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the separate republics of Haiti and Santo Domingo, does not present the unity required to constitute a state. In the same way the separate "states" of the American Union are not states in the technical sense of the term, since each forms part of the single political entirety known as the United States. The United States as a totality constitutes a state; the "state" of Massachusetts does not. The final requisite, that of organization, is one that must be carefully noted. Even granting that we have a territory and population disconnected from the rest of the world, and thus in a sense a unit, we have not yet a state. Imagine, for example, that a "numerous assemblage of human beings," to use Professor Holland's phrase, were deposited upon some uninhabited island not owned or controlled by any existing government. Here we should have land and population in unity, but the inhabitants, having as yet no cohesion or connection, would not form a state. Imagine, however, that these inhabitants, being persons, we may suppose, accustomed to live under a settled government, should agree to form themselves into an organized body and to vest the control of all of them in the hands of certain among their number. We should then have a state. Or let us imagine a very different state of affairs. Suppose that a certain number of the inhabitants were enabled by their superior physical force or cunning to reduce the others to a condition of submission, so that settled relations of control and obedienee were established. In this case too there would be a state. For the organization needed to constitute a state need not be one established by mutual consent or one of an equitable nature. The mere existence of settled obedience to a superior, coercive force is all that is required. Any form of despotism or tyranny which fulfills these conditions establishes a political state just as much as does a government whose authority rests on a general acquiescence.

Having considered the general idea of the state as an organized community occupying a definite territory, it is next necessary to make a further analysis of the organization itself. This will involve the discussion of the relations exist

ing between the individual citizen and the state as a whole. The two central points around which the discussion of the present and the succeeding chapter will turn, are those of the sovereignty of the state, and the liberty of the individual. These two ideas, which appear at first sight to be mutually contradictory, will be shown to be not only reconcilable, but complementary and correlative to one another.

The question of the sovereignty of the state has long been a vexed topic of political discussion, and one that has given rise to the most serious difficulties and misunderstandings. The proposition that the state is absolutely sovereign over the individual has proved itself a stumbling-block and a rock of offense to the student of political history. Take, for example, the enunciation of the principle of sovereignty given by Professor Burgess. "I understand by it,” he says, "the original, absolute, unlimited, universal power over the individual subject and all associations of subjects." This is a hard saying and one calculated to call forth at first sight a most emphatic contradiction. It seems to sanction the tyranny of the state, and to involve the sacrifice of individual rights. A nearer analysis of the proper meaning to be attached to the sovereignty of the state ought to rob it of all offensive connotation. What is meant is simply this. The state is an organized community. It comes into existence when the relations of control over and obedience from the individual person are established. This obedience may or may not receive the approval of the individual rendering it. The fact of obedience is all that is needed in order that the state may be said to exist. Somewhere within the state there will exist a certain person or body of persons whose commands receive obedience. The commands may be just or unjust, morally speaking, and the persons in power may be put in a position to issue them, either by general consent or by the use of physical force. But in either case they are able to make their commands good by actual coercion. Unless there is such a body there is no state. The commands thus given are called laws. A law, then, is a command issued by the

state. Can there, then, be any limit, any legal limit, to the sovereignty, or legal supremacy, of the state? Obviously not, for such a limit would imply a contradiction in terms. A legal limit must mean a limit imposed by a lawgiving authority. Now the lawgiving authority is the sovereign power of the state, and any limits it might put on its own power would be removed as soon as it saw fit to remove them. The lawgiving power of the lawgiving body is therefore of necessity unlimited. The state, in other words, is legally sovereign. Looked at in this light the matter simply resolves itself into an equation in terms.

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The meaning to be attached to the word state will be rendered more precise by distinguishing it from society, government, and nation. The term society has no reference to territorial occupation; it refers to man alone and not to his environment. But in dealing with man its significance is much wider than that of state. It applies to all human communities, whether organized or unorganized. It suggests not only the political relations by which men are bound together, but the whole range of human relations and collective activities. The study of society involves the study of man's religion, of domestic institutions, industrial activities, education, crime, etc. The term government, on the other hand, is narrower than state. It refers to the person or group of persons (which in a modern community will be very numerous) in whose hands the organization of the state places for the time being the function of political control. The word is sometimes used to indicate the persons themselves, sometimes abstractly to indicate the kind and composition of the controlling group. The ordinary citizens of a community are a part of the state, but are not part of the government. The term has moreover no reference to territory.

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In the next place it is to be observed that nation and state are two distinct conceptions. The term nation, though often loosely used, is properly to be thought of as having a racial or ethnographical significance. It indicates a body of people -the Germans, the French, the Hungarians, etc.-united by

common descent and a common language. But such divisions by no means coincide with the political divisions of the civilized world into states. Austria-Hungary constitutes a single state, but its population is made up of members of a great many different races. The political division of the civilized world into states freely intersects with the division into races, although sometimes the political units-as in the case of modern France-are almost coincident with the ethnographic. The relation between political organization and nationality has been a changing one. In the classical world, in the city states of ancient Greece and Italy, kinship among the citizens was considered an elemental factor in the composition of the state. In ancient Athens and Sparta persons of alien race were not considered as members of the political community. Hence in the political thought of classical Greece the conception of the state is limited to a small area occupied by persons of the same race. In the Roman world, the original conception of a city state with a common nationality was transformed by the process of absorption and conquest into the larger conception of a world-wide state and universal sovereignty. Nationality is here lost from sight. The foreign nations occupying the subjugated provinces were recognized by the virtue of the Emperor Caracalla's act of general infranchisement (A. D. 212) as citizens of the universal empire. Such a conception, as will be seen in a later chapter, long survived as the basis of European polity, though existing only in the shadowy form of the titular Holy Roman Empire. In actual fact, however, it was displaced by other political conceptions. Feudalism brought with it the notion of territorial sovereignty and dynastic supremacy. A state became coincident with the domain owned, if one may use the term, by a particular house and its descendants, and quite irrespective of the nationalities of the subject peoples. States were formed out of communities of varying nationalities by inheritance, by cession, by marriage of their sovereigns. Witness for example the sovereignty of Henry II over Anjou, Aquitaine, etc.; the claim of Edward III to the crown of France;

and at a later date, the empire of Charles V, who inherited Burgundy, Spain, part of Italy, and various Austrian territories. To a large extent this political fusion has fortunately been accompanied by a fusion of languages, as in the amalgamation of modern France.

It was in the nineteenth century that the claim of nationality as the paramount basis of state organization strongly asserted itself. The great political upheaval consequent upon the American and French revolutions led to an intense national movement in most parts of Europe. Under its influence modern Italy has been converted (1815-1870) into a national state. Germany has assumed a definite national form in the modern German Empire (1871), whose boundaries, however, are not identical with those occupied by the German people. In other countries-Hungary, Irelandthe same movement has been seen in abortive form, while the modern aspirations of Pan-Slavism, Pan-Germanism, and "unredeemed" Italy foreshadow the part that nationality is to play in the organization of the states of the future. Common nationality is, therefore, though not an actual requisite in the composition of the state as it now exists, a potent factor in its formation.

2. CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT.

One of the most characteristic features of modern states as distinguished from the ancient is that which is implied by the term constitutional. We are constantly talking about constitutional history, constitutional law and constitutional amendments, but what in essence is constitutional government? President Wilson in the following selection answers this question:

By a constitutional government we, of course, do not mean merely a government conducted according to the provisions of a definite constitution; for every modern government with which our thoughts deal at all has a definite constitution, written or unwritten, and we should not dream of speaking of all modern governments as "constitutional." Not even when their constitutions are written

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