this 

 account, and because it stands in the way of an intelligent investigation 

 of our subject, the Introduction presents the most appropriate place for its 

 consideration. 



§ 3. The Doctrine of Absolute Sovereignty, (d) 



The doctrine of absolute sovereignty so universally asserted and appa- 

 rently believed, would seem to consist of a single proposition, and the 

 several forms in which it is asserted, to be merely unessential variations 

 of the same doctrine. But this is far from being the case ; for the term 

 sovereign, on which the meaning of the term sovereignty depends, has sev- 

 eral essentially distinct meanings, and to each of these there corresponds 

 a distinct and independent theory, (e) 



Hence, the so-called doctrine of sovereignty consists in reality of sev- 

 eral theories that must be distinguished from each other, and which, it 

 will be found, are not only essentially diflFerentbut mutually inconsistent. 



(1) Originally the term sovereign denoted merely a monarch or single 

 ruler ; and the corresponding doctrine of sovereignty simply asserted the 

 absolute or unlimited power of the monarch, or, as more usually ex- 

 pressed, the Divine Right of Kings. In this, the original and proper 

 sense of the term, sovereignty — being the power of a single man — is ex vi 

 termini, indivisible. But that it is absolute is a proposition asserted only 

 by extreme royalists, who may now be regarded as practically extinct. 



(2) But afterwards, with the progress of constitutional government in 

 Europe, the term sovereign came to denote not merely a monarch but the 

 government or political organization of the State, whether consisting in 

 an assembly or of several departments ; and the doctrine of sovereignty 

 thus assumed the form of asserting the unlimited power of the govern- 

 ment in its corporate capacity. But obviously the term sovereign is here 

 used in a secondary and improper sense, essentially distinct from its 

 original signification ; for the government thus regarded is a body politic 

 or corporation, which is rightly defined as a fictitious or imaginary per- 

 son ; and the power of this fictitious sovereign is equally fictitious or 

 imaginary. For human power can exist only in actual human beings ; 

 and though for convenience we may speak of the power of the govern- 

 ment, as of that of any other eorporation, yet the expression is always to 

 be understood as really denoting the concurrent powers of certain indi- 

 viduals in the government. Thus, taking for illustration the case of a 

 simple sovereign assembly, and regarding this as the sovereign, when we 



