I9OI-2 TRANSACTIONS. 79 



if Sir William Hamilton is right, is an Intelligence served by 

 organs. And as to the State constitiuing the brain of Society 

 one has to sa)' that so far from the State doing any thinking 

 for Society, it is the concrete Government {giLberna ciiliim^ a 

 rudder, the ruling power), that, by flelegation, does the think- 

 ing for the vState. 



Concerning this ingenious hypothesis, Professor Maitland, 

 of Cambridge, sa)s (i) 



A Sociology, emulous of the physical sciences, discourses of organs and organism 

 and social tissue." unable "to sever by sharp lines the natural history of the States 

 group [of existences] from the natural history of other groups. 



It is now only necessary for me to explain in a general 

 way what I mean by the Sovereign Power in a State before 

 I enter upon a discussion of the relation of the King to that 

 power, which I trust has not been deferred .beyond the 

 demands of perspicuity. 



Sovereign power, or sovereignty, as a term in political 

 science, may be defined, shortly, to be ihe ultimate coercive 

 powe7' in a State. In jural science it is recognized as the 

 foundation upon which re>t all the sanctions of Positive Law. 

 It is neiiher reposed in nor synergetic with the organ of Gov- 

 ernment, which makes and administers the law, but is be- 

 hind it. Sovereignty in the abstract resides in the whole 

 body of the people of a Stale. (2). And tint is only another 

 way of putting the famous apothegm of the American 

 Declaration of Independence that: all Governments de<ive 

 their just p iwers from the consejit oj the governed (3.) To 

 deny this proposition is to say that the body-politic is a dead 

 thing upon which the vultures of tyranny and usurpation 

 have a prescriptive right to feed. 



With til is estimate of sovereignty in our minds you can 

 readily apprehend that the sovereign power and the King 



1) Introd. to Gierke' Pol. Theories of Middle Age, xi. 



(2) Merlin (Rep. 31, 369) says: "La Souverainete est la source de toutesdes'ois." 



(3) " Force is always on the side of the governed ; the governors have nothing to 

 support them but opinion " Hume : ' Essays,' (1875 ei.) i, pp, 109, 110. 



