198 



citizen to have to obey no other law than that to which he has given his 

 consent or approval."* But the legislative power is to be regarded as 

 " the united will of the people,"f and as necessarily including as such 

 the will of every citizen. Hence, every law is to be regarded as an 

 expression, not only of tlie will of the government, but of every indi- 

 vidual in the Stale ; and hence, "resistance on the part of the people of 

 the State to the supreme legislative power of the State is in no case legiti- 

 mate ; for it is only by submission to the universal legislative will that a 

 condition of law and order is possible. Hence, there is no right of sedi- 

 tion, and still less of rebellion, belonging to the people.":}: " The will of 

 the people is naturally un unified, and consequently it is lawless ; and its 

 unconditional subjection under a sovereign will, uniting all particular 

 wills by one law, is a fact which can only originate in the institution of a 

 supreme power and thus is public right founded. Hence, to allow a 

 right of resistance to tliis sovereignty, and to limit its supreme power, is a 

 contradiction ; for in that case it would not be the supreme legal power 

 if it might be resisted, nor could it primarily determine what shall be 

 publicly right or not. This principle is involved a priori in the idea 

 of a political constitution generally, as the conception of the practical 

 Reason."^ 



This, as will be seen, is precisely the argument of Hobbes, with its 

 native enormities draped under a cloud of words. Its whole validity rests 

 upon the manifest fiction that the toiU of the State is the tinited will of all 

 the people ; to wliich it may be answered that what is called " the will of 

 the State," is merely the will of the individuals who control the Slate, 

 and that the will of these rulers does not necessarily, or even generally, 

 concur with the wills of the citizens, even where these happen to concur. 

 Furthermore, it is manifest that the term will is purely relative, and im- 

 plies some actual creature in whom it exists. Hence, the State, properly 

 speaking, cannot be said to have a will ; and when we speak of the will 

 of the State, or of the government, or of the legislature, we use the term 

 in a figurative sense, based upon the conception of the State as a body 

 politic, or in other words as a fictitious person, {k) 



% 7. Huxley's Argument. 



Another argument I find attributed to Professor Huxley in a collection 

 of essays lately publislied, under the singularly inappropriate title of " A 

 Plea for Liberty." But whether he is in fiict responsible for it, or for the 

 use made of it by the author, I do not know. It occurs in the essay 

 entitled "The Limits of Liberty," by j\Ir. Douisthorpe, and is as follows : 



"The power of the State may be defined as the resultant of all the 

 social forces operating within a definite area. 'It follows,' says Profes- 

 sor Huxley, with characteristic logical thoroughness, 'that no limit is, or 

 can be theoretically set to State interference !' " (0 



* Philosophy oj Law, p. 1G7. 



fid., p. 166. J /(/.. |). 176. § Id., p. 258. 



