The German Constitution

[p. 588]

[Finances]

The finances have in more recent times become a chief part of state power, because all European states have more or less departed from the feudal constitution; but since Germany’s political relations, in regard to what is called constitution, are an old heirloom, and every alteration of them was only a diminution, Germany has had no finances to inherit, or has lost what could be so called; of the revenues of the German Empire, their relation to the expenditure, the manner of raising the necessary sums, public credit, public debts, there can be no question. These considerations of such enormous importance, which in other states demand the expenditure of the greatest talents, in which errors can have the most fearful consequences, all these cares do not plague Germany.

In the old pure feudal constitution that which now has the form of general impositions for defraying the expenses of the state had rather the form of the peculiar possession and rights of the supreme feudal lord, who out of his domains defrayed the expense of conducting the suzerainty, administration, administration of justice, embassies etc.; the few cases, captivity of the supreme feudal lord, endowment of the princes etc., in which an actual imposition was made, do not come into consideration here. The expense of war each vassal had to defray himself. In more recent times one has seen the other extreme of this absence of finances, namely every expense that a public office [requires], down to the humblest village judge, juge de paix and constable and lower still, arrive first as a levy at the supreme public power and flow back again as state expenditure into the smallest branches of public service, through all the intermediate links of laws, decrees and accounts.

In Germany not only does this public interference of the state in every small public cost not take place – the immediate estates, even the territorial towns in them, villages, look after, under general supervision but not according to orders of the state power itself, that part of the finances which concerns them directly themselves – but, because Germany has fallen apart into a multitude of independent states, there can also be no actual general finances. This lack of finances would,

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