SOVEREIGNTY (IN U. S. HISTORY). (See POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY.) SPAIN. This country, which occupies the greater portion of the Iberian peninsula, and includes the Balearic isles and the Canaries, exArmstrong & Co., 1878), "are applicable to persons and to states; moreover, from the intimate connection between the state as a political organism and the territory where the laws prevail, the territory itself may be called a sovereignty, or the expression may be explained in the last case with greater reason as denoting something held in sovereignty, a province or district which is not dependent. The first notion in the word was that of being above or higher than others in power and jurisdiction. Thus, the sovereign ruler is above all other officers or magistrates, and above all the individuals belonging to the people. The quality of sovereignty, however, does not necessarily imply unlimited power or unchecked power; much less undelegated power. It can be used of all kingly and imperial power, from that of a chief officer of state who is absolute, to the king who can do noth we do not err, ever been applied to the head of a democratic state whose office ceases after a term of years. For the most part, when used at present, it is either of dignity, denoting the superior person in the state or nation, or else it is used of a ruler who can control the policy of a nation toward other nations in matters of diplomacy. Thus, the king or queen of England, although having, in matter of fact, an exceedingly limited power, is called sovereign, to denote the dignity of the office as above all others in the kingdom, or as having constitutionally the power to control foreign relations, a power unchecked in theory, yet practically not expressing the sovereign's personal will. The abstract conception of sovereignty is thus unfolded by Mr. John Austin in the sixth of his lectures on 'The Province of Jurisprudence,' (i., p. 226, ed. 3): If a determinate human superior, not in the habit of obedience to a like superior, receive habitual obedience and laws. One of the greatest tasks of politics is to guide a revolution which has broken out into the regular paths of reform and political order. If the law was too weak to prevent, or reform too slow to anticipate, revolution, neither the one nor the other, nor both together, can now control it. Hence we can speak only by way of exception of a right of revolution, and only in the sense of a right of self defense of the people, to save its existence, or to realize its necessary development, when the avenues of reform have been closed. The constitution is, after all, only the external or ganization of the people. If by the constitution the state incurs the danger of ruin, or if by it the life of the people has been paralyzed, or the vital interests of public well-being have been endangered, the principle of self-defense should be applied. "Necessity knows no law."-4. State sovereignty embraces the power of making the necessary laws.ing without a legislative assembly. It has not, however, if The legislative power, in the narrower sense of the term, like the constitutive power, flows from the sovereignty of the state, and is at the same time its regular revelation. - 5. But further still, on the sovereignty of the state, in principle, rest all other powers of the state, for which reason the constitution, and legislation limit and regulate all other expressions of sovereignty.-6. Irresponsibility. From the higher point of view, there really exists no irresponsibility of men in regard to their doings or omissions. In fact, the eternal judgment of God of this world excludes the idea of the irresponsibility even of nations. Even on earth, in the destinies and sufferings of peoples, this responsibility is not unfrequently painfully felt. But it is impossible within a state to establish a tribunal before which the whole people, or its representatives, as holders of the supreme power of the state, can be called to account. If this were attempted, the state itself would to that extent at least be subject to this tribunal, and thus a member would be placed higher than the body, the part above the whole. But if a state, in the execution of its sovereignty, should be responsible to another state, its sovereignty on that account would be a limited one, and subordinate to the higher sovereignty of the judging state. Only by the further development of international law, or by a higher political organization of the world, before which individual sovereign states would have to bow, as to an aggregate empire, could the political responsibility of individual states be organized. It may be reserved for the future to realize this idea. At present it is only an idea.-7. All particular state powers, on the contrary, are responsible to the sovereignty of the state. -IV. The second kind of sovereignty, the sovereignty which belongs only to the head of the state, is recognized in modern public law only in monarchy. Only the monarch, not the president of a republic, although the latter exercises rights of sovereignty, has, according to modern public law, a personal claim to be regarded as sovereign.