the law-imposing and law-enforcing power, then either a disruption of the state or a change in the sources of sovereignty must sooner or later take place. In judging, however, whether this is the case, we must not be misled by words. In England, e.g., from the way in which many people speak of 'government,' we might suppose that it was looked on mainly as the wielder of coercive force; but it would be a mistake on that account to suppose that English people commonly regard the laws of the country as so much coercion, instead of as an institution in the maintenance of which they are interested. When they speak disapprovingly of 'government,' they are not thinking of the general system of law, but of a central administrative agency, which they think interferes mischievously with local and customary administration. 94. It is more true, then, to say that law, as the system of rules by which rights are maintained, is the expression of a general will than that the general will is the sovereign. The sovereign, being a person or persons by whom in the last resort laws are imposed and enforced, in the long run and on the whole is an agent of the general will, contributes to realise that will. Particular laws may, no doubt, be imposed and enforced by the sovereign, which conflict with the general will; not in the sense that if all the subject people could be got together to vote upon them, a majority would vote against them,--that might be or might not be,--but in the sense that they tend to thwart those powers of action, acquisition, and self-development on the part of the members of the society, which there is always a general desire to extend (though the desire may not be enlightened as to the best means to the end), and which it is the business of the law to sustain and extend. The extent to which laws of this kind may be intruded into the general 'corpus juris' without social disruption it is impossible to specify. Probably there has never been a civilised state in which they bore more than a very small proportion to the amount of law which there was the strongest general interest in maintaining. But, so far as they go, they always tend to lessen the 'habitual obedience' of the people, and thus to make the sovereign cease to be sovereign. The hope must be that this will result in the transfer of sovereignty to other hands before a social disruption ensues; before the general system of law has been so far perverted as to lose its hold on the people. Of the possibility of a change in sovereignty without any detraction from the law-abiding habits of the people, France has lately given a conspicuous example. Here, however, it must be remembered that a temporary foreign conquest made the transition easier.