[p. 127]
|127| the people, its sovereignty etc. State legislation is for the men of principles essentially more or less exhausted with the Droits de l’homme et du citoyen composed by Lafayette and prefixed to the earlier French constitutions; a further determinate legislation, an organisation of the powers of state and of the authorities of administration, as of the subordination of the people to these public authorities, is indeed admitted as necessary and set up. But against the operation of the institutions, which are public order and actual freedom, recourse is had to those universalities, through which, according to what they demand for freedom, the fundamental law is already contradictory in itself. Obedience to the laws is admitted as necessary, but demanded by the authorities, i.e. by individuals, it appears contrary to freedom; the authority to command, the difference of this authority, of commanding and obeying in general, is against equality; a multitude of human beings can give itself the title of people, and rightly, for the people is this indeterminate multitude; but from it the authorities and officials, in general the members belonging to the organised power of the state, are distinguished, and they thereby appear in the wrong of having stepped out of equality and of standing over against the people, which is in the infinite advantage of being recognised as the sovereign will. This is the extreme of contradictions in whose circle a nation is tossed about that these formal categories have seized. The members of the English Parliament of the hitherto existing system and the English in general have more of a practical sense of the state and have a notion of what government and governing are, – whereby it lies at the same time in the character of their constitution that the government intervenes hardly at all in the particular spheres of social life, in the administration of the counties, towns etc., in church and school affairs, also in other common
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.