And therefore the supreme power
cannot of itself resolve and decree in these matters for the people.
As regards the cost of maintaining the ecclesiastical establishment,
for similar reasons this must be derived not from the public funds
of the state, but from the section of the people who profess the
particular faith of the church; and thus only ought it to fall as a
burden on the community.
D. The Right of Assigning Offices and Dignities in the State.
The right of the supreme authority in the state also includes:
1. The distribution of offices, as public and paid employments;
2. The conferring of dignities, as unpaid distinctions of rank,
founded merely on honour, but establishing a gradation of higher and
lower orders in the political scale; the latter, although free in
themselves, being under obligation determined by the public law to
obey the former so far as they are also entitled to command;
3. Besides these relatively beneficent rights, the supreme power
in the state is also invested with the right of administering
punishment.
As regards civil offices, the question arises as to whether the
sovereign has the right, after bestowing an office on an individual,
to take it again away at his mere pleasure, without any crime having
been committed by the holder of the office.
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