STATE (Lat. stare, to place, establish). A body politic, or society of men, united togeth for the purpose of promoting their mu tual safety and advantage, by the joint ef forts of their combined strength. Cooley, Const. Lim. 1. A self-sufficient body of per sons united together in one community for the defence of their rights and to do right and justice to foreigners. In this sense, the state means the whole people united into one body politic; and the state, and the people of the state, are equivalent expressions. Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 Dail. (U. S.) 425,. 1 L. Ed. 440; 2 Wilson, Lect. 120; 1 Story, Const., § 208: So, frequently, are state and nation ; Texas v. White, 7 Wall. (U. S.) 720, 19 L. Ed. 227. See Morse, Citizenship; Wheat. Int. L. 17; but it is said that "a state is distinguished from a nation or a people, since the former may be composed of dif ferent races of men all subject to the same supreme authority. . . . The same na tion or people may be subject to, or compose, several distinct and separate states. . . . The terms nation and people are frequently used by writers on international law as synonymous terms for state." 1 Halleck, Int. L. 66. • Another writer commenting on the defini tion of Cicero which is substantially that first • aboVe given, says : "This definition is not complete without some additions and restrictions. A state must be an organiza tion of people for political ends ; it must per manently occupy a fixed territory ; it must possess an organized government capable of making and enforcing law within the com• munity ; and, finally, to be a sovereign state it must not be subject to any external con trol. Thus a company of men united for commercial purposes cannot be a state in the sense held in international law ; neither can a tribe of wandering people, nor a communi ty, be so considered if their government is permanently incapable of enforcing its own laws or its obligations toward other states. So long as a state possesses the requisite at tributes mentioned in the preceding para graphs, international law does not concern itself with the form of its government ; it may be an absolute monarchy, a limited monarchy, or a republic; it may be a cen tralized state or a federal union ; or it may change from one to another of these forms at will, without in the least affecting its po sition in the view of international law ; Snow, Int. L. 19.
In the search for a verbal expression of that entity which has been variously phrased as the state, the nation, the commonwealth, or the public, the first mentioned term was slow in coming into general use. Queen Eliza beth used the word respublica in Latin /or commonwealth, in English. A statute referred to Guy Fawkes and others as having attempt ed "the overthrow of the whole state and com monwealth"; 3 Jac. I, c. 3; the Exchequer Chamber, in 1623, spoke of inconveniences in troduced "in the republic" by remote limita tions; Palm. 335. fihe words "republic" and "commonwealth," implying absence of a king, were abandoned only after 1600 when the word "state" came into use. It is little used in Blackstone, though he does speak of the "danger of the state" ; 1 Com. 135. The peo ple did not answer, since there is in opposi tion the king, and together they constitute the state or commonwealth. See "The Crown as Corporation," by F. W. Maitland, 17 L. Q. R. 131, 136, which begins with this quotation: "The greatest of artificial persons, politically speaking, is the state. But it depends on the legal institutions and forms of every com monwealth whether and how far the state or its titular head is officially treated as an arti ficial person." Pollock, First Bk. of Jur. 113.
The head of the state occupies the relation, not merely of ruler, but also of parens patrice to the people of the country, and has a power to intervene for their protection, in many in stances; this has been recognized by courts of other countries: The emperor of Austria, as representing the collective interests of his Hungarian subjects, was allowed to main tain a bill in equity to restrain the introduc tion of spurious notes meant to be circulated in Hungary as money, to the detriment of the value of property and commercial deal ings in that country; Emperor of Austria v. Kossuth, 3 De. G., F. & J. 217. So an injunc tion will issue at the suit of a consul (under a treaty authorizing his intervention to pro tect his countrymen) to restrain the use of the name and portrait of a foreign ruler in a fraudulent advertising scheme intended to lead emigrants from the foreign state to be lieve it to be under the patronage and ap proval of such ruler; but not to redress any personal offense to the ruler; Von Thodoro vich v. Beneficial Ass'n, 154 F4d. 911.