That the highest political authority must have the supervision, and prevent these various aspects from hindering the main action of the state is a matter of course. But it is a great advantage of the older states in Europe that they, after insuring what is necessary for the state, can leave plenty of room for the activity of the citizen in the fields of administration and adjudication, whether in regard to choosing the officials or in regard to current business and the handling of law and custom. It is in view of the size of present states not possible to realize the ideal according to which each free man should participate in the deliberation and determination of general public policy. Political authority must be concentrated, be it as government for the executing, or for the determination thereof. If this center of authority is made secure in itself by the respect of the peoples and is sanctified in the person of the monarch as unchangeable; a political authority can leave without fear or jealousy to the subordinate systems and corporate bodies a great part of the relations which are produced in a society. It can leave to them their maintenance according to law, and each class, city, village, community, etc., can enjoy the freedom of doing and executing what lies within its sphere.
In the new, partly developed theories it is the central prejudice that the state is a machine with a single spring which gives motion to the infinite remaining wheels. All institutions which constitute the nature of a society ought to stem from the highest political authority, to be regulated, commanded, supervised and directed.
The pedantic passion to determine everything in detail, the unfree jealousy which wants to order and administer everything oneself, this ignoble fussing over any self-activity of the citizens, even though it has no general relation to the state’s authority, has been clothed in rational principles. Not a cent of ordinary expense which may be made for the poor in a country of 20 or 30 million ought to be spent without being commanded, controlled, inspected by the highest authority. Out of a concern for education, the appointment of every village teacher, the expenditure of every penny for a window glass in the school house, the appointment of every secretary or policeman, of every village judge is supposed to be the emanation of the highest political authority. In the whole state every bite should be taken from the soil which produced it to the mouth in a straight line which state and law and government have investigated, calculated, corrected and commanded.
This is not the place to develop more at length that the center of political authority, the government, should leave to the freedom of the citizens all that is not essential to its purpose, namely to organize and to maintain [the highest] authority and power which is necessary for external and internal security. Nothing should be more sacred [to a government] than to leave to the free action of the citizens all these matters and to protect it without regard to utility. For this freedom is sacred in itself.
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