* J. C. BLUNTSCHLI. "The words sovereign and sovereignty," says Theodore D. Woolsey ("Political Science," etc., New York, Scribner, from the bulk of a given society, that determinate superior is sovereign in that society, and the society (including the superior) is a society political and independent. To that determinate superior the other members of the society are subject; or on that determinate superior the other members of the society are dependent. The mutual relation which subsists between that superior and them may be styled the relation of sovereign and subject, or the relation of sovereignty and subjection.' This definition looks at fact simply, and has nothing whatever to do with right. The habitual obedience would seem to be absolute, but persons called sovereigns at the present day have no right to require habitual obedience except within a very narrow sphere. Subjection is now used, if used at all in politics, of relations that are not personal, the term being retained while the feudal notion has left it. And again, few, I presume, of the subjects of the sovereign of Great Britain would allow to themselves be called dependents on the sovereign. - But what is the sovereignty of a state? and how does it comport with the sovereignty of a ruler? In the intercourse of nations, certain states have a position of entire independence of others, and can perform all those acts which it is possible for any state to perform in this particular sphere. These same states have also entire power of selfgovernment, that is, of independence upon all other states as far as their own territory and citizens not living abroad are concerned. No foreign power or law can have control except by convention. This power of independent action in external and internal relations constitutes complete sovereignty. This definition of sovereign states would be inconsistent with the claim of sovereignty which has been set up in' this country by communities called states, and in the treaty of 1783 with Great Britain called sovereign states; which, however, never made a treaty separately with foreign nations, never belonged in their separate capacity to the community of nations, and are incapacitated by the constitution from performing any international act; and which, moreover, by the same constitution, are precluded from doing many things within their own territory and in the exercise of state power, which sovereign states do and must do. This use of the word sovereignty, and, indeed, the use of the word state, shows the poverty of political language, but has helped on far tends over 507,036 square kilometres, and contained, according to the census of 1860, 15,658,000 inhabitants. Spain had perhaps sixteen millions in 1873. The last general enumeration of the population took place on Dec. 31, 1877, the returns showing that at that date the kingdom, including the Balearic and Canary islands ("Baleares" and "Canárias," each considered a province), and the small strip of territory in North Africa, facing Gibraltar, had a total population of 16,625,860, comprising 8,134,659 males and 8,491,201 females. -The vast majority of the inhabitants of Spain are natives of the country, the aliens being less numerous than in any other state of Europe. According to the census returns of Dec. 31, 1877, there were at that date only 26,834 resident foreigners, the mass of them in four provinces, namely, Barcelona, Cadiz, Gerona and Madrid. The number in the province of Barcelona was 4,392, comprising 2,490 males and 1,902 females; while in the province of Cadiz the number was 3,321, comprising 1,866 males and 1,445 females. - The progress of population did not amount to more than 75 per cent. in the course of the last hundred years. In 1768 the population was cal culated to number 9,307,800 souls; in 1789 it had risen to 10,061,480; and in 1797 it exceeded 12,000,000 souls. In 1820 it had fallen to 11,000,000, but in 1823 it had again risen to 12,000,000, and in 1828 to 13,698,029. At a census taken in 1846 the population was found to be 12,168,774, and it was 16,301,851 at the census of 1860. Finally, at the census of 1877 the population amounted, as before shown, to 16,625,860, being an increase of 324,009 in the course of seventeen years, or at the rate of about per cent. per annum. The present density of population is considerably less than half that of Italy, and less than one-third that of The Netherlands. There were, at the census of Dec. 31,1877, fourteen towns in Spain greater evils than that of supplying false premises for syllogisins ending in secession. - Is the sovereignty of the state a term emanating from the sovereignty of the ruler? or is the ruler properly called a sovereign only as representing the state? The state stands for an untold amount of good to be secured to present and future generations by a just and wise government, at the head of which the ruler is placed. He is a means for a great permanent end; he dies, and some one else succeeds to him, and not by his will, for the most part, but by the law of the state. He disobeys the law, and seeks to overturn it; another is substituted for him, and all things go on, it may be, better than before. All this shows that the ultimate power in theory rests with the state or the people constituting it, and that the prince is a delegate or deputed sovereign. This of course touches the source of his power, and the object for which it is granted. The power itself may be absolute, and the grant may have been