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BOOK I.

THE PUBLIC ECONOMY.

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CHAPTER I.

THE STATE AND THE PUBLIC BUSINESS.

LITERATURE. Bluntschli, Allgemeines Staatsrecht, 3. Auflage, 1863. Rudolph von Ihering, Geist des römischen Rechts auf den verschiedenen Stufen seiner Entwickelung, vol. i., 3. Auflage, 1873. Rudolph Gneist, Das Englische Verwaltungsrecht, 3. Auflage, 1883. Lorenz von Stein, Handbuch der Verwaltungslehre, 2. Auflage, 1876. Adolph Wagner, Finanzwissenschaft, Erster Theil, 3. Auflage, 1883. secs. 1-11.

I. THE EVOLUTION OF THE STATE.

§ 20. There are few points at which the historical conception of social life has so completely carried the day against the notions of natural right as in the debate about the beginnings of the state. It is true the favorite analogy of a plant-like or "organic" growth is not to be taken too literally. Also, it is undoubtedly true that after a certain advanced stage of culture has been reached the foundation of a state by contract is not only possible, but is substantiated by historical fact. But the essential point is not touched by such objections as these. The essential fact is that long before a "contract" in the sense required by the abstract conceptions involved in the notion of natural right, could have been entered into, that is to say, long before the peoples had attained the stage of culture at which such a conscious recognition of the developed idea of a political organization is possible, an instinctive banding together is brought about by the pressure of the natural course of development,—a banding together of kindred for protection against common danger and common

enemies.

This is the fundamental fact in the formation of all states. The principle of self-preservation which urges every living being to defend himself against every other being from whom danger threatens, leads, through the action of the natural bond existing

between individuals connected by ties of blood, to concerted action in defense of a common existence.

All that comes to pass in the long course of the subsequent development of the state is traceable, finally, to this fundamental fact. None of the higher developed civilized states has yet been able to eradicate the traces of its childhood in respect of the fundamental importance which the need of a common defense and a common organization of force continues to claim.

And in this fundamental fact there is given the primarily democratic character of every primitive political body. This is not a national characteristic and does not distinguish any one people above others—a view which for obvious reasons has been acceptable to our historical school, whether they have been pleased to find that this peculiar feature characterized the Roman or the German people-but it is something that arises by universal necessity from universally efficient causes. What is related by African travelers, as for example by Henry M. Stanley,' concerning the peoples of the interior of Africa, agrees, as respects this fundamental characteristic, with what we know of the earliest stages of development of the Romans and of the Germans, however great may have been the difference in point of race descent and later culture.

What Tacitus relates of the Germans is therefore something that holds true without regard to national lines of demarkation, and describes in its essential features a typical fact.

Here we find the state a living identity of people and army. Army and People were not discrete concepts in the early days.* The army was nothing more than the people under arms. The population, constantly armed as they were, when they were assembled, also constituted the army. Therefore the words which denote the army were used, even in later times, to designate simply the populace.

2

Accoutred with their weapons they congregate in the Through the Dark Continent (1876).

Georg Waitz; Verfassung der Deutschen Urzeit, 3. Auflage, 1880.

3 Nihil autem neque publicæ neque privatæ rei nisi armati agunt.— Germ. cap. 13.

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popular assembly where they transact such business as may be necessary even in the primitive commonwealth, in addition to the use of arms: determination on war or peace, punishment of offences and the like. Only matters of lesser importance are decided by the leaders alone; the more important by the whole body.

This participation of the individual members of the community in public affairs is so profound that their life-activity may be said to be made up of war and the popular assembly. Between whiles they sleep and eat and idle, while house and fields are left to the care of the women, the aged and the infirm. Such is the life of these men.1

§ 21. For the purposes of a discussion introductory to the Science of Finance the meaning of this primitive form of the political structure may be indicated as follows:

It is the embryonic form of public obligation which contains the germs from which the various elements of the developed public economy are evolved by a process of differentiation.

In the first place, the personal factor is, at this rudimentary stage, still undifferentiated from the material [sachliche] factor. The individual member of the community not only contributes his personal service in the army, he also brings with him into. the field whatever is required in the way of arms and accoutrements; for these he carries as his own from the day when, having reached manhood, he is publicly invested with them in the assembly of the people as a symbol of his public dignity and obligation as a mark that he has become part and parcel of the

state.2

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A second fact is closely related to this first.

The man's participation in the affairs of the commonwealth has not yet been differentiated into honor or privilege on the one hand and burden or obligation on the other. It is true, we are told by the writers on law that public law is distinguished

Tacitus, Germ. cap. 15.

2 Ante hoc domus pars videntur, mox rei publicæ.-Tacitus, Germ. cap. 13.

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