The state has its outward direction in that it is an individual subject. Its relation to others therefore falls to the power of the crown, to which it accordingly belongs immediately and exclusively to command the armed forces, to maintain relations with other states through envoys and the like, and to conclude war and peace and other treaties.
In almost all European countries the individual apex is the princely power, which has to attend to relations with the outside. Where there are constitutions with estates, the question can arise whether war and peace should not be concluded by the estates, and in any case they will retain their influence, particularly with regard to financial means. In England, for example, no unpopular war can be waged. But if one thinks that princes and cabinets are more subject to passion than chambers, and therefore seeks to place the decision over war and peace into the hands of the latter, it must be said that whole nations can often be roused to enthusiasm and set into passion even more than their princes. In England the whole people has more than once pressed for war and, so to speak, compelled the ministers to wage it. The popularity of Pitt arose from the fact that he knew how to hit upon what the nation wanted at that time. Only later did the cooling of feeling here produce the awareness that the war was useless and unnecessary and had been begun without any reckoning of the means. The state, moreover, stands in relation not only to one other, but to several, and the entanglements of these relations become so delicate that they can be handled only from the apex.
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