made in remote ages. The prince is a vicar of God, just as receivers of tribute are 'God's ministers, attending continually upon this very thing. But he is such because the state and its authority are from God, and because he fulfills the end for which the helm of state is intrusted to him. If some democrats of the French school have talked of cashiering kings, the grossness of taste, and want of reverence for old dignities, were the result of an ill use of sovereign power. If the French kings had felt that they were created to minister rather than to be ministered unto, that their power, called sovereign, was delegated to them, the outrages of an extreme reaction against their sway might have been spared to the world." -Nearly 46 per cent. of the whole surface of the kingdom is still uncultivated. The soil is subdivided among a very large number of proprietors. Of 3,426,083 recorded assessments to the property tax, there are 624,920 properties which pay from 1 to 10 reals; 511,666 from 10 to 20 reals; 642,377 from 20 to 40 reals; 788,184, from 40 to 100 reals; 416,546, from 100 to 200 reals; 165,202, from 200 to 500 reals; while the rest, to the number of 279,188, are larger estates, charged from 500 to 10,000 reals and upward. The subdivision of the soil is partly the work of recent years, for in 1800 the number of farms amounted only to 677,520, in the hands of 273,760 proprietors and 403,760 farmers. I. Constitution. At the end of the last century there was left no tradition of the ancient cortes of Castile, Aragon, Valentia and Catalonia, which were so powerful during the middle ages. The only vestiges of them which remained did not go beyond the empty ceremony in which an oath was taken to the prince of the Asturias. The war of independence roused the Spanish nation, which had been accustomed to absolute monarchy, from its slumber. Deprived of its kings, the necessities of the time obliged it to appoint a regency, which, in order to gain more prestige and a greater authority, convoked the cortes. The deputies, assembled at Cadiz, dictated the constitution of 1812, which was the origin of representative government in Spain. It would be vain to look on their work as the restoration of Spain's ancient liberties, which now belong exclusively to history. Nothing will be found in it but an echo of the ideas proclaimed by the French revolution of 1789. The spirit which reigns in it is the spirit of democracy, as is shown, beyond a doubt, by the establishment of a single chamber and the suspensive veto. - Once on the throne again, Ferdinand VII. re-established the ancient régime pure and simple. A military insurrection in 1820 restored a breath of life to the liberal system, which in 1823 fell a second time under the influence of internal dissensions, aided by the intervention of France on behalf of absolute monarchy, on which Europe looked complacently. It was easy to foresee, that, with the death of Ferdinand, an inevitable change would take place in the form of government. Isabella II. succeeded him, at the age of three years, under the guardianship of her mother, Maria Christina, of Naples. The infante Don Carlos, brother of the king, and representative of the party opposed to all reform, considered himself injured in his rights, and the quarrel which ensued made it necessary to strengthen the new legitimist order by the sup port of liberal opinions. Still, there was no thought | first title provided for individual liberty, the of restoring the constitution of 1812; it was believed that the people could be satisfied with something less; and in 1834 the royal statute was promulgated and a charter granted, establishing two chambers, the one of the grandees of the nation (estamento próceres), the other of its representatives (estamento de procuradores), to whom was conceded not the initiative in the drawing up of bills, but the simple power of deliberating on those which might be presented to them by the ministers, together with an altogether derisive right of petition. While war desolated Spain, disorder was increased by the manœuvres of the more or less ardent partisans of political progress. In 1836, an insurrection having broken out at Granja, Maria Christina was forced to sign a decree restoring the constitution of Cadiz until such time as the nation, represented in the cortes, should reject it or frame one in harmony with the wants of the time. In 1837 the constituent chambers were assembled, and drew up a constitution very similar to that at present in force in Belgium. Later, the moderate party, having obtained power, undertook to correct, according to its doctrines, the work of the progressive party, and formed, with the assistance of the ordinary cortes, the constitution of 1845, which, with certain amendments (1857), is the constitution that continued in force until 1868, and which has a great resemblance to the French charte, amended in 1830. X. Y. -Spain, after the Revolution of 1868. In September, 1868, a revolution put an end to the dynasty of the Bourbons. The revolutionary juntas undertook, first of all, to secure public order, a necessity imposed on every well-organized society. It was besides necessary, for the organization and concentration of power, to establish the unity of the government, and to call on men experienced in the management of public business