[1] Cf. Maine's statement of Austin's doctrine in _The Early History of Institutions_, pp. 349 and 350: 'There is in every independent political community--that is, in every political community not in the habit of obedience to a superior above itself--some single person or some combination of persons which has the power of compelling the other members of the community to do exactly as it pleases. This single person or group--this individual or this collegiate sovereign (to employ Austin's phrase) may be found in every independent political community as certainly as the centre of gravity in a mass of matter. If the community be violently or voluntarily divided into a number of separate fragments, then, as soon as each fragment has settled down (perhaps after an interval of anarchy) into a state of equilibrium, the sovereign will exist, and with proper care will be discoverable in each of the now independent portions. The sovereignty over the North American colonies of Great Britain had its seat in one place before they became the United States, in another place afterwards; but in both cases there was a discoverable sovereign somewhere. This sovereign, this person or combination of persons, universally occurring in all independent political communities, has in all such communities one characteristic, common to all the shapes sovereignty may take, the possession of irresistible force, not necessarily exerted, but capable of being exerted. According to the terminology preferred by Austin, the sovereign, if a single person, is or should be called a monarch; if a small group, the name is an oligarchy; if a group of considerable dimensions, an aristocracy; if very large and numerous, a democracy. Limited monarchy, a phrase perhaps more fashionable in Austin's day than it is now, is abhorred by Austin, and the government of Great Britain he classes with aristocracies. That which all the forms of sovereignty have in common is the power (the power but not necessarily the will) to put compulsion without limit on subjects or fellow-subjects.'