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STATE

STATE

STATE, condition of persons. This word has various acceptations. If we inquire into its origin, it will be found to come from the Latin status, which is derived from the verb stare, sto, whence has been made statio, which signifies the place where a person is located, stat, to fulfill the obligations which are imposed upon him. 2. State is that quality which belongs to a person in society, and which secures to, and imposes upon him different rights and duties in consequence of the difference of that quality. 3. Although all men come from the hands of nature upon an equality, yet there are among them marked differences. It is from nature that come the distinctions of the sexes, fathers and children, of age and youth, &c. 4. The civil or municipal laws of each people, have added to these natural qualities, distinctions which are purely civil and arbitrary, founded on the manners of the people, or in the will of the legislature. Such are the differences, which these laws have established between citizens and aliens, between magistrates and subjects, and between freemen and slaves; and those which exist in some countries between nobles and plebeians, which differences are either unknown or contrary to natural law. 5. Although these latter distinctions are more particularly subject to the civil or municipal law, because to it they owe their origin, it nevertheless extends its authority over the natural qualities, not to destroy or to weaken them, but to confirm them and to render them more inviolable by positive rules and by certain maxims. This union of the civil or municipal and natural law, form among men a third species of differences which may be called mixed, because they participate of both, and derive their principles from nature and the perfection of the law; for example, infancy or the privileges which belong to it, have their foundation in natural law; but the age and the term of these prerogatives are determined by the civil or municipal law. 6. Three sorts of different qualities which form the state or condition of men may then be distinguished: those which are purely natural, those purely civil, and those which are composed of the natural and civil or municipal law. Vide 3 Bl. Com. 396; 1 Toull. n. 170, 171; Civil State.

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