ABSTRACT
The social contract is no longer in high place; but those who bow the knee to the fashionable hypothesis of social solidarity half-consciously offer it its old-time worship. Of the general theory of sovereignty a similar truth may be asserted. It has fallen from its high estate. In the modern democratic community, it has become customary to associate that sovereignty with the people as a whole. This theory of popular sovereignty does not have amazing influence; nor should the novelty of the democratic state blind to its antiquity. Popular sovereignty, that is to say, implies representative government. Some institution, or set of institutions, has to be erected in which the will of the people as a whole may find expression. Certainly the history of popular sovereignty teaches its students that the announcement of its desirability in nowise coincides with the attainment of its substance.
