It is in the people
that the supreme power originally resides, and it is accordingly
from this power that all the rights of individual citizens as mere
subjects, and especially as officials of the state, must be derived.
When the sovereignty of the people themselves is thus realized, the
republic is established; and it is no longer necessary to give up
the reins of government into the hands of those by whom they have been
hitherto held, especially as they might again destroy all the new
institutions by their arbitrary and absolute will.
It was therefore a great error in judgement on the part of a
powerful ruler in our time, when he tried to extricate himself from
the embarrassment arising from great public debts, by transferring
this burden to the people, and leaving them to undertake and
distribute them among themselves as they might best think fit. It thus
became natural that the legislative power, not only in respect of
the taxation of the subjects, but in respect of the government, should
come into the hands of the people. It was requisite that they should
be able to prevent the incurring of new debts by extravagance or
war; and in consequence, the supreme power of the monarch entirely
disappeared, not by being merely suspended, but by passing over in
fact to the people, to whose legislative will the property of every
subject thus became subjected.
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