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CHAPTER VI.

ERRONEOUS VIEWS OF SOVEREIGNTY.

FTER careful reading of the constitution in the light of history, the surprise of reading Story, and the paraphrases of him by Lincoln in 1861, by the Philadelphia convention in 1866, and by the federal supreme court more recently, is only equalled by the pain of seeing their general promulgation, vast following, and ruinous consequences. The confiding masses readily yield assent to misstatements and untruths, if leading men-great or small-constantly string them on a plausible thread of sophistry; while those whose duty it is to find and proclaim the truth, seem to stand in criminal silence or abject discouragement, forgetting the eternally salutary rule of telling the truth, doing justice, and leaving results to God.

It seems absurd to meet by analysis and argument many of the dogmas of consolidation, that really must be examined, and tested by truth, under the very eye of the people, so that misstatements and sophistries, as well as their advocates, can be put under the ban of public reprobation.

The Teaching that the States are mere Counties runs about as follows: "We, the people," as a nation made the constitution. It is "the supreme law of the land," and it "reserves to the states, or to the people," all "powers not delegated to the united states." Hence, the states have no status or rights, except what the nation has "reserved to them," in its supreme law. Judge Story puts it as follows: "There is a limited supreme sovereignty conferred upon the national government by the constitution of the united states." [Bills of Exchange, § 23.] The Philadelphia convention's claim, that "the government" holds the states under allegiance, and the federal supreme court's declaration that the said government" is supreme and above the states," have been heretofore stated. The complement of all this treason is, that the right of deciding finally on all disputed jurisdictions belongs to the said government-this, of course, sealing the subjection of state authority and existence. [Supra, 160.]

Amazing as this may seem, there are thousands of so-called republicans, and so-called democrats, who actually have minds - shave beards talk politics, and assume to lead, who stand upon the false doctrine, and say they are "state-rights men”!

Defences Changed to Means of Attack. The above is really the most pernicious expounding we have, because it bears a semblance to fair exposition, and deludes the people into the idea that their beloved commonwealths are impregnably fortified by the constitution, while in reality that constitution, with its forces, is perverted into an engine of destruction, that will grind them to powder. To use the figure of Fisher Ames, the states are on "the naked beach; and the union is the dyke to fence out the flood." As long as it is admitted that the states are the makers, owners, and controllers of the dyke, it is all right; but the prevailing idea is, that a superior power, with their safety in charge, dyked them in, and can, by construction, increase that dyke to the walls of an impregnable fortress, and can at will, and on the plea of necessity, turn its guns inward upon the states! Offence and defence are relative, and walls can be used for protection or restraint! History is full of instances of citadels becoming prisons to the owners, - useful machines proving to be traps, and "engineers hoist with their own petards." At all events, the people, under this treason, are losing liberty!

"The States are Sovereign, except," etc. Let us now proceed to expose the flagrant error (or mistake) of the "expounders," on this subject. Judge Story, in his Bills of Exchange, § 23, thus sets it forth: "Each state is absolutely sovereign in its political organization and government and dominion, saving and excepting only so far as there is a limited supreme sovereignty conferred upon the national government, by the constitution of the united states."

Webster, in a letter to Baring Brothers & Co., October 16, 1839, said: "Every state is an independent sovereign political community, except in so far as certain powers, which it might otherwise have exercised, have been conferred on a general government, established under a written constitution."

Hon. A. H. Stephens, in his War between the States, vol. i, p. 403, claims that Mr. Webster in the above, and in his argument in the "Bank of Augusta vs. Earle" (13 Peters, 599), fully admits that "the states are sovereign, except in so far as they have delegated specific sovereign powers." It is difficult to see how this so-called admission helps Mr. Stephens's argument, or proves a change in Mr. Webster's views between 1833 and 1839. I fancy Mr. Webster might cogently, if not conclusively, reply as follows: "You state my admission correctly. I made it in 1833 as well as 1839; and on the former occasion I

added, as on the latter I implied, that so far as those 'specific sovereign powers' go, so far state sovereignty is effectually controlled.' By claiming my admission of your statement, you admit mine. We agree, then, that as to the 'specific sovereign powers,' the states are not sovereign, and that hence 'so far state sovereignty is effectually controlled.'" Should not Mr. Stephens, to escape, change his base, and say he did not mean sovereign powers? In truth, there are no such in the constitution—all being subordinate. However, all the writers of the Massachusetts school state the doctrine exactly as Mr. Stephens (inconsistently with his theory) seems to admit the same.

I will present here two more expressions, because of their representative character, and because they show that, as to constitutional views, there is little or no difference between the great parties of the day. George H. Pendleton said in a speech at Bangor, Maine, in 1868: "The men of 1787, . . . committed to the federal government inter-state and international affairs. All the rest they reserved to the states themselves. Within this narrow sphere they made the federal government supreme. All beyond remained to the unimpaired sovereignty of the several states." Further along, he calls our system "a union of states, . . . sovereign, except in so far as they have delegated the exercise of some powers," etc. Is there any difference between Mr. Pendleton's statement and that of Mr. Stephens? And the New York World agrees with its neighbors, the Tribune and the Times, on this point. Its expression is that the states are "not sovereign, except as to their reserved rights." By "reserved rights" it means such as are reserved to the states in the general constitution.

