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SOUTHWELL. 378 SOVEREIGNTY. Saint Peter's Complaint in 132 six-line stanzas; his best is perhaps the brief Burning Babe. Con- sult liis Poetical IVorAs, ed. by TurnbuU (Lon- don, I806) ; Complete Pueiiis, ed. by Grosart ("Fuller's Wurtliics Library," ib., 1872) ; and A Four-fotild Mrdiliilion (not in Orosart), ed. with bibliography by Edmonds (ib., 1895). SOUTH'WICK. A town in Durham, England, 1 mile northwest of Sunderland (Jlap: England, E 2). It has shipbuilding industries, glass works, and potteries. P.ipulation, in 1901, 12,040. SOUTH'WORTH, Emma Doeotiiy Eliz. [Nevitte] (1819-99). Ajji American novelist, born at ^^'ashingtonJ D. C. She wrote tales for the National Era of Washington, in which she pub- lished her iirst novel, Retribution (1849) , and she wrote nearly sixty popular novels. They dealt principally with Southern life and were highly wrought in color and emotion, but had little literary value. A uniform edition of her works was brought out in 1872 at Philadelphia. SOUVESTRE, soo'ves'tr', Emile (1806-54). A French novelist and dramatist. His best works, Les derniers Bretons (1835-37), Le foyer Breton (1844), deal with his native Brittany. More noted is the sentimentally cheerful Philo- sophe sous Ics toils (1851). SOVEREIGN. An English gold coin of the value of a pound sterling, the standard weight of which is ,123.374 grains troy. The sovereign is worth appro.ximately $4.85. SOVEREIGNTY (OF. sovrainte, Fr. souve- rainte. from OF. sovrain, soverain, suverain, souverain, from ML. superanus, principal, su- preme, from Lat. super, above, over). Several uses of the term sovereignty must be distin- guished. Of these the principal are internal sov- ereignty and external sovereignty. Internal sover- eignty touches the relation between a State and its citizens or subjects; external sovereignty re- lates to the position of a State among other States. The essence of internal sovereignty is supremacy over subjects; that of external sov- ereignty is independence of other States. Internal Sovereignty. Under the head of in- ternal sovereignty another distinction is made between what is termed 'legal' sovereignty and 'political' sovereignty. Political sovereignty is the ultimate controlling power resident in any political society. Legal sovereignty is the or- ganized power which at any given time must be regarded as legally supreme. Political sovereignty arises out of the very nature of the State as an organization for the purposes of social control. A supreme pow-er enabling the State to preserve a form of public order, protect the community, and otherwise promote the general welfare is neces- sary to the life of organized society, and its ab- sence is anarchy. Political sovereignty, then, is that power in the State the will of which is ulti- mately obeyed. ."Vt any given time this supreme will may or may not be accurately expressed by the existing legal or governmental authority. Legal sovereignty refers to the supreme power of the State as embodied in some legal or gov- ernmental organ or agency. Thus the King in Parliament is termed a sovereign body in Eng- land ; a Constituent Convention is so called in France; or a king in some cases is called the sovereign. This legal sovereign may not, al- though it generally does, repres jit the actual sovereignty in the State, but it is none the less supreme from the legal or governmental point of view. For example, the political sovereignty maj- actually Ijelong to the mass of the people while the legal sovereignty may be vested in an aristocracy or a monarch ; and, on the other hand, the actual power may be vested in a few while the government is democratic in form. Again, the legal sovereign, as for example the Parlia- ment in Great Britain, may pass a law opposed by the majority of the people, but the enactment is none the less law and legally enforceable until repealed, or until the Government is overthrown by a revolution. The origin of sovereignty has been explained in various ways by different schools of political philosophy. It has been asserted that the ruling authority holds by divine appointment or sanc- tion; that the right to rule is a property right descending as other pi'operty in regular line of succession; that the sovereignty is created by a voluntary contract either between ruler and ruled or between independent individuals, as in the social contract (q.v. ) ; that sovereignty is the prerogative of superior force and belongs to the strongest claimant. In modern times it is gener- ally believed that sovereigntj' is a product of po- litical necessity arising out of the essential na- ture of political association, and the tenure of the particular holders of the political sovereignty is a result of historical evolution. This process has thrown the supreme power in most civilized States into the hands of the mass of the people. Characteristics of Sovereignty. In the nar- rower sense, sovereignty is generally regarded as absolute. There is no limitation of a legal or governmental character upon the exercise of its power. Legally speaking, all governments, whether monarchical, aristocratic, or democratic in form, are absolute. There are physical and moral limitations upon it, but, so far as the legal organization is concerned, there is no other or- ganization or association within the limits of the State which can resist in any legal way the commands of the sovereign. In the broader sense of the term, political sovereignty is not abso- lute, since the ruling element in the State, how- ever powerful, is never strong enough to be abso- lute in all things. It is also pointed out by some authorities that there may be and actually are legal limitations on the sovereign power. Thus in the I'nited States there is no legal way of depriving the States of their equal suffrage in the Senate without their consent (Const., Art. v.), and in Germany the special rights of the States are likewise protected (Art. Ixxvii.). It has also been strongly urged that the self-limita- tion of a State through its own Constitution gives rise to inviolable rights against the supreme jOTwer, and that therefore, although limited only by its own act, the sovereignty of a State should be regarded as legally limited, and hence not absolute in character. Furthermore, sovereignty in the narrower sense of the term is indivisible. There cannot be two sovereign powers acting on the same territory in an organized State. Two supreme powers having jurisdiction over the same persons and things would be logically impossible in a unified State. One must be sovereign and the other subordinate. Both cannot be tlic highest, the supreme au- thoritv. The King cannot be half-sovereign and