"His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz: New Hampshire, Massachusetts-Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia to be free, sovereign and independent States"; and, again, when they penned the declaration: "There shall be a firm and perpetual peace between his Britannic Majesty and the said States"; it was so understood by Massachusetts when she declared herself to be a "free, sovereign, and independent State," although she had adopted "Commonwealth" as her distinctive title; it was so understood by the Continental Congress when it placed this second Article in its plan of union: "Each State retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence," etc.; it was so understood by the same body when they recognized the Congress as a Congress of States "the United States in Congress assembled"; it was so understood by the people of New Hampshire when, in their Constitution of 1792, they declared: "The people of this State have the sole and exclusive right of governing themselves as a free, sovereign and independent State"; it was so understood by the people of Vermont when, in their Constitution of 1793, they required"every officer, whether judicial, executive or military, in authority under this State, before he enters upon the execution of his office," to "take and subscribe the following oath or affirmation of allegiance to this State, unless he shall produce evidence that he has before taken the same," etc.; it was so understood by the States when they defined "treason against a State, and their delegates provided for the surrender of any person charged in any State with treason"; it was so understood by the Congress of the Confederation when, using a practically synonymous word in the Thirteenth

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Article of the Ordinance for the Government of the Northwest Territory, they said (July 13, 1787, while the Constitutional Convention was in session): "And for extending the fundamental principles of civil and religious liberty, which form the basis whereon these republics,' their laws, etc., are erected," etc.; it was so un-· derstood by the Convention of 1787, which closed its draft of the Constitution with the statement that it was "done in Convention by the unanimous consent of the States present"; and it was so understood by the Congress in 1794, when in framing the Eleventh Amendment they proposed to shield the States against suits prosecuted by "citizens or subjects of any foreign State."

This long line of authorities reaching back beyond 1626, can leave no doubt in the minds of intelligent persons that each one of the States was regarded by itself and by the other States as an independent sovereignty, possessing all the rights, powers and jurisdictions of any other sovereignty; that it could form "a firm league of friendship" with any or all of the other States, or refuse to do so.

When, we may now ask, did they lose their character as States? When did "State" lose its proper meaning? Was it done by one act, or was the operation gradual? The answer to these questions is that it was never done at all up to 1861.

The claim that it was done when they united in 1776 for their mutual defense, is negatived by the second Article of the Articles of Confederation adopted afterwards; and the assertion that it was done by the first three words of the preamble of the Constitution-"We, the people "--is disposed of by the declaration that the

A "republican government is that in which the body, or only a part of the people, is possessed of the supreme power." -Montes quieu's Spirit of Laws, Book II, Chapter I.

Constitution was to be "between the States." Equally unfounded is the claim that the people of all the States were consolidated into a Nation because the Constitution was to be the supreme law of the land. Treaties also were to be the supreme law of the land; and, unquestionably, if the construction of the consolidationists were correct, both parties to a treaty would be sovereigns over the States. The truth is, this was simply another way of declaring, as the Articles of Confederation did, that "each State shall abide by the determinations of the United States in Congress assembled on all questions which by this Confederation are submitted to them; that "the Articles of this Confederation shall be inviolably observed by every State "; and that "the Union shall be perpetual."

SOVEREIGN.

The term sovereign is properly an adjective, being a modern form of the ancient Latin word supremus, which we translate highest. In the course of time it came to be used also as a noun, signifying the man possessing the supreme or highest authority in a State. This was its meaning during the seventeenth century. It was its meaning when these thirteen Colonies freed themselves from British rule. And it is its meaning to-day in monarchical governments.

When, however, the sovereignty of the British king was successfully renounced by these Colonies, the new order of things inevitably led to some confusion of thought, because, strictly speaking, nobody had inherited the sovereignty of the king, who, as to them, was dead. Was each inhabitant a sovereign? Was each State a sovereign? Or were all the people of all the States a sovereign? Naturally the answer to these questions would depend on the answer to the question,

What had become of the allegiance each inhabitant had owed to the British crown? Did he owe anything of the sort now; and, if he did, to whom?

This question was easily answered; each one of the Colonies, after active hostilities began between them and the British Government, and more than a year before the Declaration of Independence, demanded the allegiance of each one of its inhabitants, and in default of compliance the property of recusants was confiscated by the legislatures.'

This was done in every one of the States, and the right was denied by nobody except the British and the Tories.

Hence it followed necessarily that, if the word sovereignty was at all admissible in the new nomenclature, it belonged to each State; and, accordingly, in all the early State Constitutions, in the Declaration of Independence, and in the Articles of Confederation, the sovereignty of the several States is recognized as the logical sequence of Independence.

This sovereignty was never renounced, or delegated, or surrendered by the States; they delegated powers, jurisdictions, etc., but this was no more a delegation of sovereignty than the conferring of powers on a tenant transforms him into a landlord.2

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'In November 1777, the Legislature of North Carolina, in session at Newbern, passed an act, That all the lands, tenements, etc., within this State, and all and every right, etc., of which any person was seized or possessed, or to which any person had title, on the 4th of July, in the year 1776, who on the said day was absent from this State, and every part of the United States, and who still is absent from the same; or who hath at any time during the present war attached himself to, or ailed or abetted the enemies of the United States, etc., shall and are hereby declared to be confiscated to the use of this State; unless," etc.-Laws of North Carolina, Potter, Taylor and Yancey's Digest, Volume 1, page 366.

"By an apparent oversight the Constitution conferred on the Su preme Court the power to decide suits "between a State and citizens

CITIZEN.

This word is derived from city, as burgess or burgher is from borough or burg, but for some reason, unlike burgess, it was in the course of time applied to members of any community or body politic, and became the opposite of foreigner. The rights and the duties of the citizen depended on the degree of civilization attained to by his community and the nature of the government, and there could be no inference from the word itself as to the privileges and immunities of the person to whom it was applied, whether a man, or a woman, or a child.

In the course of time it became in England and France the equivalent of inhabitant, as the lexicographers inform us, and as we may infer from its use in the Bible where it is found in four places, as follows:

1. Luke xv, 15: "And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country

2. Luke xix, 14: "But his citizens hated him, and sent a messenger after him, saying, We will not have this man to reign over us."

3. Acts xxi, 39: "But Paul said, I am a man which am a Jew of Tarsus, a city of Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city."

4. Ephesians ii, 19: "Now, therefore, ye are no more

of another State." Under this provision a suit was instituted against Massachusetts, while John Hancock was Governor, which is thus referred to in Conrad's Lives of the Signers, etc., page 62.

"He (Hancock) did not, however, in favoring a Confederate Re public, vindicate with less scrupulous vigilance the dignity of the individual States. In a suit commenced against Massachusetts, by the Court of the United States, in which he was summoned upon a writ, as Governor, to answer the prosecution, he resisted the process, and maintained inviolate the sovereignty of the Commonwealth. A re currence of a similar collision of authority was, in consequence of this opposition, prevented by an amendment (the Eleventh) of the Federal Constitution."