Revolutionists prevailed under Kolchak, Denikine, Kaledines, or Wrangel, and had the inhabitants acquiesced in the change of rulers as they appeared to do during the succession of revolutions which ended in the dictatorship of the urban proletariat under the leadership of Lenin and Trotzky? Again, was the Russia of the Romanoffs the same state after the secession of the Finns, the Esthonians, the Letts, and the Lithuanians? After the formation of the new Poland? And after the formation of other states of uncertain stability in the Caucasus, and in Siberia?

Apparently changes of rulers might continue indefinitely without destroying the state, if the people should, as a matter of fact, recognize the authority of the successive rulers and submit to their dominion. But the process of disruption by the secession of particular bodies of people from the original body could not continue indefinitely without so altering its original character as to make it unrecognizable. Since the dissolution of the Dual Monarchy and the disruption of both Austria and Hungary, where is the former Austrian state? Is German-Austria alone the true successor of the ancient Austria, or have the Hapsburg dominions been so dispersed among the various Danubian states which now exist, the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Hungary, and German-Austria, as well as Poland and Italy, to say nothing of the state of Fiume, that the identity of Austria has been utterly lost? Strictly speaking, any substantial change in the body of people who obey a common ruler may be said to constitute a new state, but for practical purposes it is probably enough to preserve the identity of a state that the bulk of its people should be the same before and after the change. Changes of rulers are of less consequence in determining the identity of a state. Whether, however, a state is bound by the acts of rulers whom its people have repudiated is another question.

of

Bentham's realistic definition of the state is broad Inadequacy enough to include a wide variety of bodies politic. The Bentham's American Union, for example, is a state, according to this theory definition, and so also are the forty-eight States which compose the Union. Whether such territories as Alaska, Hawaii, and Porto Rico, are also states in Bentham's sense of the term is not so clear. They have their local rulers, who are obeyed in most matters by the inhabitants, but who in their turn take orders from their official superiors at Washington. The peoples of the Philippine Islands are in a somewhat different position with reference to their local rulers and to the government at Washington, respectively, and those of the other overseas dependencies such as Guam and Samoa are still differently placed. Moreover, the United States maintains a peculiarly intimate relationship with certain states which are, nominally at least, completely independent, notably Cuba and Panama. The United States has also at times extended its special protection and friendly assistance to more or less unwilling peoples in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and elsewhere, to say nothing of the protection which has been extended to Indian tribes, which once roamed in the American wilderness and now are settled upon their reservations in the West. Upon Bentham's theory of the state it is manifestly uncertain where the line is to be drawn between political communities which are real states and those which fall into the category of dependencies and other types of subordinate political community. The British Empire affords many illustrations of the same difficulty. Is the Dominion of Canada a state? Is the colony of Newfoundland a state? Is the province of Quebec a state? Is British India a state? Are the protected native states in India true states? And what about those similar bodies of people within the "spheres of interest," "spheres of legitimate aspiration," and "hinterlands," that once filled so great a

Austin's definition of the state

The idea of

space upon the map of Africa? Common usage affords no clue to the answer. It is too hopelessly inconsistent. Bentham's definition is consistent but inadequate. It is founded on the data of politics, but it does not clearly explain the most important political phenomenon, the existence of

states.

3

Evidently there is need for a definition of the state which without being less realistic, shall be more precise. An attempt to supply this need was made by Bentham's acute and subtle disciple, John Austin.1 Austin. "If a determinate human superior," he wrote, "not in a habit of obedience to a like superior, receive habitual obedience from the bulk of a given society, that determinate superior is sovereign. in that society, and the society (including the superior) is a society political and independent. . . . To that determinate superior, the other members of the society are subject. . The mutual relation which subsists between that superior and them, may be styled sovereignty and subjection.. . . ." By an independent political society, therefore, Austin meant one consisting of a sovereign and subjects, as opposed to a political society consisting entirely of persons in a state of subjection. Thus arose the juristic distinction between sovereign and non-sovereign states. The essence of the state, according to Austin as well as Bentham, consists in the habit of obedience on the part of the bulk of its people to their rulers. Any organized body of people among whom such a habit exists is a kind of state. But the only perfect state, according to Austin, is the sovereign state.

Sovereignty is one of those unsatisfactory terms which, sovereignty like state itself, has received various meanings at different

1 Cf. John Austin, The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (1832), and Lectures on Jurisprudence (1869).

times and still conveys different ideas to men. It was introduced into the literature of political science by the influential French political philosopher, Bodin, in his epochmaking treatise, De Republica, first published in 1576, to describe the powers of the supreme ruler in the territorial states which were then struggling to establish their authority against the obsolete pretensions of the Holy Roman Empire and the more substantial claims of the late medieval Papacy. It seems to have been sometimes used, however, as by the great Dutch writer on the law of nations, Grotius, to designate the sovereign's estate or state. In this sense it came to mean an independent state, that is, one whose rulers possessed the powers ascribed to so exalted a ruler by Bodin and his successors. Even when, with the overthrow of absolute monarchy as a form of government, sovereignty in Bodin's sense of the term passed from single persons to more numerous bodies of people and became comparatively impersonal, the other use of the term remained. Abraham Lincoln, for example, used it in that sense in one of his messages to the Congress of the United States, in which he argued that the Southern States were not "sovereignties" and hence were not entitled to withdraw from the Union without the consent of the people of the United States. But in modern times the term has generally been employed to designate the most important attribute of a so-called sovereign state, not the state itself.

problem of

in the

modern

Sovereignty, as defined by Austin, is a relationship that The can obtain only between one definite person or body of per- authority sons and the other members of the state. It implies the existence in the whole body of people of a single, recognized state supreme authority. But the problem of authority in the modern state is not so simple. Real men, unlike the hypo

1 See Harold J. Laski, Authority in the Modern State, and Essays on the Problem of Sovereignty.

thetical political animals of Austin's theory, are in the habit of obeying various authorities whose supremacy they recognize in their respective spheres of action. The state is only one of several organizations to which they may belong, and to the leaders of which they may duly acknowledge allegiance. The sovereign, as described by Austin, may be absolute, according to the juristic theory, but he is not omnipotent in the actual conduct of affairs.

Practical This is most clearly evident in matters of religion. limitations upon legal Christians have their Gospels, Mohammedans their Koran, sovereignty and adherents of other creeds their sacred writings, by which they seek to rule their lives. Christians have the word of the Master Himself for the distinction between the things that are Caesar's, that is, political, and those that are God's and therefore not political but ecclesiastical. Everywhere the division of authority between civil and ecclesiastical dignitaries has a higher sanction than that of any temporal ruler. Temporal rulers may exercise both temporal and spiritual authority, but if they do so effectively, they must first have been recognized as head of the church as well as of the state. The limitation of the obligation to obey the authority of the state, which results from the existence of competing social and economic authorities, is less deeply rooted than that resulting from the existence of the church, but it is no less real. The officers of trade unions and of fraternal orders exercise within their respective fields an authority which often transcends that of the constitutional rulers of states. Coal miners, for instance, will persist in a strike duly called by their regular leaders, despite exhortations by governors and presidents and injunctions by courts of law. Political authority is only one kind of authority, and obedience to the rulers of states is only one aspect of a general phenomenon. In short, the facts of human obedience are too complicated to be satisfactorily explained by Austin's theory of sovereignty.