limits to which it designs to restrict, or the circuit to which it would extend, its agency. Lastly, the third point of view is suggested by the means which the State requires in order to preserve the political organism itself, and to render the attainment of its ends at all possible. Every conceivable law must properly originate in one of these three points of view; but none should be made and enacted without regard to all the three, and the one-sided view in which they have originated is an essential defect in too many laws. Now from this threefold aspect we have three preliminary essentials for every system of legislation. 1. A complete general theory of right. 2. A perfect exposition of the end which the State should propose itself, or what is, in fact, the same thing, an accurate definition of the limits within which it is to restrict its activity, or a representation of the especial ends which are actually pursued by this or that State union. 3. A theory of the means necessary for the existence of a State; and as these means are necessary partly for the sake of preserving internal cohesion, and partly in order to assure the possibility of action, a theory of political and of financial science, or, again, a representation of actual systems of politics and financial economy. In this general classification, which admits of various subdivisions, I would only observe that the first-mentioned alone is eternal and immutable as human nature itself, while the others allow of divers modifications. If, however, these modifications do not proceed from perfectly general considerations, derived from all these different aspects of legislation, but from accidental circumstances; if, for example, there exists in some State a fixed political system, and financial arrangements which are unchangeable, then the second division we have mentioned is very difficult to preserve entire, and often through this the first and most essential suffers. The reasons for very many political imperfections might certainly be traced to these and similar collisions.