to take the initiative in this task. The revolutionary junta of Madrid, therefore, delegated its powers to Gen. Serrano, duke de la Torre, whom it intrusted with the formation of a provisional government. He did this by raising to the first places in the state those men who had labored for the triumph of the revolution by the sword, by their words or their acts. The provisional government convoked constituent cortes. The people hastened to the polls; universal suffrage was for Spain an accomplished fact. It was necessary, to give a legal character to the general acts of the provisional government, to establish a political constitution different from those of 1812, 1837 and 1845, and to bring it into harmony with the new wants of the nation, and the political interests of popular parties. The cortes, in a number of sessions, some of which have remained memorable, finished the task which they had undertaken, and transformed the provisional government into an executive The constitution of 1869 was the cause of great progress in political institutions. The power. inviolability of a man's domicile, and the secrecy of letters, unless in case of offenses punishable by law. It also accorded the right of assembling and of association for all purposes not contrary to public morals. Every Spaniard, by its terms, acquired the right of expressing his ideas and opinions freely by speech, or through the press. The right of petition was recognized as belonging to all citizens except to the army. The nation pledged itself to maintain the Catholic relig ion and its ministers. The free practice of every other religion, in public or private, within the bounds prescribed by the general rules of morality and law, was guaranteed to all foreigners living in Spain. This provision applies to Spaniards professing a religion different from the Catholic. That constitution guaranteed liberty of the press, and abolished its preliminary censure, etc. It allowed any one to found schools without the permission of the authorities. An important provision is that abolishing the requirement of a special permission to summon before the ordinary tribunals, public officials for any kind of misdemeanor. In case of a clear and evident violation of the provisions of the constitution, the official can not shield himself against responsibility by alleging an order emanating from his superiors. - Every Spaniard is obliged to take up arms in defense of his country whenever called upon to do so by law; to contribute to the expenses of the state in proportion to his means; in return he may aspire to every office and public employment, according to his merit and capacity. Constitutional guarantees can not be suspended in the whole or in any part of the kingdom unless by law and for a given time, in extraordinary circumstances, and when demanded by public safety. Except in those extreme cases in which public safety might be endangered, the government has neither the right to exile nor to transport a Spanish citizen, nor to remove him farther than 250 kilometres from his domicile. It is provided that every association, which, by its object or by the means which it employs, imperils the security of the state, shall be dissolved by law. - The constitution recognizes three public powers: the legislative power, the executive power and the judicial power. Sovereignty resides essentially in the nation, from which all powers emanate. The cortes make the laws; the king sanctions and promulgates them. The cortes are composed of two legislative assemblies, the senate and the congress (chamber of deputies), equal in power, except that the popular chamber has the priority in all discussions relative to taxation, public credit and recruiting. Congress is renewed every three years, and one-fourth of the senate during the same period. The cortes must remain in session at least four months each year, not including the time spent in organizing. They must be convoked before Feb. 1. Senators and deputies can not be arrested nor called before the courts during the time in which the cortes are in session, without the permission of the legislative classes of senators: first, senators by their own right, or senadores de derecho propio; secondly, 100 life senators, nominated by the crown; and thirdly, 130 senators, elected by the corporations of state, and by the largest payèrs of contributions. Senators in their own right are the sons, if any, of the king and of the immediate heir to the throne, who have attained their majority; grandees, who are so in their own right, and who can prove an annual renta of 60,000 pesetas, or £2,400; captains general of the army; admirals of the navy; the patriarch of the Indias and the archbishops; the presidents of the council of state, of the supreme tribunal, and of the tribunal of cuentas del reino. The elective senators must be renewed by one-half every five years, and by total body of which they form a part, except in case they are taken flagrante delicto. The cortes have the right to appoint or to discharge, at will, the members of the court of accounts of the kingdom. In the case in which, in accordance with the vote of the congress, there is occasion to impeach a minister or a ministry, the senate constitutes itself a court of justice. In this case the chamber of deputies chooses a commission intrusted with