So far as bears on the question in hand, it is made up of three distinctive constituent factors, or perhaps rather categories or conditions of men.

The populace is of course the main category, and in the last resort always the main and decisive factor.

Next in point of consequence as well as of numbers and initiative is the personnel of the control,--the ruling class, the administration, the official community, the hierarchy of civil and political servants, or whatever designation may best suit; the category comprises that pyramidal superstructure of privilege and control whereof the sovereign is the apex, and in whom, under any dynastic rule, is in effect vested the usufruct of the populace.

These two classes or conditions of men, the one of which orders and the other obeys, make up the working structure of the nation, and they also between them embody the national life and carry forward the national work and aim.

Intermediate between them, or rather beside them and overlapping the commissure, is a third category whose life articulates loosely with both the others at the same time that it still runs along in a semi-detached way.