The German Constitution

[p. 476]

|476| of the citizens of the state in general the laws are given, likewise the character of the courts, whether in the various instances of the administration of justice, in relation to the members, it is an inherited one, or proceeding from the supreme power, or conferred by the citizens according to their free confidence, or by the courts themselves, what extent the district of a particular court has and whether it has been determined by chance, whether a common supreme instance exists for the whole state etc.

Equally independent of the state, and equally non-uniform, can the form of administration in general [be], then the institutions of the magistrates, the rights of the cities and estates etc. All these circumstances are only relatively important for the state, and for its true essence the form of their organization is a matter of indifference.

The inequality of the levies of the various classes according to their material value, but still more the inequality of the ideal side, namely of the rights and duties herein and of their origin, is to be found in all European states. Just as little as the inequality of contributions to the expenditure of the state, arising from the inequality of wealth, hinders the state at all — the modern states, rather, rest upon it — just as little does it affect the state that the various estates of the nobility, the clergy, the burghers and the peasantry contribute unequally, and have in the diversity of the estates, quite apart from everything that is called privilege, the ground for contributing in different proportions, because the proportion cannot be determined according to the essential side of that of which a part is given up, namely not according to the side of labour, which cannot be calculated and is in itself unequal, but only according to the side of the product.

Other contingencies — whether the various geographical parts of a state are burdened differently, what transformations and subordinate systems the levies pass through, whether on one and the very same field a

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