The modern idea of the state

Contents

PAGE

translators' introduction XI

I. The History of Sovereignty xv

Chapter I The Authority Of The State And The Authority Of

LAW 3

I. The Opposition between the Old and the New

Idea of the State 3

II. The Rise of the Modem Idea of the State .... 6

III. The Significance of the Modern Idea of the State 8

VI CONTENTS

PAGE

Chapter II The Authority Of The Sovereign And The Authority

OF THE LAW IN HISTORY 12

I. The State Originally a Community founded on

Law 12

II. The Rise of the Authority of the Sovereign . . . 12 "^III. Ancient Political Theory as a Theory of the

Legal Order of the Community 14

"^V. The Political Theory of the Middle Ages as a

Theory of Sovereignty 16

V. The Meaning of the Contract with the Sovereign

and of the Social Contract under Absolutism . 17 VI. The Relation between the Sovereign Authority and the Organization of the Community in

Grotius and Others 19

VII. Political Theory as Exclusively a Theory of the

Sovereign Authority 22

VIII. The Relation between Sovereign Authority and

the Organization of the Community in England 24 IX. The German Philosophy of the State under the

Ancien Regime 25

X. Montesquieu's Separation of Powers : A Product of Political Theory as a Theory of Sovereign

Authority 25

XL The Theory of State Sovereignty in the Eighteenth Century 27

XII. Rousseau's Popular Sovereignty 28

XIII. The Rise of the Modern Idea of the State under

the Constitutional System 30

XIV. The Supplanting of the Authority of the Sovereign by the Authority of the Law 34

CONTENTS VII

PACE

Chapter III

I. The Concept of the Sovereignty of Law ... 37

II. The Authority of Law as the Rulership of Will 41

III. Criticism of the Rulership of Will 44

IV. The Conditions for the Validity of Law ... 45 V. The Basis of Legal Rules 45

VI. Objections to the Theory 52

A. The Normative Character of the Sense of Right 52

B. The Authority of the Sovereign as the Authority of Law 56

C. The Stabihty of Law 61

D. Force and Law 63

VII. Law as the Rule of a Community 69

VIII. Majority Rule 72

IX. Criticism of Objections to the Majority Principle 78

X. The Individual Sense of Right 83

XI. The Quality of the Sense of Right 87

XII. The Making of Statutory Law 91

XIII. Legislation as the Operation of an Organized Sense of Right 94

XIV. Unwritten Law 98

A. Content 98

B. Necessity 100

C. Supplementary 102

D. Abrogating and Modif3dng 107

E. Statute and Law 110

XV. Strengthening the Authority of Law .... 114

VIII CONTENTS

PAGE

A. The Administration with reference to Punishments and Judicial Executions .... 115

B. The Further Task of Administration . ... 122

Chapter IV

I. Law-making as an Intellectual Process ... 127

II. The Influence of Codification 129

III. The Revolution in Criminal Law 129

IV. The Revolution in Private Law 131

V. The Influence upon Judicial Decisions. ... 133

VI. The Idea of Sovereignty and Constitutional Law 135 VII. The Idea of Sovereignty in Administrative Law 1 39 VII I . The Hybrid Character of the Systems of Constitutional and Administrative Law 143

