oned
thereto. Even in his own domicile, though he be householder and head
of a family, he may not injure the public health or morals by
nuisances on his own premises, his financial obligations to creditors
are secured against him by law, even the possession of his acres is
made certain only by public record. It makes no difference whether the
legal restrictions under which he lives are local or national, they
are all a part of the system for which he and his neighbors are
responsible, and which as citizens they are under obligation to
maintain.

144. =Political Terms.=--It is important to understand and use
correctly certain terms which occur in this connection. The state is
the people organized for the purpose of exercising the authority of
social control. In its sociological sense it is not restricted to a
large or small area, but in political parlance it is used with
reference to a large district which possesses a certain degree of
authority over all the people, as the State of New York, or the
sovereign state of Great Britain. Government is the institution that
functions for social control in accordance with the will of the people
or of an individual to whose authority they submit. Politics is the
science and art of government, and includes statesmanship as its
highest type and the manipulation of party machinery as its lowest
type. Law is the body of social regulations administered by government
ostensibly for the public good. Each of these may be and in the past
has been prostituted for private advantage. In the state one man or a
small group has seized and held the sovereign power through the force
of personal ascendancy or the prestige of birth or wealth, and has
used it for himself, as history testifies by numerous examples. The
forms of government in many cases have not been well adapted to the
functions that they were designed to perform. The despotic
administrative agencies that were overthrown by the French Revolution
were ill-adapted to the governmental needs of the lower classes. Much
of the governmental machinery of the American republic has not matched
the constitutional forms that were originally provided, and the
Constitution has had to be stretched or amended if the government of
the founders of the republic was not to be revolutionized. So law and
politics have had to be reorganized, revised, and reinterpreted to fit
into the social need. Law is a conservative factor in progress, but it
adapts its