conducting the impeachment. This commission and the members impeached may challenge one-third of the senators called to sit in judgment; the latter can not be chosen except from senators who have entered on their duties before the impeachment of the ministers. - Deputies are elected by universal suffrage. Every Spaniard aged twenty-five years, not hav-ity every time the king dissolves that part of the ing been sentenced for any crime, is a voter, and eligible to office. Election in two degrees is resorted to in the case of senators: they are nominated by commissioners chosen by universal suffrage, and by the members of the deputations or provincial assemblies. - King Amadeus, son of the King of Italy (duke of Aosta), was elected by 195 votes in the session of Nov. 19, 1869, and on Feb. 2 following he made his solemn entry into Madrid. The same day the regent of the kingdom resigned his powers into the hands of the assembly, and the king took the oath of fidelity to the constitution before the president, Don Manuel Ruiz Zorilla. The cortes pronounced their own dissolution in their capacity of constituent cortes. F. H. - Restoration of the Monarchy in 1874, and present Constitution. At the beginning of 1874 the republic was set aside by Serrano's regency. In the meantime the uprising in favor of Don Carlos had assumed greater dimensions. A dislike for the latter, and a desire for quiet and an orderly state of things, rendered the return of the younger branch of the Bourbons to the throne possible. Alfonso XII., son of Queen Isabella, and her husband, Francis de Assisi, was proclaimed king Dec. 30, 1874, and he succeeded in again restoring the monarchy to an orderly state. The present constitution of Spain, drawn up by the government, and laid before a cortes constituyentes, elected for its ratification March 27, 1876, was proclaimed June 30, 1876. It consists of seventy-nine articles or clauses. The first of them enacts that Spain shall be a constitutional monarchy, the executive authority resting in the king, and the power to make the laws "in the cortes with the king." The cortes are composed of a senate and congress, equal in authority. There are three cortes. The congress is formed by deputies "named in the electoral juntas in the form the law determines," in the proportion of one to every 50,000 souls of the population. By a royal decree issued Aug. 8, 1878, the island of Cuba received the privilege of sending deputies to the cortes, in the proportion of one to every 40,000 free inhabitants, paying 125 pesetas, annually, in taxes. Members of congress must be twenty-five years of age; they are re-eligible indefinitely, the elections being for five years. The deputies can not take state office, pensions and salaries; but the ministers are exempted from this law. Both congress and senate meet every year. The king has the power of convoking, suspending or dissolving them; but in the latter case a new cortes must sit within three months. The king appoints the president and vice-president of the senate from members of the senate only. The king and each of the legislative chambers can take the initiative in the laws. The constitution of June 30, 1876, further enacts that the king is inviolable, but his ministers are responsible, and that all his decrees must be countersigned by one of them. The cortes must approve his marriage before he can contract it, and the king can not marry any one excluded by law from the succession to the crown. Should the lines of the legitimate descendants of Alfonso XII. become extinct, the succession shall be in this order: first to his sisters; next to his aunt, and her legitimate descendants; and next to his uncles, the brothers of Ferdinando VII., “unless they have been excluded." If all the lines become extinct, "the nation will elect its monarch."-The executive power is vested, under the king, in a council of ministers of nine members. F. M. — II. Administrative Organization. The administration has been entirely remodeled since 1868: centralization has given place to self-government. The government, the provincial assemblies and the municipalities (ayuntamientos) constitute the three degrees of the administration. The government, in conjunction with the cortes, administers and executes the laws. The provincial assemblies have within their jurisdiction benevolent institutions, prisons, education, roads, canals; they have | the initiative in all projects of public utility with- | vises, in its name, the execution of the laws, and in their respective boundaries. The municipali- presides over the provincial assemblies. He has ties, with their juntas of associates, have within power to suspend their decisions, rendering, at their jurisdiction the tribunals of the justices of the same time, an account of his acts to the govthe peace, the colleges and free universities, and ernment, which, on the advice of the council of the levying of taxes; and are really sovereigns state, confirms or rejects his decrees of suspension. within the limits fixed by the law. The constitu- The civil governor has, within his sphere of action, tion of 1869 has defined these limits by regulating political affairs, the public safety, the postal servthe laws creating these different bodies, accord- ice and telegraphs, economic establishments (agriing to the following principles. 