The people, as forming
the mass of the subjects, belong to the sovereign as a people; not
in the sense of his being their proprietor in the way of real right,
but as their supreme commander or chief in the way of personal
right. This supreme proprietorship, however, is only an idea of the
civil constitution, objectified to represent, in accordance with
juridical conceptions, the necessary union of the private property
of all the people under a public universal possessor. The relation
is so represented in order that it may form a basis for the
determination of particular rights in property. It does not proceed,
therefore, upon the principle of mere aggregation, which advances
empirically from the parts to the whole, but from the necessary formal
principle of a division of the soil according to conceptions of right.
In accordance with this principle, the supreme universal proprietor
cannot have any private property in any part of the soil; for
otherwise he would make himself a private person. Private property
in the soil belongs only to the people, taken distributively and not
collectively; from which condition, however, a nomadic people must
be excepted as having no private property at all in the soil. The
supreme proprietor accordingly ought not to hold private estates,
either for private use or for the support of the court.
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