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§4. General Observations Upon the Doctrine of Sovereignty. 



Of the several forms of the doctriae of sovereignty above enumerated 

 — namely, the doctrine of Personal sovereignty, of Corporate sovereignty, 

 of the sovereignty of the State, and of the sovereignty of Right, or of the 

 Law — the first — now happily obsolete — is the only one that has any defi- 

 nite significance ; for in this form of the doctrine, the sovereign referred 

 to is an actual person ; whose power is necessarily indivisible and may be 

 despotic. But in the second form of the doctrine — namely, that of cor- 

 porate sovereignty — the sovereign referred to is a body politic or corpora- 

 tion, a purely fictitious person, whose supposed power is equally fictitious. 

 Tliat the fictitious and imaginary power of this fictitious and imaginary 

 sovereign is unlimited and indivisible is a proposition witliout significance 

 and is to be regarded as a mere verbal trick or contrivance to conceal the 

 actual fact that, in all governments of more than one, the supreme pol- 

 itical powers are in all cases divided among several officers or departments, 

 and that the power of each officer or department is necessarily limited 

 by those of the others ; and hence, that in all such governments the pro- 

 position that the sovereign power is necessarily unlimited and indivisible, 

 is, in fact, untrue. The doctrine of corporate sovereignty must, there- 

 fore, be regarded as in effect a denial of the true form of the theory ; 

 which is that of personal sovereignty. A fortiori are these observations 

 true of the doctrine of the sovereignty of the State — where the sovereign 

 is conceived to be the unorganized mass of the people, of all ages, 

 sexes and degrees of mental capacity, without political power, or capacity 

 of exercising it — and also of the doctrine of the sovereignty of Right or 

 Law ; where the imagined sovereign is a mere abstraction. 



These obvious considerations are sufficient of themselves to dispose of the 

 doctrine of absolute sovereignty, which — except in its now happily obso- 

 lete form as asserting the divine right of kings — is altogether destitute of 

 definite signification, or, in other words, using the term in its original sense, 

 is merely nonsense, (h) This is strikingly illustrated by the arguments that 

 have been adduced in its support; which, for the purpose of further illus- 

 trating our thesis, we will next consider, commencing with the celebrated 

 argument of Hobbes. 



g 5. Robbes' Argument. 



Hobbes clearly perceives the nature of the fundamental problem of 

 political science ; which is to determine, not the actual, but the rightful 

 power of the government or, in other words, the power with which the 

 government ought to be vested. As stated by him, the question to be con- 

 sidered is : "What are the 'rights' and 'just power' or 'authority' of a 

 sovereign?"* And accordingly his conclusion — which is that the 

 " rights " or "just power " of the sovereign over the lives and fortunes 

 of the subject is unlimited, and that there is a corresponding duty on the 



* Leviathan, Introduction. 



