Intermediate state

“ I declare that the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the states, and especially the right of each state to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of powers on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend. ”

“ The real answer to them at this time is, that whether they are good or bad, the present state system is one that, so far as any human being can see now, is certain to exist for some more centuries at least ”

“ If anything is clearly demonstrated as true, it is that both "government" and "the state" have been evolved out of our own necessities; neither was imposed from without, but both have been evolved from within ”

“ But the conception of a state must carry with it at least two ideas over and beyond the common needs of its members: there must be internal organisation to secure domestic tranquillity, and—since there will be collision with other states—external organisation for purposes of offence and defence. ”

“ Neither, again, is it necessary that states which are cut off from others and choose to live alone should be inactive; for activity, as well as other things, may take place by sections; there are many ways in which the sections of a state act upon one another. ”

“ A state powerful enough to keep isolated under modern conditions would be powerful enough to rule the world, would be, indeed, if not actively ruling, yet passively acquiescent in all other human organisations, and so responsible for them altogether. ”

“ The people respectively composing them, instead of constituting political communities, having appropriate organs to will and to act — which is indispensable to the existence of a State — would, in such case, be divested of all such organs; and, by consequence, reduced into an unorganized mass of individuals — as far as related to the respective States — and merged into one community or nation, having but one constitution and government as the organ, through which to will and to act. ”

“ Such laws may even be considered as actually invariable, while a state subsists without convulsions or revolutions: because then the alterations are so gradual, that they become imperceptible to all, but the most discerning, who compare the customs and manners of the same people in different periods of time and under different combinations of circumstances. ”

“ Throughout political organizations the like tendency, though less dominant, is very strong. The gradual establishment of law, by the consolidation of custom, is the formation of something fixed in the midst of things that are changing; and, regarded under its most general aspect as the agency which maintains a permanent order, it is in the very nature of a State-organization to be relatively rigid. ”

“ If it be a State which he is erecting—not, be it noted, a nation which is growing—he must carefully consider the territory which it is desirable to occupy and the social structures—not economic laws—which are to his hand as the result of history. ”

“ This system, which created the omnipotent State and a powerful centralisation, was retained by all subsequent Governments and is preserved to-day. Centralisation being, in spite of its drawbacks, the only means of avoiding local tyrannies in a country profoundly divided within itself, has always been maintained. ”

“ Two states are measuring their strength against each other, but a third and an altogether independent state comes into the whirlpool of their politics and undergoes the fate of double or triple partitions among the neighbours.
Observers of such freaks of Nature in the phenomena of the human world are naturally expected to doubt if there be any law or definite principle governing man's progress and decay. ”

“ The state becomes a larger institution, by deepening its hold on a subordinate institution which had grown up as private property under the law of survival and centralization, until it reached the point where organization tended to suppress the free movement of the persuasive principle animating its members. ”

“ His influence was exercised, however, not only in dogmatic questions but in matters of discipline, by means of appeals, petitions and consultations, not to mention spontaneous intervention. This state of affairs was defined and developed in the course of centuries, till it produced the present state of centralization, according to a law which can equally be observed in other societies. ”

“ Inasmuch as power is the main attribute of the State, it follows that only those States which are sufficiently strong in population, in territory, and in financial resources, have a right to exist. There is a definite limit below which a State cannot fulfil its mission nor defend its existence. ”

“ The Empire has yielded to the Monarchy, the Monarchy to the Republic, the Republic to the Empire again, and that once more to the Republic, but the Code which embodies the principle of equality before the law has remained. Fundamentally the social equilibrium has been stable. ”

“ If the integrity of any state can only be maintained at the cost of war, and if that state is more than what many so-called states have been,—more than an aggregation of individuals or communities under one ruling power,—if it so far fulfils the idea of a state, that its maintenance is necessary to the free development of the people belonging to it ”

“ Any discussion of Imperial organization must start from some fairly definite conception, not only of the present inter-State position, which is the hypothesis of the problem, but also of the ideal which it is hoped to promote, or at least not to retard, by the scheme proposed. ”

“ IN the relations between states, as in the relations of groups within a single state, what is to be desired is independence for each as regards internal affairs, and law rather than private force as regards external affairs. But as regards groups within a state, it is internal independence that must be emphasized, since that is what is lacking; subjection to law has been secured, on the whole, since the end of the Middle Ages. In the relations between states, on the contrary, it is law and a central government that are lacking, since independence exists for external as for internal affairs. ”

“ Sovereignty, we have seen, is the power generated within the group—dependent on the principle of interpenetration. (2) Man joins many groups—in order to express his multiple nature. These two principles give us federalism. ”

“ The state is a real organization of defense to guarantee and perpetuate a mode of association, the foundation of which is a form of economic production, or a compact and a transaction between forms. To sum up, the state assumes, either a system of property, or a compact between several systems of property. There is the foundation of all its art, the exercise of which demands that the state itself became an economic power, and that it also dispose of means and processes to make property pass from the hands of some into the hands of others. ”

“ What we see, on the contrary, is that, with every advance in civilization, as the end of the state grows larger and fuller, the means to its attainment become more numerous. The minimizers of governmental activity seem to deal with the primitive, rather than with the latest form of the state. ”

