The German Constitution

[p. 481]

|481| dependence on the supreme public power; just as the greater part of the internal social institutions has made itself, through the free doing of the citizens, for every determinate extent of need, and their duration and life maintain themselves with this very freedom, undisturbed by any jealousy or anxiety of the supreme public power, except that the government partly protects them, partly restricts the luxuriant growth of such a part, whereby it would oppress other necessary [parts].

In the new theories, however, which have been in part carried out, the fundamental prejudice is that a state is a machine with a single spring, which communicates the motion to all the rest of the infinite wheelwork; from the supreme public power all institutions which the essence of a society brings with it are supposed to proceed, to be regulated, commanded, supervised, directed.

The pedantic mania for determining every detail, the unfree jealousy of the own ordering and administering of an estate, corporation, and so on, this ignoble carping at all own doing of the citizens of the state that would have no relation to public power but only some general relation, has been clothed in the garment of principles of reason, according to which not a farthing of the common expense that is made for the poor in a country of 20, 30 millions [may be spent] without [its] having been first not [merely] permitted but commanded, controlled, inspected by the supreme government. In the care for education the appointment of every village schoolmaster, the expenditure of every penny for a windowpane of the village school as well as of the village council chamber, the appointment of every gate-clerk and court bailiff, every village judge, is to be an immediate emanation and effect of the supreme government; in the whole state every morsel from the soil that produces it to the mouth is to be led along a line which is investigated, calculated, rectified and commanded by state and law and government.

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