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cal writings, but tlieir wliole literature. Tliis view has also become a 

 matter of popular faitli witli the members of a great party ; to whom the 

 very name of States rights is offensive — and it is also very largely, if not 

 generally, received among European publicists. On this account, if not 

 for its intrinsic merits, the opinion demands, and will receive a critical 

 examination. 



The opinion in question rests wholly upon the doctrine of absolute sov- 

 ereignty, which has already been considered at length ; and from which, 

 it must be admitted, the conclusion is logically deducible. For if it be 

 true that the sovereignty is unlimited and indivisible, and that it is vested 

 la the federal government, it follows that a federal State is at once a prac- 

 tical impossibility and a logical absurdity. 



For obviously, in general, no Slate would ever be willing to enter into 

 a federal union, if the doctrine be recognized that by doing so it would 

 part altogether with its sovereignty, and subject itself to a foreign domi- 

 nation, and that too, according to the assumed doctrine, a domination 

 absolute and unlimited in its nature. Certainly, had such a doctrine 

 been broached in the constitutional convention which framed the fed- 

 eral constitution, the federal union would never have come into exist- 

 ence ; nor can it now be asserted without violating every principle of 

 good faith. 



But independently of this, the doctrine is logically absurd ; for if it be 

 assumed that the sovereignty is indivisible, it would follow that, in every 

 so-called federal union, it must be vested exclusively, either in the federal 

 State, or in the several constituent States, and that the former must be 

 subordinate to the latter, or the latter to the former. But obviously, upon 

 the former hypothesis, the union would be a mere confederacy, or league 

 of States ; and upon the latter, it would differ in no essential particular 

 from the ordinary or simple State ; for in such case the subordinate States 

 would be nothing more than mere municipalities, such as universally 

 exist in all States. 



It would be an endless task to enumerate all of the disastrous conse- 

 quences that have resulted, not only to political science, but to the prac- 

 tical interests of men, from this purely fictitious notion of sovereignty ; 

 but the subject may be sufficiently illustrated by observing, in connection 

 with the present subject, that from this doctrine — the fruit of a question- 

 begging term — there has resulted, in our own history, nearly a century of 

 bitter conflict, ending in four years of destructive war, and, it is to be 

 feared, in the permanent alienation of the two sections of the country. 

 For, upon the assumption that sovereignty is indivisible, a proposition 

 accepted by both sides, it is clear, as we have observed, that either the 

 federal government is sovereign, and the Slates subordinate, or the States 

 sovereign, and the federal government a mere league or compact ; and, 

 as both propositions are equally untenable, it was impossible, in the long 

 controversy between the North and South, for either party to be con- 

 vinced, and nothing was left but the arbitrament of arms. It may be 