1, the govern- cultural, industrial, commercial and others), cusment and management of the local affairs of the tom house guards for the prevention of fraud, the province by local provincial corporations; 2, pub- civil guard for the protection of persons, and the licity of the sessions of each corporation; 3, the inspectors charged with the maintenance of public publication of budgets, financial management, and order. We thus see that in the civil order no the most important decisions; 4, interference by functionary has so much power and responsibility the king, or, in default of the king, by the cortes, as the governor. There are in Spain 9,361 muto prevent the provincial and municipal assem- nicipal districts, with an equal number of counblies from exceeding their powers, to the prejudice cils. There are as many provincial assemblies as of general and permanent interests; 5, verification provinces, with the exception of the Basque provof their resources arising from taxation, to prevent inces, which, in virtue of their fueros (franchises), the provinces and the municipalities from coming have a general assembly that is renewed every three into opposition with the financial system of the years. These fueros were confirmed in 1839, at state. — Municipal assemblies, elected by univer- first by the general-in-chief, Baldomero Espartero, sal suffrage, and whose councilors elect the alcalde, prince of Vergara, afterward by the national cortes. previously appointed by the governors or the king, They (the fueros, or franchises) consist in the exmay establish hospitals, almshouses, lying-in-hos-emption from personal tax, from the tobacco mopitals and colleges, and regulate everything capa- | nopoly and from stamped paper. They compenble of contributing to the scientific, industrial and sate for the exemption from customs by a volun. progressive movement of the locality. The pro-tary gift of three millions of reals each year, for vincial assemblies form a species of congress. everything which these provinces import or exProvinces, whose population does not exceed 150,000 inhabitants, have twenty-five deputies, and one more for each 10,000, up to 300,000; those which reach this figure have forty deputies, and an additional one for every 25,000 inhabitants; those which have 500,000 inhabitants have fortyeight deputies, and an additional one for every 50,000 inhabitants. Permanent provincial commissions are chosen from these assemblies, and renewed every year. Provincial assemblies hold two sessions, one in the month of April, and the other in November, to regulate and discuss the budget, to balance the preceding budget, and to perform all acts within their competence. The permanent commission has charge of the execution of the decisions of the assembly, decides urgent questions which may arise in the interval of the sessions, on condition that these decisions shall be submitted to the approval of the provincial assembly at its earliest meeting. The provincial assemblies, as well as the municipal councils, can exercise their functions only within the precise limits assigned them by the laws. The wants of each province, not within the exclusive jurisdiction of the state, are regulated by the provincial assemblies. Those which are special to each municipality are within the jurisdiction of the municipal councils. Political questions are forbidden to the two assemblies. Consequently, the government has a representative in each province, the civil governor, to prevent the municipal and provincial assemblies from exceeding their powers. This functionary, essentially political, and liable to be removed by the government, super port without being subject to governmental inspection. - Navarre also possesses franchises (fueros) which were limited by the law of Aug. 16, 1841: since that year this province is subject, like others, to a direct tax. One of the most important privileges enjoyed by the Basque provinces is the exemption from military service. But, when the country has to carry on a national war, they are obliged to furnish a division, armed and equipped at their own expense, to defend the honor of the Spanish flag, which they did in the African war and the Cuban expedition. — Public education, in so far as it relates not only to elementary instruction but to middle-class schools, is placed entirely in charge of the municipal councils and the provincial assemblies. It is true that the law requires conditions of fitness for the masters and professors, but it is the assemblies which pay them. The state reserves to itself the universities, the high schools and special schools, without prejudice to establishments of the same kind, founded to compete with those of the state, by virtue of freedom of instruction. The clergy maintain seminaries for the instruction of young men intended for the priesthood. — III. Judicial Organization. The judicial organization corresponds to the requirements of civil and criminal justice. Its tribunals are classified as follows: 1, municipal tribunals, or justices of the peace; 2, tribunals of the first resort; 3, courts of appeal; 4, supreme court (court of cassation). Justices of the peace are intrusted with all registers of the civil state and of marriages. Formerly, marriage was exclusively canonical, and could only be contracted before the priest of |