[p. 480]
|480| in the deliberation and determination concerning the general affairs of the state is altogether impossible. Public power must concentrate itself in a centre, both for the execution, as government, and for the resolving upon it. If this centre is secure for itself through the reverence of the peoples, and is hallowed in its immutability in the person of the monarch determined by a law of nature and [by] birth, then a public power can, without fear and jealousy, leave freely to the subordinate systems and bodies a great part of the relations that arise in society, and their preservation according to the laws, and every estate, city, village, commune, and so on, can enjoy the freedom of itself doing and carrying out whatever lies within its district.
As the laws concerning this have gradually emerged immediately from the customs themselves as hallowed usages, so [the] constitution of right, the institutions of the lower jurisdiction, the rights of the citizens therein, the rights of the administrations of the cities, the collection of the levies, partly the general ones, partly those necessary for the needs of the cities themselves, and the lawful use of the latter — everything belonging here has come together of its own drive and has grown up for itself, and since it brought itself forth it has also maintained itself.
The so extensive organisation of the ecclesiastical institutions has likewise not been made by the supreme public power, and the whole estate maintains and replaces itself more or less within itself. — The great sums which are spent annually in a great state for poverty, and the institutions of wide extent devoted to it, which reach through all parts of a country, are not defrayed by impositions which the state would have to order, nor is the whole establishment maintained and conducted at its command. The mass of possessions and revenues that belongs here rests on foundations and gifts of individuals, just as the whole establishment, its administration and activity is without
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