The republic is nothing whatever but--absolute monarchy; for it makes no difference whether the monarch is called prince or people, both being a "majesty." Constitutionalism itself proves that nobody is able and willing to be only an instrument. The ministers domineer over their master the prince, the deputies over their master the people. Here, then, the _parties_ at least are already free,--_videlicet_, the office-holders' party (so-called people's party). The prince must conform to the will of the ministers, the people dance to the pipe of the chambers. Constitutionalism is further than the republic, because it is the _State_ in incipient _dissolution_. E. Bauer denies (p. 56) that the people is a "personality" in the constitutional State; _per contra_, then, in the republic? Well, in the constitutional State the people is--a _party_, and a party is surely a "personality" if one is once resolved to talk of a "political" (p. 76) moral person anyhow. The fact is that a moral person, be it called people's party or people or even "the Lord," is in no wise a person, but a spook. Further, E. Bauer goes on (p. 69): "guardianship is the characteristic of a government." Truly, still more that of a people and "people's State"; it is the characteristic of all _dominion_. A people's State, which "unites in itself all completeness of power," the "absolute master," cannot let me become powerful. And what a chimera, to be no longer willing to call the "people's officials" "servants, instruments," because they "execute the free, rational law-will of the people!" (p. 73). He thinks (p. 74): "Only by all official circles subordinating themselves to the government's views can unity be brought into the State"; but his "people's State" is to have "unity" too; how will a lack of subordination be allowable there? subordination to the--people's will. "In the constitutional State it is the regent and his _disposition_ that the whole structure of government rests on in the end." (_Ibid._, p. 130.) How would that be otherwise in the "people's State"? Shall _I_ not there be governed by the people's _disposition_ too, and does it make a difference _for me_ whether I see myself kept in dependence by the prince's disposition or by the people's disposition, so-called "public opinion"? If dependence means as much as "religious relation," as E. Bauer rightly alleges, then in the people's State the people remains _for me_ the superior power, the "majesty" (for God and prince have their proper essence in "majesty") to which I stand in religious relations.--Like the sovereign regent, the sovereign people too would be reached by no _law_. E. Bauer's whole attempt comes to a _change of masters_. Instead of wanting to make the _people_ free, he should have had his mind on the sole realizable freedom, his own.