Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/371

 A SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW OF SOVEREIGNTY 357

that these commands were the expression of the joint will of the king and his barons, they are known as "positive laws" instead of mere commands. They are the will of the state as against the will of one man.

But Magna Charta must not be looked upon as more than a foreshadowing of the true state. It preceded by three hun- dred years the triumph of absolutism. It was mainly a com- promise or "international" treaty between feudal proprietors, each sovereign in his own field. The advance of irresponsible abolutism continued to absorb the coercive sanctions of sub- ordinate proprietors. It was not until the revolution of 1688 that subordinate classes achieved a recognized permanent right of participation in shaping the royal will. Sovereignty is a daily flow of coercion, and not the mere promise of a king to do and not to do so and so. Sovereignty, therefore, requires defi- nite enduring constitutional organs for its daily exercise. Magna Charta did not adequately provide these. There was as yet too little common consciousness and cooperation among the barons and people. The private interests of each were not yet overshad- owed by the absorbing despotism of the king. But the Bill of Rights introduced Parliament definitely into the will-shaping functions of sovereignty. It forever provided that "the pre- tended power of suspending of laws, of dispensing with laws, or the execution of laws, by regall authoritie without consent of Parlyament is illcgall." Henceforth every command issued in the name of the king proceeds from the joint will of the king and Parliament, as provided in the constitution, and is a true law. Coercion is extracted from the king's private property and is made a public function, and Parliament is now admitted by the monarch into partnership in shaping the direction of this public coercion. The personal caprice of the king loses its import as a factor in sovereignty, and positive law comes to have order for its basis as well as force.

But it must not be thought that in this new form coercion has lost coerciveness. Philosophical and biological theories have tended to personify the state and to raise it above the matter-of-fact affair that it is. Hobbes says: "The common-