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Do not these expounders all stand upon Lincoln's dogma, that the states of the union are but counties or municipal divisions of a great nation, with no rights at all except what the said constitution reserves to them; or Webster's equivalent, that "the nation" "ordained" "the constitution," "and therein they established a distribution of powers between this, their general government, and their several state governments"? Obviously, the only respect in which Webster and others differ from Lincoln, is that this "expounder" blurts it out that states are counties, while those merely imply — but as certainly mean -the same. Indeed, one of the ablest writers of this school said, in the North British Review for January, 1870, that "the history of state sovereignty ends, and the history of state rights begins, at the federal convention of 1787,"-meaning by state rights those provided for and guarantied in the federal constitution.1 Practically "the school" 1 This writer like many yes, thousands, argued ably on a subject he did not understand- -not knowing the facts. Another of his expressions is the following: "The united states constitution started into life, with a full recognition of state sovereignty in

seem to teach, or believe, that the states have no status or rights whatever, independently of the general constitution; and this is, logically, Webster's view of 1833. It should seem inexpressibly absurd to say, that rights and powers "retained," or "reserved," [see Amendments IX. and X.] were not kept out of the constitution, and in the pre-existent states, that ratified and thereby ordained and established it. "Well-known words must be taken in their well-known sense," says Webster.

As this weak and fallacious dogma is the corner-stone nay, the whole foundation, of the expounding "school," the reader may wish to see it in its most respectable dresses. Let him look, then, at Brownson's American Republic, Draper's Civil War, Cooley's Constitutional Limitations, Greeley's American Conflict, Jameson's Constitutional Convention, Lunt's Origin of the War, Parker's Harvard Lectures of 1865-6, etc.

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Delegating is Irrevocably Granting. With amusing naïveté, Mr. George T. Curtis, while declining, in a recent controversy with Mr. A. H. Stephens, to defend Mr. Webster's views on "political sovereignty," sets them forth as follows: "When the states ratified the constitution, they parted with a part of their sovereignty, and yet remained states. . . . The sovereign powers of a people are divisible, so that a portion can be granted irrevocably, and a part retained." [See his letter in N. Y. World, August 23, 1869. See also the World of June 3, 1868.] The reader will please notice here that the "sovereign powers" to be parted with, or reserved, are treated of as identical with "sovereignty."

The above expression may be taken as the views of Dane, Story, Webster, Curtis, G. H. Pendleton, and, in short, of the whole Massachusetts school. They admit, strange to say, that the states, as sovereign political communities, ratified and established the constitution; but they untruly assert (and in doing so disregard history and reason) that the said states thereby excepted out of their sovereignty a national sovereignty which effectually controls them. The very constitution itself, with its "plain tale, puts them down"! What they incorrectly and sophistically call exceptions out of sovereignty, are expressly characterized, by the constitution itself, as delegated the senate, and of national sovereignty in the house of representatives; and the problem, how to harmonize the two, was the legacy of the federal convention to the American people."

Such legacy was never thought of, much less left. The commonwealths of people were to govern themselves, jointly and severally. Having the right to do so from God, they had sovereignty in them. "It never leaves them." [Wilson.] The senators and representatives of a state were the delegation of that state. All those delegations made the congress of the states, which are the sovereignty as to general affairs - — a joint sovereignty of commonwealths.

powers. And it contains no powers but delegated ones; these, as the phrase solely means, being confided to agents or representatives, for the use and behoof of the delegators or sovereigns.

Arguing from False Words. As the constitution contains, and contemplates, no other "powers" than those "delegated," these must necessarily be used by agents or trustees, i. e. persons who act for the supreme authority that the said powers belong to. So when the Danes, Storys, Websters, Jacksons, Curtises, Parkers, Brownsons, Drapers, Pendletons, Lincolns, Jamesons, Greeleys, Johnsons, and others, talk and write of "ceding," "transferring," "parting with," "relinquishing," "surrendering"-all in the sense of alienating — sovereignty, and say it is done "irrevocably," while they suppress the real constitutional language, which bears a totally different meaning, they only escape the imputation of ignorance by incurring a worse one; and those of them officially sworn to support and preserve the constitution must, if they escape the former alternative, meet the additional charge of perjury.

It is certain that neither the constitution nor the sacred teachings of the fathers contain any warrant for such a doctrine as the states committing suicide, or as their contemplating any other sovereignty to amend the constitution than that which established it, namely, their own. Hence the immortal Washington wrote, "by unanimous order of the convention," that making the constitution was the "delegating" of an "extensive trust" this agreeing strictly with the instrument itself, which expressly and exclusively provides for "powers delegated," and for none whatever that are "granted IRREVOCABLY.” And hundreds of pages from the fathers could be here quoted, to show the falsity of the idea that sovereignty was transferred at all let alone "irrevocably," but not a line in its favor. Nay, more, I will venture to say, that as no man can believe an obvious untruth, the great mind of Webster never believed, and Mr. Curtis does not now believe, that the sovereignty of the people is "divisible, so that a portion can be granted irrevocably, and a part be retained.”

Is not this particular expounding now degraded to the rank of a misstatement, and made to appear so absurd that any mere sophist, upon being convicted of it, would rather say, "I aimed to cheat with it," than "I believed it " ?

The Fathers never held such dogmas, though they sometimes used the word sovereignty in the sense of government, rather than the right of government. But they nowhere say or hint that the states, as political bodies, are "sovereign, except so far" as they are not sovereign, this being precisely the idea of all these modern expounders. In those days of political experiment, the fathers were

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