of a sovereign government by positive laws, pro- mises, compacts, and constitutional checks or ba- lances, are nugatory. It is likewise absurd to deny to a sovereign government the power, or, as it is commonly called, the right of doing certain acts, such as inflicting death or bodily pain, of taking property, &c. When the right of a sovereign govern- ment to do any act is denied, nothing more is meant than that the government ought not, in the speaker's or writer's opinion, to do the act. This expression is, therefore, merely a concise formula for assuming the question at issue. The opinion just adverted to is merely a variety of the ancient notion that the laws of a bad and oppressive government have no binding force, and, therefore, are not laws. A con- versation on this subject, said to have taken place between Pericles and the young Alcibiades, is re- ported in Xenophon's Memoirs of Socrates. Pericles at first answers the inquiries of Alcibiades correctly, by saying that every decree of the sovereign person
laws. Which error, because it setteth the laws above the sovereign, setteth also a judge above him, and a power to punish him ; which is to make a new sovereign ; and again for the same reason a third, to pimish the second ; and so continually without end, to tbe con- fusion, and dissolution of the commonwealth."— (Part II. ch. 29.) " The sovereign of a commonwealth, be it an assembly, or one man, is not subject to the civil laws. For having power to make and re- peal laws, he may, when he pleaseth, free himself from that subjec- tion, by repealing those laws that trouble him, and of making of new ; and consequently he was free before. For he is free, that can be free when he will : nor is it possible for any person to be bound to himself; because he that can bind, can release ; and therefore he that is bound to himself only, is not bound." — (Part II. ch. 26.) Compare also some good remarks of Blackstone on this subject, Commentaries, vol. i. p. 161 — 2.
