第44章

3.The church is here regarded as an ecclesiastical establishment merely, and as such it must be carefully distinguished from religion, which as an internal mode of feeling lies wholly beyond the sphere of the action of the civil power.Viewed as an institution for public worship founded for the people- to whose opinion or conviction it owes its origin- the church establishment responds to a real want in the state.This is the need felt by the people to regard themselves as also subjects of a Supreme Invisible Power to which they must pay homage, and which may of be brought into a very undesirable collision with the civil power.The state has therefore a right in this relation; but it is not to be regarded as the right of constitutional legislation in the church, so as to organize it as may seem most advantageous for itself, or to prescribe and command its faith and ritual forms of worship (ritus);for all this must be left entirely to the teachers and rulers which the church has chosen for itself.The function of the state in this connection, only includes the negative right of regulating the influence of these public teachers upon the visible political commonwealth, that it may not be prejudicial to the public peace and tranquility.Consequently the state has to take measures, on occasion of any internal conflict in the church, or on occasion of any collision of the several churches with each other, that civil concord is not endangered; and this right falls within the province of the police.It is beneath the dignity of the supreme power to interpose in determining what particular faith the church shall profess, or to decree that a certain faith shall be unalterably held, and that the church may not reform itself.For in doing so, the supreme power would be mixing itself up in a scholastic wrangle, on a footing of equality with its subjects; the monarch would be making himself a priest; and the churchmen might even reproach the supreme power with understanding nothing about matters of faith.

Especially would this hold in respect of any prohibition of internal reform in the church; for what the people as a whole cannot determine upon for themselves cannot be determined for the people by the legislator.But no people can ever rationally determine that they will never advance farther in their insight into matters of faith, or resolve that they will never reform the institutions of the church; because this would be opposed to the humanity in their own persons and to their highest rights.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.I say, "No." For what the united will of the people would never resolve, regarding their civil officers, cannot (constitutionally) be determined by the sovereign regarding them.The people have to bear the cost incurred by the appointment of an official, and undoubtedly it must be their will that any one in office should be completely competent for its duties.But such competency can only be acquired by a long preparation and training, and this process would necessarily occupy the time that would be required for acquiring the means of support by a different occupation.Arbitrary and frequent changes would therefore, as a rule, have the effect of filling offices with functionaries who have not acquired the skill required for their duties, and whose judgements had not attained maturity by practice.

All this is contrary to the purpose of the state.And besides it is requisite in the interest of the people that it should be possible for every individual to rise from a lower office to the higher offices, as these latter would otherwise fall into incompetent hands, and that competent officials generally should have some guarantee of life-long provision.