WHAT CONGRESS AND GANDHI HAVE DONE TO THE UNTOUCHABLES : A PLEA TO THE FOREIGNER
479
countries are suffering. Those who are living in such a delusion had better read what Prof. Dicey has to say on this point. Discussing the question what persons and bodies with full sovereign powers can do Dicey has the following observations to make :—
“The actual exercise of authority by any sovereign whatever and notably by Parliament, is bounded or controlled by two limitations. Of these the one is an external, the other is an internal limitation.
“The external limit to the real power of a sovereign consists in the possibility or certainty that his subjects or a large number of them, will disobey or resist his laws.
“This limitation exists even under the most despotic monarchies. A Roman Emperor, or a French King during the middle of the eighteenth century, was (as is the Russian Czar at the present day) in strictness a ‘sovereign’ in the legal sense of that term. He had absolute legislative authority. Any law made by him was binding, and there was no power in the empire or kingdom which could annul such law . . . But it would be an error to suppose that the most absolute ruler who ever existed could in reality make or change every law at his pleasure . . .
“The authority, that is to say, even of a despot, depends upon the readiness of his subjects or of some portion of his subjects to obey his behests; and this readiness to obey must always be in reality limited. This is shown by the most notorious facts of history. None of the early Caesars could at their pleasure have subverted the worship of fundamental institutions of the Roman world . . . The Sultan could not abolish Mahomedanism. Louis the Fourteenth at the height of his power could revoke the Edict of Nantes, but he would have found it impossible to establish the supremacy of Protestantism, and for the same reason which prevented James the Second from establishing the supremacy of Roman Catholicism . . . What is true of the power of a despot or of the authority of a constituent assembly is specially true of the sovereignty of Parliament ; it is limited on every side by the possibility of popular resistance. Parliament might legally tax the Colonies ; Parliament might without any breach of law change the succession to the throne or abolish the monarchy ; but everyone knows that in the present state of the world the British Parliament will do none of these things. In each case widespread resistance would result from legislation which.