The security of the state and of the governed against the abuse of power on the part of the authorities and their civil servants lies, on the one hand, immediately in their hierarchy and responsibility, and, on the other hand, in the rights of communities and corporations, whereby the intrusion of subjective arbitrary will into the power entrusted to civil servants is in itself checked, and the control from above — which does not extend to individual conduct — is supplemented from below.

In the conduct and the formation of civil servants lies the point at which the laws and decisions of the government touch individuality and are made effective in actuality. This is, accordingly, the point on which the satisfaction and confidence of the citizens in the government, as well as the execution or the weakening and frustration of its intentions, depend — from the side that the manner of execution, in feeling and disposition, is easily rated as highly as the content of what is to be executed, which may in itself already contain a burden. It lies in the immediacy and personal character of this contact that control from above achieves its purpose less completely from this side — a purpose that can also meet obstacles in the common interest of civil servants as an estate closing ranks both against those below and against those above; the removal of such obstacles, especially where institutions are otherwise still more imperfect, requires and justifies the higher intervention of sovereignty (as, for example, Frederick II did in the notorious Müller-Arnold case).