IX. The Logical Consequences of the Old and New

Pohtical Theories 145

A. The Binding Force of Law 145

B. The Monopoly of Law 145

C. The Continuance of Validity 146

D. The Interpretation of Statutory Law ... 147

E. Judicial Decisions 147

Chapter IX

I. The Old Theory of the State 200

II. Criticism 204

III. The Modem Theory of the State 208

IV. The State as a Community of Interests ... 213 V. Origin of the State as a Community of Interests 215

VI. Origin of the State as a Legal Community . . 221

VII. The Organization of the Community of Interests 226

X CONTENTS

PAGE

Chapter X

V I. The Authority of International Law . . . . 233

A. The Derivation of its Authority from the Authority of the State 233

B. Criticism 236

^ U. The Content of International Law 238

A. The Significance of International Law for the State as a Legal Community 238

B. The Subjects of International Law .... 240

C. The Connection between National and International Law 245

III. The Creation of International Law 248

A. Organs 248

B. Customary Law 251

C. Treaty-Law 252

D. Contractual and Declaratory Treaties . . 256

E. Legislation 259

F. The Internal Transformation of International Law 263

G. The Rise of a World State 269

TRANSLATORS' INTRODUCTION

The value of the more general and abstract efforts of political theory, of what may perhaps be called the philosophy of the state, is often questioned. It is urged on the one hand that the true science of poUtics cannot go beyond the study of the actual organization of government and of its relations to other social and economic institutions. On the other hand, it is asserted that political philosophy, because it is necessarily a prioriin method, cannot do more than ring the changes on certain fundamental types of theory which were stated once for all in the far-distant past. Thus, for example. Professor Dunning in his recent book on Political Theories from Rousseau to Spencer says, "Greek Thought on this problem [the justification of authority and submission] in the fourth and third centuries before Christ included substantially all the solutions ever suggested." ^)

Nevertheless, with some ups and downs, political philosophy goes on; it is one of those subjects of permanent human interest which, whether "scientific" or not, men are not likely to abandon. To be sure, it does at times degenerate into an apology for special interests in their endless struggle for power. This danger can scarcely be avoided when men undertake to weigh values and to estimate the importance of tendencies that have not yet eventuated in political fact. But notwithstanding this danger, the criticism of principles is indispensable. The notion that political theory can be reduced strictly to an analysis and sxmimation of accomplished political facts is really idle. The political theorist must no doubt feel the scientific reverence for fact as keenly as any other thinker, but he cannot escape

XII TRANSLATORS INTRODUCTION

from the fact that his subject matter, unlike that of the physical scientist, includes an ideal dimension. For political institutions are not unchangeable, nor do they change solely under the influence of objective conditions. At bottom political phenomena belong to the realm of mind and mind is always in part an unrealized plan for the future, as well as a record of accompUshment. Pohtical theory certainly cannot neglect what is, but just as little can it close its eyes to what ought to be, for what ought to be is an ineradicable element of man's experience in his political relationships and a real force in his conduct.

Consequently political thought has always included, and must always include, not only the generalization of facts but also the valuation of tendencies. It is a product of the need to clarify the mental vision, to see present events clear and whole in the endless struggle for a more reasonable reconstruction of the conditions of human life. And the wholeness of institutions includes what they are becoming quite as much as what they are. The notion that political philosophy consists of a few abstract principles, once for all completed in the hands of the Greek Philosophers, has in fact done serious injury to the political thought of the nineteenth century. A return to the Greek's clear perception of the fact that social relations are the indispensable condition of the individual's good was undoubtedly a useful corrective to the abstract individualism of the natural rights philosophers. It can easily be understood why political thinkers turned to Plato and Aristotle for a saner point of view than that which they inherited from the era of the Revolution. But to treat the Greek city state as an analogue of the modern national state is merely to forget the long story of Rome and the Middle Ages, to lose sight of the enormous upheaval of values that accompanied the rise of the Church and its dissolution at the Reformation, and to neglect the rise of feudalism and its fall before the advances of commerce and industrialism. The supposition that behind all this there is an unchanging body of political principles is merely the last illusion of seventeenth century rationahsm. Throughout the twenty-three centuries since

TRANSLATORS INTRODUCTION XIII

Aristotle, political theory has stood close to the centers of change from which the modern state finally emerged. It has sought continually to describe and evaluate these forces of change, to create the conditions of rational foresight, to supersede muddle by direction. From time to time it has gone back to Greek thought for inspiration, but the inspiration lay less in the borrowing of specific theories than in the ideal of an intelligence which in the midst of change can look before and after and so make itself master of its fate. That it borrowed from the past is less important than that it aimed to adapt its borrowings to new times and new conditions. Let it be granted that political theory at its worst can become special pleading. Nevertheless the continuous criticism of ideals and tendencies remains an indispensable part of its function.

This function is at once negatively critical and constructive. The march of events is not wholly conscious, nor conscious to all men equally. Ideas and ideals which once corresponded to social and political fact become outworn and obsolete. They become not only fictions but obstacles to the solution of new political problems. It is the function of the political thinker to display the unreality of such notions, in order that the ground may be cleared for a more adequate conception of political relations. Institutions, like habits, can bind and fetter the mind, when they issue in conduct that has ceased to be suitable. The legislator and the administrator, as well as the man in the street, needs to have the cobwebs of obsolete theory cleared from his mind. Criticism is the sole means of re-establishing a clearer vision of political and social realities. But for this purpose no a,mount of merely negative criticism will suffice. The political theorist cannot avoid some of the functions of statesmanship ; he must seek the whither no less than the whence of institutions ; he must estimate the forces at work and their direction. The value of a political theory depends not only upon its recognition of achieved fact and on the logical thoroughness of its synthesis, but also upon its grasp of fact in posse. Thus it was that Hobbes, who far surpassed Locke in the force

XIV translators' introduction

of his logic, was yet less effective than the latter, for he failed to see the forces and tendencies that were ushering in constitutional government.

