Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol I).djvu/233

 CH. I.] king of England the attribute of sovereignty or preeminence," because, in respect to the powers confided to him, he is dependant on no man, and accountable to no man, and subjected to no superior jurisdiction. Yet the king of England cannot make a law; and his acts, beyond the powers assigned to him by the constitution, are utterly void.

§ 208. In like manner the word "state" is used in various senses. In its most enlarged sense it means the people composing a particular nation or community. In this sense the state means the whole people, united into one body politic; and the state, and the people of the state, are equivalent expressions. Mr. Justice Wilson, in his Law Lectures, uses the word "state" in its broadest sense. "In free states," says he, "the people form an artificial person, or body politic, the highest and noblest, that can be known. They form that moral person, which in one of my former lectures, I described, as a complete body of free, natural persons, united together for their common benefit; as having an understanding and a will; as deliberating, and resolving, and acting; as possessed of interests, which it ought to manage; as enjoying rights, which it ought to maintain; and as lying under obligations, which it ought to perform. To this moral person, we assign, by way of eminence, the dignified appellation of ." But there is a more limited sense, in which the word is often used, where it expresses merely the 25