These points form the basis of Austin's theory of sovereignty,
and the basis was provided by Bentham. There are, however,
two differences between the passages from Bentham and Austin
which should not be overlooked.

Bentham defined 'being in a state of political society';
Austin 'an independent political society'. That explains why
Austin's definition consists of two conditions, one positive (the
bulk of the population habitually obeys the sovereign) and one
negative (the sovereign is not in the habit of obeying anyone),
whereas Bentham's definition mentions only the positive con-
dition. The negative condition is relevant only to the indepen-
dence of a political society with which Bentham was not in this
passage concerned. Austin comments on this omission and says
that 'Mr. Bentham has forgotten to notice' the necessity of a
negative condition. ¹ This is not true of the Fragment to which
Austin referred, yet it is true of Bentham definitions of
sovereign in Of Laws in General, his most important jurispru-
dential work, and elsewhere. ² But it is no more than a technical
fault. There can be no doubt that Bentham would have
approved of Austin's amendment. In the Fragment he writes:

But suppose an incontestable political society, and that a large one,
formed; and from that a smaller body to break off: by this breach
the smaller body ceases to be in a state of political union with
respect to that larger: and has thereby placed itself, with respect to
that larger body, in a state of nature . . . [and suppose] the sub-
ordinate governors, from whom alone the people at large were in
use to receive their commands under the old government, are the
same from whom they receive them under the new one. The habit
of obedience which these subordinate governors were in with respect to that
single person, we will say, who was the supreme governor of the whole is
broken off insensibly and by degrees. The old names by which these

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