else succeeds to him, and not by his will for the most part, but by law of the state. He disobeys the law and seeks to overturn it; another is substituted for him, and all things go on, it may be, better than before. All this shows that the ultimate power in theory rests with the state or the people constituting it, and that the prince is a delegate or deputed sovereign. This of course touches the source of his power and the object for which it is granted. The power itself may be absolute, and the grant may have been made in remote ages. The prince is a vicar of God just as receivers of tribute are "God's ministers, attending continually for this very thing." But he is such because the state and its authority is from God, and because he fulfils the end for which the helm of state is entrusted to him. If some democrats of the French school have talked of cashiering kings, the grossness of taste and want of reverence for old dignities was the result of an ill use of sovereign power. If the French kings had felt that they were created to minister rather than to be ministered unto, that their power, called sovereign, was delegated to them, the outrages of an extreme reaction against their sway might have been spared to the world.

What is the people?

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The question can now be asked, if the state or the people of the state is sovereign, who are the people? The answer will vary with the purpose which dictated the question. If the question is who are the people for whose sake the state is created or administered or reformed, the answer must be “ every man, woman, and child, now living, and all that shall come after them." If, again, it be asked, what is intended by a public act of a people occupying a large territory, as, for instance, the adoption of a new form of government, or the choice of a line of kings, the answer must be that if the people act at all, they act either in masses constitutionally gathered at various points through a country, or by representatives constitutionally appointed, or appointed in some of those rude methods of which history furnishes so

many examples. The people, in this case, will be a much smaller body, as far as active participation is concerned, than the whole. They will be the active citizens, or the cives optimo jure, those qualified to do political acts. In general, all political acts which are done by the representatives of the people are popular acts. For the most part even in democracies the people are a small body compared with the whole number of inhabitants. In Athens, the demus or active people, the assembly of citizens, was never over 20,000, and seldom were more than 6,000 present in public assemblies. Thus slaves and foreign residents, all females and male minors, were counted out. The Roman populus, after the plebs reached political power, was the mass of citizens able to vote in the comitia. In other governments, where suffrage has been more extended, the people, as a community invested with political rights, will include one quarter, at the most, of the inhabitants, but a smaller proportion generally are found at elections. Then this same people, having chosen their political officers, no longer act in person, but entrust the greater part of the power in the state to representatives; and this is inevitable in all free states excepting such as are confined to a city and its near neighborhood.

There is also a distinction of great importance to be made between the people considered as a mass of individuals, and the people acting collectively in a political community. The individuals are those who have rights, obligations, and wants, who are united in a public body, and from whom public power, in theory or in fact, emanates. Besides these, there is no third political entity such as the people of New York or of Chicago, except so far as municipal powers are given to these communities. It sometimes happens in free states that assemblies of men, gathered together by private persons, call themselves the people. But there is no people except the political community and the individual members of the same. All other assemblages for the most lawful purposes have no political voice whatever. They may have a right to assemble, but they can decree nothing, they can only express an opinion.

Relations of a state to its territory.

The state (comp. 57) must be an existing entity on some part of the earth's surface. If it be really a state, no other body having the same properties of a sovereign state can co-exist with it within the same bounds, nor exercise any jurisdiction nor do any political act there except by its consent. It may be limited by its constitution, in regard to the actions which it can perform within its bounds and its amount of jurisdiction, as well as to the extent of its power in dealing with other like states, but it necessarily is so far supreme in a certain territory, as to exclude in certain things all other power. As for territory and the question by what right does a state exert its state power there and no where else, except in a limited degree on the high sea and wherever external war requires, the theory of the state is entirely silent, just as social contract and other hypotheses of a state's origin are silent. Historical causes running through ages make it easier for men within certain bounds to unite than within certain others; causes of a violent kind, as conquest, others more just, as the accident of family inheritance, or mutual security against a strong power, or assimilation of social traits, bring political bodies together; other causes dissolve political unions. But the fact must be accepted, and the long existence of a government doing its proper work gives it rights, whatever may have been its origin. It has a right to authority in a certain territory because it is in possession and does its work tolerably well.

action. Ends of the

state.

CHAPTER IV.

SPHERE AND ENDS OF STATE.

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A QUESTION of extreme importance in the state is, what is Sphere of state the proper sphere within which state-action ought to move? Or the question may be put in a form different in terms but in substance the same, what are the ends which a state or nation ought to seek? Does it exist only to protect the rights of the individuals living within the territory-to defend their bodies and goods, as the expression is, or must it have a wider care of their welfare, reaching to all the interests of education, culture, morality and religion, to the assistance of the poor, to the encouragement of industry and of intercourse? Still further, does the office of the state require it to shield the individual from impending evil, or must its intervention begin, when the rights of the individual are invaded? With our view of the extent of the state's sphere, our view, also, of the duty to punish offenders of the law, must vary. If there were no duty but to protect the body and goods of individuals, it does not appear how there could be any criminal law, which contemplates the state or the people as the aggrieved party, because the reparation of the individual is not punishment but payment of due. Thus we have, on one construction of the state, a community watched over in all its interests, a régime going far beyond the demands of justice and of security, the perpetual presence of power which may meddle with the affairs of private persons even in the exercise of their acknowledged rights; or, on the contrary, a government where all forward movement must come from single persons or bodies, while the state itself will be as much out of sight as possible, and thereby fulfil

its true office of only seconding and securing such as need its aid.

It is impossible for those who seek to carry out the narrowest view of the state's sphere to make a consistent explanation of what they themselves hold to be necessary. We might ask them why, on their theory, it is not enough to make rights real by opening the courts to the wronged, and helping them to right themselves by the servants of justice enforcing the judicial decision. Why prevent the occurrence of wrongs by any kind of force like that of a police? Or we might ask them whether any government has existed, any code of laws ever been framed, in which "body and goods" alone were the subject-matter of legislation. It is a great thing to allow the individual to develop himself in the community, to cultivate his own individual powers in his own way; but it is of equal importance to mankind, to the progress and welfare of the world, that the interests of the whole body should be cared for. The problem as thus presented seems to combine two opposite tendencies-a care for the whole and a care for the individual. How to adjust and unite these so that the individual shall not be unduly controlled, nor the general welfare neglected, is a difficult problem, but it must be solved, somehow or other. (Comp. what is said below, §§ 76, 77.)

It may be of use at this stage of our subject to attempt to arrange the different particulars which make up the state's offices or duties, without counting those relating to external bodies or governments.

(1.) First we have the office of giving redress to the individual or family or association which has been wronged. Of this enough has been said, and that this is an essential office of the state will not be disputed.

(2.) It is also properly an office of the state to secure the individual from injury beforehand, to prevent the invasion of rights. Otherwise we must say that all force, as far as the individual is concerned, is to be exerted in enabling him to obtain redress and that he ought on a right theory to have no