The people alone is sovereign. Therefore, though there can be individual liberty and liberty of association, there ought to be only such individual liberty and liberty of association as the people permits. Liberty cannot be and ought not to be anything more than a thing tolerated by the sovereign people. The individual may think, speak, write, and act as he pleases, but only so far as the people will allow him; for if he can do these things with absolute freedom, or even with limitations which are not imposed by the people, he becomes the sovereign power, or the power which fixed the limits of his freedom becomes the sovereign, and the sovereignty of the people disappears. This brings us back to the simple definition that liberty is the right to do what we please within the limits of the law. And who makes the law? The people. Liberty is then the right to do everything which the people permits us to do. Nothing more; if we attempt to go beyond this, the sovereignty of the individual begins, and the sovereignty of the people disappears. --But to have liberty to do only what the people permits, this is to be free as we were under Louis XIV.--and that is not to be free at all! So be it. There will indeed be no liberty unless the law permit it. Surely you do not wish to be free in opposition to the law? --The law may be tyrannical. It is tyrannical if it is unjust.-- The law has the right to be unjust. Otherwise the sovereignty of the people would be limited and this must not be. --Fundamental and constitutional laws might be devised to limit this sovereignty of the people in order to guarantee such and such of the liberties for the individual.-- And the people would then be tied! The sovereignty of the people would be suppressed! No, the people cannot be tied. The sovereignty of the people is fundamental and must be left intact. --Then there will be no individual liberty?-- Only such a measure as the people will tolerate. --Then there will be no liberty of association? Still less; for an association is in itself a limitation of the sovereignty of the nation. It has its own laws, which from a democratic point of view is an absurd and monstrous incongruity. The right of association limits the national sovereignty, just as would a free town or sanctuary of refuge. It limits the nation, and pulls it up short in face of its closed doors. It is a State within a State; where there is association, there arises at once a source of organisation other than the great organism of the popular will. It is like an animal which lives some sort of independent life within another animal larger than itself and which, living on that other animal, is still independent of it. In fact there can be only one association, the association of the nation, otherwise the sovereignty of the nation is limited, that is, destroyed. No liberty of association can then exist.