It  may  be  said,  however,  that  in  the  cases  to  which  I
have  referred,  society  was  in  a  partially  anarchical  and
disorderly  condition :  and  that  when,  in  the  course  of
historical  development,  the  stage  of  political  order  has  been
attained,  Austin's  analysis  is  found  to  apply :  and  that —
speaking  broadly  and  allowing  (as  Austin's  phrases  do)  for
the  imperfections  of  all  human  institutions — this  stage  of
orderliness  has  now  been  reached  in  modern  communities
generally.  And  it  is  certainly  true  that  in  most  modern
communities  there  is  a  determinate  complex  body  of  persons,
called  the  supreme  legislature,  whose  ordinary  function  it  is
to  lay  down  rules  intended  to  control  the  outward  actions
of  members  of  the  community,  to  the  violation  of  which
some  penalty  ^  is  attached :  and  that  such  rules  are
habitually  obeyed  by  the  great  majority  of  such  members,

^  I  agree  with  critics  of  Austin  in  thinking  that  the  conception  of
' '  command  " —  implying  announcement  of  wish,  together  with  power  and
purpose  of  punishing  its  violation — can  only  be  applied  in  an  indirect  way,
and  by  a  process  of  inference  sometimes  rather  complicated,  to  many  of  the
rules  that  make  up  the  aggregate  of  civU  law.  Still  I  think  that  Austin's
conception  is  always  applicable,  if  it  is  interpreted  as  meaning  only  that  the
expectation  of  some  penalty,  to  result  from  the  action  or  inaction  of  Govern-
ment or  its  subordinates,  constitutes  one  motive  for  conforming  to  the  rules
that  we  call  "laws,"  and  supplies  a  broadly  distinctive  characteristic  of  such
rules  :  though  the  penalty  (1)  may  consist  only  in  the  enforced  payment  of
damages  to  a  private  individual  injured  by  the  violation  of  the  rule,  or  (2)
may  be  merely  negative,  and  consist  in  the  withdrawal  from  the  law-breaker
of  some  governmental  protection  of  his  interests  to  which  he  would  otherwise
have  been  entitled.
