Absolute, if this pernicious term must be used, the supreme power of the legitimate sovereign of a state may indeed be called in so far as he is responsible to God alone. For were the supreme ruler responsible to man, then the only difference would be, that instead of one, the many to whom he is answerable would be absolute. But in another sense, it is impossible to call the supreme power, wherever lodged, absolute or unlimited; for it is limited in many ways. Its exercise is checked and controlled by the treaties subsisting between it and other powers--by the laws which it finds in existence from the times of his predecessors, and which are still in force by the family laws of succession, and all matters pertaining to or connected therewith. If he who is invested with the highest power in the state, is determined to interfere with all these institutions, and violently to subvert existing customs and compacts, then is there, in such a case, no one really justified or entitled either to make objections to his measures or to oppose them. By such arbitrary and violent proceedings, however, he is himself undermining the very foundation of his own power. And a regard to and consideration of the possible consequences of such injustice will in most instances furnish the necessary and salutary check. Lastly, if we look a moment from the right itself to its actual exercise and influence, how often and how greatly are the latter limited by adverse circumstances and evil times. Nothing, in short, is more at issue with and opposed to nature and to life, than the very notion of unlimited power, and generally all that is absolute or destructive. But there is yet another side on which the supreme political power is essentially checked and controlled. It is bound to consider and pay respect to the principles of religious society, which rests no less than itself on a divine authority. For the church, although very different in its nature, and flowing from a wholly different origin from that of the state, is, nevertheless, equally inviolable. If, however, the civil and political ruler, not content with a co-ordinate jurisdiction and the revision of ecclesiastical affairs--with a joint authority and influence, should attempt to make the religious polity also entirely subject to his own arbitrary will, no one perhaps will be able to oppose force to force, and probably no one would be justified in so doing. But by such an attempt, as indeed by every act of religious oppression, the supreme civil power would most fatally undermine the very basis of its own authority. If, for instance, the ruler of a great nation places the third estate in the painful alternative of making, what in any case must be most pernicious, a choice between divine and human authority--or, rather, to speak more correctly, between two claims to its allegiance equally divine, he does but smooth the road which must lead at last to his own ruin.