Now it is to be observed, that an artificial system may possess many different forms, as in an army under one supreme commander there are many subordinate parts, and inferior powers, while in the operations of the field it appears but as one body. In same manner, the union of the legislative and executive in a state gives it the appearance of one form, while the distinction between subject and sovereign, and their still mutual relation give it another. The executive power is the politician's concern; the judicial, the lawyer's. Nor did this escape the notice of Aristotle. For he says it belongs to a science different from that of politics to determine whether, under a change in the form of government, the debts contracted under the old system ought to be discharged by the members of the new. He does this, to avoid the fault which he blames in many other writers, of making digressions from one subject to another. It is evident that a state, which from a commonwealth has become a regal government, is answerable for the debts incurred before that change. For it is the same people, possessing all the same rights, and powers, which are now exercised in a different manner, being no longer vested in the body, but in the head. This furnishes a ready answer to a question some times asked, which is, what place in general assemblies of different states, ought to be assigned to a sovereign, to whom the people of a commonwealth have transferred all their power? Undoubtedly the same place which that people or their representatives had occupied before in such councils. Thus in the Amphictyonic council, Philip of Macedon succeeded to the place of the Phocensians. So, on the other hand, the people of a commonwealth occupy the place assigned to sovereigns. VIII.[23] Whenever two nations become united, their rights, as distinct states, will not be lost, but will be communicated to each other. Thus the rights of the Albans in the first place, and afterwards those of the Sabines, as we are informed by Livy, were transferred to the Romans, and they became one government. The same reasoning holds good respecting states, which are joined, not by a federal UNION, but by having one sovereign for their head. IX. On the other hand, it may happen that a nation, originally forming but one state, may be divided, either by mutual consent, or by the fate of war; as the body of the Persian Empire was divided among the successors of Alexander. When this is the case, many sovereign powers arise in the place of one, each enjoying its independent rights, whatever belonged to the original state, in common, must either continue to be governed as a common concern, or be divided in equitable proportions.