XI. It is an inquiry of importance whether the law of usucaption and prescription, if it prevail in a prince's dominions, can be applied to the tenure of the crown, and all its prerogatives. Many legal writers, who have treated of the nature of sovereign power according to the principles of the Roman civil law, seem to affirm that it may be so applied. But this is an opinion to which we cannot accede in its full extent. For to make a law binding upon any one, it is requisite that the legislator should possess both power and will. A legislator is not bound by his law, as by the irrevocable and unchangeable controul of a superior. But occasions may arise that will demand an alteration or even a repeal of the law which he has made. Yet a legislator may be bound by his own law, not directly as a legislator, but as an individual forming part of the community: and that too according to natural equity, which requires that all the component parts should bear a reference to the whole. We find in holy writ, this rule observed by Saul in the beginning of his reign. Now that rule does not take place here. For we are considering the lawgiver, not as a part but as the REPRESENTATIVE and SOVEREIGN of the whole community. Nor indeed can any such intention in the lawgiver be presumed to have existed. For legislators are not supposed to comprehend themselves within the rule of the law, except where the nature and subject of it are general. But sovereignty is not to be compared with other things; it so far surpasses them in the nobleness of its end, and the dignity of its nature. Nor is any civil law to be found which either does, or designs to comprehend sovereign power within the rules of prescription. CHAPTER IX.[22] IN WHAT CASES JURISDICTION AND PROPERTY CEASE. Jurisdiction and property cease, when the family of the owner has become extinct--In what manner the rights of a people may become extinct--A people becomes extinct when its essential parts are destroyed--A people does not become extinct by emigration--The existence of separate states not destroyed by a federal union.