[p. 482]
This is not the place to set out at length that the centre, as public power, the government, leaves [that] which is not necessary to it for its destination, to organise and maintain the power, [that is,] for its external and internal security, to the freedom of the citizens, and that nothing must be so holy to it as to let the free doing of the citizens in such matters go on and to protect it, without any regard to utility; for this freedom is holy in itself.
But as for utility — if it is to be calculated what advantage the own administering of their affairs by the particular bodies, their administration of justice, their appointing to the offices that become necessary therein, and so on, bring — there are here three kinds of calculation: the one, which goes to the tangible, the money that the supreme public power obtains thereby, — the other, to the understanding and excellence with which in a machine everything is done at uniform pace, according to the shrewdest calculation and the wisest purposes, — the third, however, to the liveliness, the contented spirit and the free and self-respecting self-feeling which springs from the participation of the own will in the general affairs, so far as their branches are contingent for the supreme public power.
In the first, in the tangible, the state whose principle is the general machinery imagines itself without hesitation to have the advantage over the one which leaves the detail, to a great extent, to the rights and the own doing of its citizens. It is to be remarked in general, however, that that state, unless it imposes heavier levies on the whole, cannot possibly have the advantage. For since it takes over all branches of administration, of the administration of justice, and so on, all the costs of these [must] fall upon it at the same time,
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