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actually "provide for the common defence," and "promote the general welfare." The wills of the states necessarily survived, looked back on the system, pronounced it good, and must have intended to amend, or in the last resort abolish, if it did not continue good, for they provided for the power to amend (in Article V.), which includes in its nature the power to abolish. If the states are compelled to keep that which their respective judgments originally approved, and their wills adopted, but which the said judgments afterward find to be bad and destructive, surely "tranquillity," "justice," "defence," "welfare," and "liberty" cannot be thereby "provided for" and "promoted." [See the federal preamble.]

Both political philosophy and the constitution, then, show Massachusetts (or South Carolina) to be a complete state with a sovereign will. Her right and duty of self-preservation are absolute. If endangered, she is bound to defend herself — "peaceably if she can, forcibly if she must."1

This is plain common-sense; for these wills, having voluntarily orordained, could, if not enslaved, respectively undo what they had respectively done. It was never denied that the union was voluntary when made. When, and by what act, did it become involuntary? When the indissoluble union begins, voluntariness and freedom end, and the states are back precisely to the provincial condition they held under Britain. So that, as to South Carolina, if the powers she put in the constitution, and the forts she qualifiedly granted the sites of, and permitted to be built, were used, or attempted to be used, for her harm and destruction, instead of her "defence and safety," she was in duty bound to investigate, judge, and will. The gun fired at Fort Sumter spoke her decree annulling the federal tenure! If she was sincere in believing her being and sovereignty endangered, it was rightful and righteous!

The Expounders Virtually admit this Theory.-Webster and the federal supreme court have often unwillingly, or perhaps unwittingly, admitted the statehood and sovereignty of the American commonwealths, and their consequent absolute right of self-preservation, and especially in "The Bank of Augusta vs. Earle." [13 Peters, 519.] In this case they said the federal compact only included and settled

1 In 1868, at the Virginia White Sulphur Springs, W. S. Rosecrans, A. H. Stephens, General Lee, and others, issued a political document to influence the then pending election. Among other things it declared that the South had given up forever the right of secession. In other words, they had alienated or parted with what God had incorporated in their natures, and made inalienable. It is evident that the declarants did not understand the source and nature of the right. However, political declarations in America are intended more to attract votes than to promulgate truth. Is it not so wherever candidates are allowed to solicit them?

the questions it provided for, leaving all others outside, to be settled. under and according to the jus gentium, i. e. by diplomacy or force. This admits sovereign states, and that every question involving the integrity or sovereignty of a state must be for her decision. If not, she is a slave, and not a sovereign; and she violates her nature if she declines the decision, or the enforcement of it.

The sovereignty of the united states then, to use the expressions of James Wilson, who stated the views of the fathers on this subject, "resides in the people" as they are organized, i. e. it dwells in commonwealths; "it never leaves them;" it is "in the people before they make a constitution, and remains in them after it is made." [II. Ell. Deb. 432, 456.] It is well to repeat here Mr. Webster's admission that sovereignty with us has never left the people, and that sovereignty cannot be in the government: also Curtis's admission, that our governments are only "agents and depositaries" of authority.

The Guaranty of all to Preserve Each. — The following clause (Art. IV. § 4) was especially designed to secure the absolute integrity and sovereignty of each commonwealth : "The united states shall guaranty to every state in this union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion, and on application of the legislature, or of the executive (when the legislature cannot be convened) against domestic violence." This clause can but mean that all the states guaranty each to be and to remain a republic; in other words, that she (i. e. "the people ") shall govern entirely and absolutely. "A republican form of government" means a republic; and there can be no republic unless the people govern themselves in everything.1

The above-quoted clause means precisely what the second article of the first federal constitution meant, to wit: that "each state retains [and its associates are to guaranty] its sovereignty, freedom and independence." It means that the state is to govern herself as to her home affairs, and that the states are to govern themselves as to their general affairs; and finally, it means that state wills are always to be supreme, and are to be bound in union only by virtue of voluntary engagements.

