The article offers a reconstruction of Hobbes' theory of commonwealth on the basis of which it considers the nexus of sovereignty and modern-day republicanism, as it is articulated in the work of Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit. It argues that, on the terms of republican theory, the difference between the liberty that republican theorists claim as man's due and the liberty that subjection to sovereign power affords is indeterminable. In conclusion, it queries the political intuition that animates republican theory.