The work of Professor Krabbe which is here presented in translation is a notable effort both to show the insufficiencies of current political theory and to outline the new form which poUtical relationships are assuming. His criticisms are directed at the fundamental conceptions of accepted theory and they portend a radical reconstruction of theory in the light of changes which are visibly taking place in contemporary politics. His theory makes no pretense to finality or even to completeness. It is subject to revision in the light both of criticism and of data not yet brought to bear upon the problem. In its main features it is in accord with the criticism of the state by other scholars, a volume of criticism which has reached proportions that make it a phenomenon of first-rate importance in political science at the present time. The impartial reader must form his own judgment of the worth of this criticism as against traditional theories and also of the adequacy of Professor Krabbe's special contributions to a constructive theory.

Such a constructive theory looks forward not only to changes in the structure of political science but also to impending transformations of government. But it is impossible to visualize in detail before they occur the chariges in the organization of government which the theory implies. The organization of parliamentary government was presaged by Locke's Treatises and the American constitutional system was suggested by the theories of Locke and Montesquieu. Yet no contemporary of those writers could have foreseen in detail the course of development which government in England and America would take. To conservative minds of their day their theories appeared both speculative and anarchical. If the reader of this book feels a like difficulty in envisaging a constitution satisfactory to practical requirements, he must remember that the process of giving legal expression to dynamic ideas is slow and is accompanied by a deal of experimentation. Practical constitu-

TRANSLATORS INTRODUCTION XV

tions are achieved by the process of trial and error, but always more or less under the guidance of ideas. The justification of a political theory does not lie in the presentation of a fully elaborated scheme of government but in a truthful expression of the trend and strength of political forces.

I. THE HISTORY OF SOVEREIGNTY

The corher-stone of political theory has long been the principle of the state's sovereignty. In order to make clear the importance of this conception it is necessary to review briefly its history. This question was discussed at length by Professor Krabbe in an earlier work entitled. Die Lehre der Rechtssouverdnitdt, 1906, to which the work now translated is a sequel. The former work is largely a critical and historical analysis of the conception of the state and of its relation to law. On the ground cleared by this criticism the present book undertakes to lay down the foundations of a new theory of the state.

The conception of sovereignty belongs essentially to modem political theory. It is sheer confusion to identify autarchy or self-sufficiency, which Aristotle asserts to be the distinguishing mark of the state, with the modern sovereignty. The former is an ethical conception; the latter is political and legal. The self-sufficing state is one which is equipped with all that is necessary to the good life. Political independence may be one element of this equipment but it is not more essential than economic self-sufficiency. Autarchy means the ability of the state to satisfy all the needs of its citizens. Nor did the Romans possess the conception of sovereignty, though the Roman law came to recognize that the emperor's right to command is inherent in his position. This principle of law was utilized later when the theory of sovereignty came to be formulated, but the assertion of sovereignty carries with it the suggestion and rejection of a possible division of authority. Such a possible pluralism was in fact altogether foreign to Roman thought and practice.

XVI TRANSLATORS INTRODUCTION

A universal state, a universal law, a universal language, and eventually a universal church were the characteristic expressions of the Roman genius.

It was not until the Middle Ages that the conditions of such a pluralism existed and then they existed everywhere. Authority is everywhere divided, dispersed, and questioned. Church and state, pope and emperor, emperor and king, king and baron, lord and vassal are in continual opposition. Society is divided into estates which are often in a high degree class-conscious, but nowhere is there a national consciousness. Decrees of emperor, pope, and king, which frequently conflict with one another, are opposed and checked by local law and custom. Nowhere is there an unambiguous authority standing at the head of a unified political and legal system. From this welter of conflicting authorities and rival jurisdictions the national sta'% eventually emerges and with it the political conception of sovereignty.

