none on earth over it to whom it has to justify its course, or in whose conclusion it has to abide.

It is comprehensive of the whole political order; it acts in its determination as organic through the whole political body, and its authority is conterminus with the whole; it works through all the members, and in all the offices and all the organs of the state.

The sovereignty of the nation, or political sovereignty, primarily presumes the power in the political people to determine the form of its own political life. This cannot be imposed upon it from without. It cannot be referred to the dictation of any power over and separate from the nation, as some imperator. It cannot be restricted to certain special formulas, and the nation is not to be compelled to shape its order and organization after some theory and preconception of state forms which may be alien from it, and thwart the purpose or defeat the hope of the people. The oppression of a mere form or system in politics, may become the extremest tyranny, and far more crushing than an imperial power; for the will of the solitary tyrant cannot have so universal a sway, and there is always hope of change, but the tyranny of a form or a system of itself precludes change, and prevents progress, while it outlives men and generations. In its own sovereignty and in its own free spirit, the political people is to mould its own political life, and to embody in it its own ideal, and to apprehend in it its own aim.

There have been certain theories, which have only a formal and historical interest, as to the residence of the sovereignty of the nation in its normal process. These assume the identity of its sovereignty with a certain form, for which then a universality is claimed, and in their conclusion, they have become the assertion of a sovereignty external to and against the nation, which in any form, whether of an individual or a system, is the very definition of despotism. Their interest is merely illustrative.

It is said that the sovereignty is inherent in a family or a certain number of families constituting the special aristocratical or regal organization, or caste, whom the possession of certain qualities or some circumstance may at the outset have designated, and thereafter it is to remain continuous in them by the necessary and organic law of the state.

This is the contradiction of the real sovereignty of the nation and its freedom, and is the assertion not of a sovereignty in and of the nation, but a sovereignty external to it. It is this which has dragged the people to war after war to decide a disputed succession, where the whole was embroiled with individual claims and family divisions. There is no family or number of families which have an original and indefeasable right to govern. It is not subsistent in the ancestry of a family, or a tribe, or a race, but continues only in the nation. It belongs to no individual or family save only as they are invested with its exercise of and by the nation. The right of government, which is alone of divine right, the right in the nation as a moral person, is of no uncertain succession and of no transient tenure. It is not the exclusive heritage of a family, and is not transmitted in the entail of its estates. "The patrimonial doctrine of the state," says Bluntschli, “which regards it as the property of the prince, and therefore ascribes sovereignty only to him, and the absolutist doctrine of the state which identifies it with the individual ruler, both forget that all the might of the prince is only the combined might of the people, and that the people and the nation as the organization of rights remain, although princes and dynasties change and perish." The recent justification of this proposition has been in some representative principle, as for instance the sovereignty is regarded as representative of the unity of the nation, Coleridge; or of the permanence of the family in the nation, — Maurice; or of the personality of the nation, — Hegel.

1 Allgem Statsrechts, vol. ii. p. 11.

It is said that the sovereignty of the nation is resident in certain abstract ideas or principles, as justice or reason. This has been assumed by publicists who have sought thus to modify the conception of popular sovereignty. Royer Collard gave a definite statement to the theory: "There is an individual and a moral element in society. To make the majority of individuals sovereign, is popular sovereignty. When, with or without their consent, this blind strong sovereignty passes under the control of an individual or a class, without changing its character, it becomes a wiser and more temperate authority, but it is yet rude force, and remains always such, and becomes the root of absolute power and privileges. If, on the contrary, sosiety be founded on the moral element, that is, on justice, then is justice sovereign, for justice is the law of rights."

This assertion of sovereignty as existent in an abstract principle or law, whatever its quality, as justice, or reason, or love, is illustrative of the tendency to convey the whole subject of politics into a realm of mere abstractions, and to merge the state into a formal idealism. The nation has

certainly in justice, the law which is implied in its being as a moral person, and the condition of its being, and must conform to the reason of things, but the nation is itself an organic being, and invested with actual powers. Sovereignty is existent in the nation only as it is an organic and moral person, and in it and through it, justice is asserted and realized in a moral order.

This proposition is the assertion of a specious and abstract ideal, and becomes the substitution of a law or a system for the determination of the organic will. It is inconsequent, since an abstract conception, however high, which is thus asserted, can have no real strength. It is moreover perilous, since it avoids the foundation in an organic being, of the organic and moral relations of the nation. It creates a tendency to regard with indifference. the real life and conflict of the nation, in comparison with

the barren conceptions of the idealist, and to consent, on the pretense of an abstract reason or justice, to its destruction and to conspire with its dismemberment.

This proposition is also sometimes connected with the assumption of popular sovereignty in its lowest and crudest form; in disregard of the being and government of the whole, the assertion of what is represented as the reserved sovereignty of the people, is assumed by some individual, on the ground of his subjective conception of justice, which is exalted in this unlimited egoism. This was the attitude of those who regarded the battle for the nation and its unity and authority, at least with indifference, and as devoid of moral content, until it should become an immediate war against slavery.

It is said that the sovereignty inheres in the people simply as the collective people, in a certain locality. This is the premise in certain phases of the preceding proposition, and, as in each of them, in its ascribing sovereignty to the collective mass in a certain locality, it is the assertion of a sovereignty apart from the organic people.

This proposition, as before stated, postulates the power of the will of the people in its organic unity, and ascribes it to the inorganic mass. This formless crowd is destitute of the consciousness of unity which is implied in the will and is the condition of sovereignty. The state is resolved into its atomy. There is no ground. for the continuity which is presumed in government and in law, and as sovereignty is apprehended as existent in the momentary action of the multitude, then in some momentary change the authority in government and law expires. As sovereignty is represented as resident in a mass of individuals who may coexist in any locality, and as determined by their momentary action, the conception of the whole is precluded, and any section, or faction, or sect, may withdraw if it have the momentary strength.

The proposition fails, also, because it cannot make clear

what the will of the many is, nor by what law its sovereignty or its reserved sovereignty is to be ascertained, nor how it is to be exercised. The existence of a law, giving authority to a political majority, cannot be assumed in the multitude, since the proposition places before us only a collection of individuals, an inorganic mass, in whom there is no consciousness of a common political principle, nor of the authority of a common political law. It is, as before, the assumption of the mob and not of the people.

These theories are the assertion of a sovereignty, external to the nation, not in it nor of it, and identical only with a formal organization.

The sovereignty is of the organic people, constituted as a nation. It has its condition in the consciousness of the people, and it is the manifestation of the nation in its moral personality, and therefore, as subsistent in personality, it is from God; it is from God and of the people. The form and the circumstance of sovereignty in the beginning of the historical life of the people, are as manifold as the incidents of the individual existence. But in whatever form, and however slow the development of its power, the sovereignty subsists in the organic people, who in the consciousness of their unity and order form the nation.

The sovereignty has not its ground in the empty conception of the people with no conscious unity nor vocation in history. There is no conception of sovereignty, and none of the state, attaching to this mass. The numerical accumulation of men by no multiplication could attain to the sovereignty of the organic people. The sovereignty whose normal expression is law, and whose realization is freedom and order, is not in the multitude, nor in the momentary action of the multitude,1 but in the will of the

1 When Rousseau asserts an absolute sovereignty as resident in the momentary volition of the individual, and regards it as always justified by the act it