The reader cannot fail to notice that it is everywhere protection and defence, and not attack and injury, of states, that the federal polity is intended for. I have heretofore shown how the constitution provides for "defence" of the states, -to use the word of the preamble. We

1 The liberticides of America pretend that keeping up the "form" satisfies the obligation. So they rule states from Washington, while keeping up simulacra for republican governments. All will admit that a monarchical form means a monarchy; an aristocratic form an aristocracy; and "a republican form a republic."

have heretofore seen that the cessions of occupancy and use of the sites of forts, etc., made by the states and accepted by "the united states," are expressly for "the defence and safety of the state;" the first part of the clause under consideration "guarantees" the continued existence and absolute self-government of every state; and finally, the latter part of the clause requires "the united states" to "protect" each of the states "against invasion" and "against domestic violence." In short, the states, in making the constitution, and giving powers to their administering subjects, could but intend self-preservation and self-defence.

Expressio unius est exclusio alterius. -The expression of a case or cases where the agency can enter the state with force and arms, is the exclusion of all other cases. The government, which lives, moves and has its being through state will, and is subordinate, can only enter states vi et armis, for the purposes of "defence" and "protection" they have specified: 1. To protect the states "against invasion" or external violence; 2. to protect them "against domestic violence." This latter is only to be when the state legislature, or (if it cannot be convened) the state executive, calls for it.

It is certain, then, that "protection" and preservation of the state, are held in view throughout the federal polity, and the history of it. Every act of the government must be in favor of, and not against the state. This all the fathers taught, and all the states intended.

“The Government" has no Right to Hold the States. The pretence that there is in the general government a superintending and constraining power over states, is false and unphilosophical, for sovereignty "resides in," and "never leaves," "the people;" and hence the government constituted by "the people" must be subordinate to them, whether they acted as states or as a nation. The audacious utterance of the Philadelphia convention of 1866, that "the government" has "absolute supremacy" over allegiant states, is alike false, unconstitutional, and treasonable.

To make out its case, "the government" first assumes that the union is indissoluble; and secondly, that it has the right and duty of preserving the said union; that is to say, the states by their wills voluntarily united themselves, and in the same act created an agency to keep them together despite their wills, by whipping them with their own men and means. Virtually "the government" says to "the people," whose creation and instrument it is: "You, as bodies, came freely and voluntarily together; but you shall henceforth be pinned together by bayonets, and shall use your minds and wills no longer, except 'so far as' 'the supreme law' which gives 'the government' ' absolute supremacy' over you, permits."

Any semblance of governmental control of the political people is unprincipled, and the exercise of such control is usurpation and flagrant wrong; for the American polity is founded solely on man's right of, and capacity for, self-government. This necessarily implies self-organization and self-rule of commonwealths, and the right to fail in and abandon, as well as that to succeed in and continue, any given political or other experiment.1 Such enforced supremacy of "the government" reduces the states to counties, nullifies their revolution of 1776, and remands them to colonial, or rather provincial, vassalage.

1 Washington, Franklin, and all the fathers considered and called the present federal system an experiment. Indeed, all human systems must be such, owing to the finite wisdom which makes them. This is why Massachusetts and other states declare, what indeed common-sense teaches: that "that the people alone have an incontestible inalienable and indefeasible right to institute government, and to reform, alter or totally change the same when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it."

BY

CHAPTER XII.

THE TRUE CHARACTER OF THE GOVERNMENT.

Y the action of their wills, the states give existence, life, and power to the visible government, and at the same time, and in the same act, they federalize themselves. No possible political will could delegate or grant, but that of the state, while the only possible grantee is the federation of states. "The government"— so called cannot have any capacity to be a grantee, for decisive reasons which will now be presented.

"The government of the united states," like that of any state, is tripartite, i. e. three institutions, co-existing, but independently acting. It was not constituted a unit, so as to be a moral person, with a mind and a will. The "unity of government" which Washington spoke of, simply meant one system for all the states-without reference to its character which should effectually provide for the

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fence" and "general welfare" of "the people" as organized.

To get a definite conception of the system, let us see how distinct and exclusive these institutions appear in the federal pact. Article I. declares that "all legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a congress of the united states;" Article II. declares that "the executive power shall be vested in a president of the united states;" and Article III. declares "the judicial power of the united states shall be vested in one supreme court" and subordinate courts.

Keeping these articles under view, the following diagram enables the mind to see the individuality of these created entities to be as distinct, and their action as independent, as if they were separated by adamantine walls, and each harnessed in steel.

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