“ He takes no notice, however, of any forms of community more primitive than that of the state. The division into the 'status naturalis' and the 'status civilis' he seems to treat as exhaustive, and the 'status naturalis' he regards, after the manner of his time, as one of pure individualism, of simple detachment of man from man, or of detachment only modified by conflict. ”

“ It contributes, at least, in a high degree, to accomplish a principal end of centralized and regular government;—the giving the greatest efficiency, as well as the greatest order, to the administrative system of the country. ”

“ Nationalism has, among other evils, bred that of a powerful bureaucracy in each state: a rigid centralization, and a deplorable uniformity within each frontier exactly corresponding to the violent contrast between either side of that frontier. ”

“ A strong centralization within the State may be the most hurtful kind of concentration, for it may more vitally affect the people at home. Here the question, remember, is not the most efficient formal administration, but the best results for the people. ”

“ But the immediate and decisive factors that led to the idea of establishing a world State, are to be found only partly in the motives underlying the extension of the single State into a world State, and in the results connected with the attainment of this ambition. ”

“ Bound together not only by a common ruler, but by a highly organized and uniform though elastic system of administration, and as time went on by a common system of law and a common citizenship, it became the most powerful engine of assimilation that the world has ever seen. ”

“ These articulations of political society, which determine the organization of the army, the mode of taxation, and the right of participation in the government of the State, develop, as we have already seen, out of totemic tribal organization, as a result of the external conditions attendant upon the migrations and wars connected with the rise of States. But they also exhibit throughout the traces of statutes expressing the will and recording the decisions of individual rulers, though even here, of course, universal human motives are decisive. ”

“ The preservation of the states in a certain degree of agency is indispensable. It will produce that collision between the different authorities which should be wished for in order to check each other. ”

“ The problem, however, still remains of making the General Will, in any particular State, active and conscious. It is clear that there are States in which visible and recognised institutions hardly answer in any respect to its requirements. ”

“ Starting from a common basis of quadruplicate division in different countries, a great variety of constitutions of state was independently invented by statesmen and philosophers, who devised cycles produced by different combinations of numbers and signs, the object being to regulate time and communal life in imitation of the law, order and harmony existing in the motion of the stars and under the guidance of a supreme ruler, the earthly representative of Polaris. ”

“ The state, which is and which must be an economic power that in its defense of the ruling classes it may be furnished with means to repress, to govern, to administer and to make war, creates in a direct or an indirect manner an aggregation of new and particular interests, which necessarily react upon society. Thus the state, by the fact that it has arisen and that it maintains itself as a guaranty of the social antitheses, which are a consequence of economic differentiations, creates around itself a circle of persons interested directly in its existence. ”

“ Instead of giving us the mere data of area, population, wealth, and industry in a State, from which its real condition can never be fully and accurately determined, it should proceed from a consideration of the real state of the country and its inhabitants, and endeavour to convey the extent and nature of their active, passive, and enjoying powers, with such gradual modifications as these receive, either from the force of national union, or from the influence of the political organization. ”

“ The consequences vary with concrete conditions; hence at one time and place a large measure of state activity may be indicated and at another time a policy of quiescence and laissez-faire. Just as publics and states vary with conditions of time and place, so do the concrete functions which should be carried on by states. There is no antecedent universal proposition which can be laid down because of which the functions of a state should be limited or should be expanded. Their scope is something to be critically and experimentally determined. ”

“ The opinions that the State is merely a mechanical aggregate of individuals, that it is formed by the combination of individuals or families for the sake of mutual protection and benefit, and that it exists only for these purposes, are examples of the first kind. Such views subordinate the State to the individual. The State is treated as an external contrivance for securing the life, the property, or the convenience of the individual. ”

“ Where states are connected or united through a justiciary medium, whether that justiciary medium is a person, a body corporate, or a state, all the states are free states, their relationships being governed by law. Where states are connected through an executive medium, whether that executive medium is a person, a body corporate, or a state, all the states are free and independent states, and each acts according to its will. ”

“ The system of a triple division of specific powers, each one of which was vigorous in its own sphere while at the same time checked and balanced by the other branches of the government, has certain advantages and certain disadvantages. ”

“ A stern, inflexible, and uniform policy may do for a small compact republic, like one of those of ancient Greece, where there is a unity of character, habits, and interests; but a more accommodating, discriminating, and variable policy must be observed in a vast republic like ours, formed of a variety of states widely differing in habits, pursuits, characters, and climes, and banded together by a few general ties. ”

“ Whether or not the primitive state, in which governing power is equally distributed among all warriors or all elders, passes into the state in which governing power is monopolized by one, depends, in part, on the life of the group as predatory or peaceful, and in part on the natures of its members as prompting them to oppose dictation more or less doggedly. ”

“ That the central government was created chiefly for matters of a general character, which concerned all the States and their people, and not for matters of interior regulation, is shown as much by the history of its formation as by the express language of the Constitution. ”

“ The intrinsic tendency of such governments to clash with the central authority, is enhanced by a cause which still operates although its origin is remote. Almost every extensive country is an aggregate of units, which, in substance at least, were once independent states ”