[p. 583]
|583| would be able to resist the state, and so find themselves in the possibility of becoming its enemies, [then] against them the same kind of power is required as against external enemies, just as the particular power against criminals does not in general deserve any special mention.
The unity of state power for the general purpose of defence is the essential of a state. All other purposes and effects of the union can be present in a most manifold and unitless manner. Even the manner in which the whole state power has passed over into a supreme public power and is to be found in the hands of those who dispose of it is wholly a matter of indifference to a people’s forming a state; it is the same whether the supreme holder of power is one or several and is elected or born to this majesty – whether there is in general a uniformity for the individual parts of the state in this; the monarch of Russia has serfs among his subjects, citizens of cities that have municipal constitutions, free noblemen and princes who themselves again have subjects, and peoples so wild, still naturally free, that they scarcely know laws and government even by name; so too in every other European state the relation of the citizens to the supreme public power is most non-uniform. Every smaller whole contained in the general law, individual estates, cities, provinces, have their own constitution and rights. But inasmuch as all help to form one supreme power and obey one supreme power, they together make up a state.
As regards civil laws of the administration of justice, neither does the equality of laws and of justice make a multitude of human beings into a state, nor does their diversity sublate the unity of the state; if in the whole of Europe judgement were given according to Roman or some other law, Europe would not thereby constitute one state; just as little if they, i.e. all states, stood in a general connection with regard to the administration of justice and extradited criminals to one another.
It is likewise not necessary, for a multitude to constitute a state, that it stand under precisely the same civil and criminal laws. One can appeal here to the example of almost all European states, among which there are few that have a uniform legislation. France before the Revolution had a very manifold system of laws; in many provinces Roman law was valid, but whole provinces, indeed almost every city, had particular customary laws, the old Burgundian, Breton law etc.; a French writer said that whoever travels post through France changes laws more often
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