THE war has given the _coup de grace_ to the Sovereign State. It was on its last legs before the war. It is certain that Mr. Combes’ affirmation of state absolutism during the debates on the disestablishment of the Catholic Church in France, was the last serious stand of this doctrine in democratic communities. In England the doctrine was never securely rooted; certainly it has not gained an unquestioned ascendency over political thought for any considerable period of time; and the exploit of Austinian legalism which (in the Scottish Churches’ case) denied to a church the right to govern itself had virtually to be annulled by a special Act of Parliament. During the war the claim of the State upon the individual has naturally attained a point which in normal times would have been unthinkable; but this was confessedly the result of an emergency and not a rule for ordinary conditions of life. The German performance during the war has revealed the logic of state-absolutism in far too vivid a fashion for any of the somewhat turgid exaltation of the state by academic people in the days previous to the war to survive on any terms. To rebut the doctrine of state-absolutism at this time would be merely to flog a dead horse. But long before the war the absolutist theory was being undermined. In the region of law and political theory the criticism of F. W. Maitland, Nevill Figgis, Duguit, and others had raised a very definite challenge to the doctrine of state-omnicompetency. But of much greater influence in the actual business of modifying the current conception of the state was the growing tendency to form independent foci of authority within the commonwealth. One obvious case of the kind is the institution of the Bank Clearing House which represents the last stage in the process by which the business of exchange has passed from the state into the hands of an independent body which exercises in its own sphere an authority which is hardly to be resisted; and the present movement for the amalgamation of large banking concerns makes it not impossible that should the banking interest come into collision with the State, there would be a very exciting tug-of-war. The medical profession took up an attitude of organised opposition to the State in the matter of the British Health Insurance Act; and other professional associations are to-day so highly organised that in the event of a collision with the State, it is at least doubtful how the issue would be decided. In the case of the Taff Vale decision which rendered a Trade Union liable to prosecution for illegal action by its members, so threatening a protest ensued that the legal decision had virtually to be reversed by special legislation; and the growing solidarity of organised labour again creates a problem of state authority which is not easily soluble, and which (it is not inconceivable) may at last have to be solved by a trial of strength.[37] It is no longer possible to assume that the philosophy