This phenomenon is connected essentially with the rise of the monarchy. In the earlier Middle Ages the strife of authorities had centered about the controversy between the pope and the emperor. This struggle, however, was gradually eclipsed in the controversies which arose from the efforts of the national king to extend his authority within the limits of his own territory. In the beginning the supremacy of the king's authority is by no means admitted. He is limited by the claims of both the great powers which had been contesting with each other the claim of supremacy.j^The emperor's claim to universal secular authority is perhaps theoretical, but the power of the Church within the kingdom is often real enough. The independence of the ecclesiastical courts, the immunities of the clergy from civil authority, and the power of the Church to collect tithes are examples of the serious impairment of the king's authority within the national territory. Apart from the ancient powers of Church and Empire, the feudal nobility could often defy his decrees.]When an angry king, on saying to a powerful retainer, "You shall either go or hang," could receive the truthful re-

TRANSLATORS INTRODUCTION XVII

sponse, "I shall neither go nor hang," ^) there was obviously no such attribute as sovereignty attaching to the king's authority. Again, a Uke independence of central control was often successfully asserted by the cities. "We will have no king but the Mayor," was the haughty assertion of the citizens of London.

But it was not merely the resistance of individual barons, cities, or ecclesiastical corporations that the king had to face. Linked together in the "estates," these elements of society were long able to meet the king on more than even terms and seriously impede the growth of royal power. The EngUsh ParUament in the Middle Ages did not represent the people as a whole but some himdreds of corporate bodies and powerful lords. The probable etymology of "commons" is "communities" or corporate bodies. ^) The House of Commons was the assembly of the counties and boroughs, — the corporate bodies, — of the realm, not a representative assembly of the common people. Unlike the pope and the emperor, the estates did not presume to set themselves above the king, but they did claim a co-ordinate position or insisted upon their independence of him. The political relation of sovereign and subject is quite foreign to this mediaeval political structure; the relation between the king and the estates is virtually contractual. Thus Magna Charta is to be viewed as a sort of treaty between the great barons and the king, not as a constitutional guarantee of popular rights.

But time and the forces of integration were on the side of the king. As M. Monod has expressed it, "We can follow through the feudal epoch the development of the monarchical idea which was to destroy feudalism, as we can follow across the monarchical epoch the national idea which was to throw dynastic interests back into the second place." *) The rise of the national state is the outstanding political event of modern history and it is the achievement of a period of royal absolutism. In tfes

■) Dicey, Privy Council, p. 2.

•) Boutmy, Constitutional Law, p. 157.

») Revue historique, Vol. XLIII, 1890, p. 95.

The modern idea of the State.

xviii translators' introduction

respect the development of government in England was more than a century in advance of that on the Continent, but in both cases the development followed the same line. The work of Henry VIII and EUzabeth was substantially sunilar in aim to that of Louis XIV or Frederick Wilham I. It was a work of consohdation, unification, nationalization. The later evolution of popular constitutional government could certainly not have followed the course it did, had not provinces been joined into kingdoms, local groups been welded into nations, and the conflicting medley of feudal rights, privileges, exemptions, and authorities been reduced to a unified poHtical system. This was the task of absolute monarchy.

The theoreticalcorner-stone of this absolute personal power is t he concept of sove reignty. This conception sets up the ideal of a legal independence free from all external control and a legal supremacy over all the internal affairs of the kingdom. It was an ideal which obtained its force from the long controversies in which numerous authorities, — Empire, Papacy, feudal nobility, free cities, ecclesiastical corporations, and king, — had vied for the right to exact obedience. It is for this reason that the conception of sovereignty belongs peculiarly to modern times; ^jicienM^mes^Jmew no conflicts of authority which could havje. called such aaidealinto being. ■-'--—

■^ In particular it was the king of France who in the sixteenth century achieved the title to be described as "in his own kingdom, as it were, a corporeal god." And in 1576 Jean Bodin first formulated a^iefinitian of the state,which made sovereign power its essential characteristic. The state consists of citizens subject to some sovereign power and "sovereignty is the supreme power over citizens and subjects, unrestrained by the laws. " ^) The sovereign is the source of law and, as such, cannot be bound by it ; he is subject only to the divine law and to the law of nature, and is responsible to God alone for his acts. Political theory thus joined hands with political policy; as MachiaveUi had prescribed the concentration of power in the

') De re publica, Lib. I, cap. viii.

