This, in modern language, means that the state
is territorial, not personal, and that the citizen appertains to
the state, not the state to the citizen. Under the patriarchal,
the tribal, and the Asiatic monarchical systems, there is,
properly speaking, no state, no citizens, and the organization is
economical rather than political. Authority--even the nation
itself--is personal, not territorial. The patriarch, the chief
of the tribe, or the king, is the only proprietor. Under the
Graeco-Roman system all this is transformed. The nation is
territorial as well as personal, and the real proprietor is the
city or state. Under the Empire, no doubt, what lawyers call the
eminent domain was vested in the emperor, but only as the
representative and trustee of the city or state.
When or by what combination of events this transformation was
effected, history does not inform us. The first-born of Adam, we
are told, built a city, and called it after his son Enoch; but
there is no evidence that it was constituted a municipality. The
earliest traces of the civil order proper are found in the Greek
and Italian republics, and its fullest and grandest developments
are found in Rome, imperial as well as republican. It was no
doubt preceded by the patriarchal system, and was historically
developed from it, but by way of accretion rather than by simple
explication.
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