when any literature in political science has been pro-
duced at all, this question has been almost always
discussed. In the Middle Ages, indeed, writers were
either like Thomas Aquinas or Dante, too much
occupied with arguing the claims of the temporal or
spiritual powers, or like Machiavelli, too much involved
in working out the details of practical statecraft, to
give much attention to it. Bat afterwards it was
always given a prominent place. Jean Bodin, a French
lawyer of the sixteenth century, was the first to give
anything like an adequate definition of a sovereign
body, when he wrote that it is limited neither by a
greater power, nor by any laws, nor by time, and that
the prince and people in whom sovereignty resides
are not answerable for their acts to any one except
immortal God. Sir Thomas Smith, who wrote shortly
after Bodin, defined sovereignty in a very similar
manner, but he differs from him in fixing its place in
Parliament. " And to be short," he says, " all that
even the people of Rome might do, either Centuriatis
Comitiis or Tributis, the same may be done by the
Parliament of England, which representeth and hath
the power of the whole realm, both the head and body."
Next it is very fully treated by Hobbes, who has the
great merit of being the first to distinguish policy
from legality, that is to say, what is expedient from
what is legally allowed. Closely connected with this
is the distinction between legal and political sove-
reignty, of which more will be said hereafter — a dis-
tinction which is of great importance, and which, if
not properly grasped, is fruitful in confusion and



SOME QUESTIONS OF SOVEEEIGNTY. 3

misunderstanding. Even Hobbes himself is too much
impressed with legal sovereignty to always keep it^
distinct. He sometimes himself falls into the mistake
which he has pointed out to others. But nothing can
be clearer than his conception of a legally sovereign
body. 