TRANSLATORS INTRODUCTION XIX

hands of the princes as the only means of uniting Italy, so Bodin, in the midst of civil war, celebrated in his theory of sovereignty a similar concentration in France, which was about to be consummated in his day. Moreover, this theory conformed quite simply to the most significant tendency of the century, the fact that the king was not subject to the Pope, owed no fealty to the Emperor, and within his kingdom was struggling toward a position in which he could legislate for the whole body of his subjects and enforce the law directly upon them by his own officers. The famous claim imputed to Louis XIV, "I am the state," was in part simply a. statement of fact; for the rest, it was a somewhat crude way of stating a great po— litical ideal . The theory of sovereignty was an invaluable weapon in the hands of the monarch in his contest with the other claimants to authority ; it gave a theoretical foundation for the emerging- national absQliite_state, and it clearly forecast the line that political evolution was to follow. It is clear, therefore, why political philosophy regarded the relation of subject and sovereign as the fundamental poUtical fact.

It is true that the authority of the king, even in the period of the most extreme absolutism, did not reach to the lengths that the theory demanded. Theoretic ally the law owed its vaUdity to the will of the king, even though it might rest upon an immemorial custom which long antedated the rise of the king. More and more, however, the enforcement of customary law fell into the hands of royal officers and it was possible for Bodin to maintain that custop cannot be law without the sanction of the royal will. But (custom and established law are stubborn^ facts and the truth is that no absolute monarch ever actually obtained more than a very limited power to impose his wiH upon that common law of the folk or people which for the most part determined the legal relations between private persons. In France the local customs remained largely intact throughout the absolute monarchy and down to the Revolution, in spite of various projects for a general codification. The king really exerted only a sUght legislative authority over pri-

XX translators' introduction

vate law. "Down to the end of the ancien regime the king of France did not touch the private law except in the rarest cases. This law remained essentially a local and customary law. Policy, administration, and police duties are the chief objects of official action. And this is in fact the king's sphere of action. His ordinances and decrees are from the beginning administrative; they are not civil laws To sum up, the chief fact

which dominates our history is the relative impotence of the king over private law." ^)

On the other hand, the absolute monarchy concentrated in the hands of the king the power to legislate in matters of administration and his mandates to his officials became the source of administrative or pubUc law. Only in England, where the rise of Parliament prevented the differentiation of pubUc from private law, was there a unified law having authority over officials and private persons alike, and a single source of law, the King in Parliament. But in this respect again political evolution in England was ahead of that on the Continent. With the extension of the representative system and the growth of the power of parliament over the administration, the state did in fact achieve a completer unification of the law than the absolute power of the monarch was able to bring about. The representative assembly gradually absorbed legislative power imtil the statute was not only a limitation upon the competence of the administration but the basis of that competence. We shall have occasion again to refer to this relation between the state and the law. '^ The theory of sovereignty could not remain merely an assertion of the supremacy of the royal wiR, for the wiU of the monarch, in England at lea:st, presently came to be of little moment. The tendency of constitutional government was directly away from arbitrary personal power and the chief aim of Locke's political theory is to determine how power can be subject

') Paul VioUet, Histoire its institutions polUiques et administratives de la France, Vol. II, pp. 198 ff. Of. Krabbe, Die Lehre der Recktssouverdnitdt, Ch. Ill, from which the quotation is taken.

TRANSLATORS INTRODUCTION XXI

to legal limitation. His ideal is government subject throughout to law. With Hobbes plainly in mind, he scouts the^otiop) of a contract which makes all men but one subject to lawT') Unfortunately, however, Locke was not able to make clear how the law-making power can itself be subject to law. His^theory. is that ultimate power rests with the people and that political obedience is due to "the public wiU of the society," the prolific germ of all the later theories of popular sovereignty. In point of fact, the net outcome of the Revolution of 1 688 was to transfer the sovereign power from the king to ParUament, leaving the conception of sovereign power itself largely unchanged. The assumed unity of the sovereign was for a time shaken by Montesquieu's doctrine of the separation of powers. But the development of the ministerial system and the concentration not only of the royal prerogative but of all executive powers in the hands of a ministry responsible to the House of Commons made the legal omnipotence of ParUament the cardinal principle of British government. The work of Bagehot in the middle of the nineteenth century established firmly the idea of parliamentary sovereignty.

