[p. 248]
|248| The lawgivers did not give arbitrary statutes. They are not determinations of their particular liking, but through their profound spirit they recognised what the truth and essence of a relation of right is.
§ 27
The government is the individuality of the will that is in and for itself. It is the power to give the laws and to administer or execute them.
Explanation. The state has laws. These are therefore the will in its universal abstract essence, which as such is inactive, – just as principles and maxims express or contain only the universal of willing, not yet an actual willing. In relation to this universal, only the government is the active and actualizing will. The law does indeed subsist as custom, as habit, but the government is the conscious power of unconscious habit.
§ 28
The universal power of the state contains various particular powers subsumed under it: 1. the legislative in general; 2. the administrative and financial, to create the means for the actualization of freedom; 3. the (independent) judicial and police power; 4. the military and the power to wage war and to conclude peace.
Explanation. The kind of constitution depends chiefly on whether these particular powers are exercised directly from the centre of the government; further, on whether several of them are united in one authority or are separated, e.g. whether the prince or regent himself directly pronounces right or whether separate, particular courts are instituted, further, whether the regent also unites the ecclesiastical power in himself, and so on. It is also important whether in a constitution the supreme centre of the government holds the power over finance in an unrestricted sense, so that it can impose taxes entirely at its arbitrary will as well as
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