The theory of popular sovereignty, which fell somewhat into abeyance after the Revolutionary Period, got a new lease of life from the rapid growth of institutions which made ParUament more directly amenable to the control of pubUc opinion. With the extension of the suffrage by the three reform biUs, there came visibly into existence and power a new element in the state, the electorate. Not only was the House of Commons, which had come to be nearly equivalent to ParUament, dependent upon the voters through elections, but not infrequently its decisions were made the subjects of appeal to the electorate through dissolutions and new general elections. In the face of this new factor in the state, could one speak with propriety of parUamentary sovereignty ? Was not the electorate sovereign ? And yet, if Parliament was dependent upon the electorate, it was no less true that the qualifications of voters, the terms and

*) Treatises concerning Government, II, Sect. 90 it.

XXII translators' introduction

conditions of elections, indeed the possibility of elections themselves, all rested upon statute, which was merely thS expression of Parliament's will. Was Parhament sovereign or was the electorate ? -"

" The confusion was increased by the fact that as a rule no clear distinction was made between the electorateandthepeople. The theory of popular sovereignty, as outlined by Locke and developed by Rousseau, attributed the sovereign- power to the entire body of citizens, a much more inclusive category than the electorate. EngUsh political theory was not greatly influenced by Rousseau's philosophy, but nevertheless the idea of popular sovereignty even in England has meant/sometimes the sovereignty of the voters and sometimes that of all the citizens. It was to resolve this confusion over the location of sover- /ei'gnty that the theory of two sovereign authorities came to be generally accepted by recent writers on English constitutional law. There is_a legal sovereign. Parliament, and a political sovereign, the electorate or the people. Thus Professor Dicey emphasizes the distinction between legal and poUtical sovereignty. "Parliament," he says, "is, from a merely legal point of view, the absolute sovereign of the British Empire, since every Act of Parhament is binding on every Court throughout the British dominions, and no rule, whether of morahty or of law, which contravenes an Act of Parliament, binds any Court throughout the realm. But if Parhament be in the eye of the law a supreme legislature, the essence of representative government is, that the legislature should represent or give effect to the will of the political sovereign, i. e., of the electoral body, or of the nation."^) But with reference to this last clause, it may be asked. Which is the political sovereign, "the electoral body," or "the nation" ? Certainly the two are not identical.

The theory of popular sovereignty has never been able to arrive at logical clearness. The truth is that it has in it two elements which refuse to combine. As has been pointed out above, the conception of sovereignty as it originated with

■) Late of the Constitution, Ed. 8, p. 425.

TRANSLATORS INTRODUCTION XXIII

Bodin was a d efense ofthe^clai^ to ultimate authority embodied in the person of an absolute monarch as representative of the state. After the Revolution such authority was not attributable to the king alone but it was transferred to the King in Parhament. But it was certainly not the main purpose of the Revolution merely to change the location of absolute authority. The primary purpose, as Locke perceived, was to obtain guarantees that authority should not be exercised arbitrarily by the king or indeed by any group of men. The first effective opposition to James came from spokesmen of the Common Law like Edward Coke and was directed against an arbitrary use of the royal prerogative. The opposition was not to authority as such, but to an identification of authority with the free will of the monarch. Certainly John Locke would have been no more tolerant of an identification of authority with the free will of Parhament. Even the enactments of that body had to justify themselves by agreement with the law of nature ; the function of positive law was to attach penalties to violations of natural law. ^) This removal of arbitrariness from authority was always the essential moral idea behind the theory of popular sovereignty ; it is stiU the essential idea behind Professor Dicey's theory of public opinion as the poUtical sovereign. What is essential is that Parhament is responsible, morally if not legally, for its use of authority. Behind the fact of specific enactment hes the further fact that the representative body spetiks for the nation. But the logical difficulty presented by this attempt to endow a group of persons with absolute authority and yet make them responsible for its exercise is really insoluble. It is the familiar philosophical difficulty of an absolute which is nevertheless Umited, and this is neither more nor less than a contradiction, vin terms. Nevertheless, as was said above, the theory of popular sovereignty, even as it was stated by Locke, was grasping after a principle of fundamental importance in the evplution of the modem state. This is the principle that at bottom pohtical authority is not merely personal; it does not inhere in the will