THE UNITED STATES
Sovereignty, under God, inheres in the organic people, or the people as the republic; and every organic people fixed to the soil, and politically independent of every other people, is a sovereign people, and, in the modern sense, an independent sovereign nation.
Sovereign states may unite in an alliance, league, or confederation, and mutually agree to exercise their sovereign powers or a portion of them in common, through a common organ or agency; but in this agreement they part with none of their sovereignty, and each remains a sovereign state or nation as before.The common organ or agency created by the convention is no state, is no nation, has no inherent sovereignty, and derives all its vitality and force from the persisting sovereignty of the states severally that have united in creating it.The agreement no more affects the sovereignty of the several states entering into it, than does the appointment of an agent affect the rights and powers of the principal.The creature takes nothing from the Creator, exhausts not, lessens not his creative energy, and it is only by his retaining and continuously exerting his creative power that the creature continues to exist.
An independent state or nation may, with or without its consent, lose its sovereignty, but only by being merged in or subjected to another.Independent sovereign states cannot by convention, or mutual agreement, form themselves into a single sovereign state, or nation.The compact, or agreement, is made by sovereign states, and binds by virtue of the sovereign power of each of the contracting parties.To destroy that sovereign power would be to annul the compact, and render void the agreement.The agreement can be valid and binding only on condition that each of the contracting parties retains the sovereignty that rendered it competent to enter into the compact, and states that retain severally their sovereignty do not form a single sovereign state or nation.The states in convention cannot become a new and single sovereign state, unless they lose their several sovereignty, and merge it in the new sovereignty; but this they cannot do by agreement, because the moment the parties to the agreement cease to be sovereign, the agreement, on which alone depends the new sovereign state, is vacated, in like manner as a contract is vacated by the death of the contracting parties.
That a nation may voluntarily cede its sovereignty is frankly admitted, but it can cede it only to something or somebody actually existing, for to cede to nothing and not to cede is one and the same thing.They can part with their own sovereignty by merging themselves in another national existence, but not by merging themselves in nothing; and, till they have parted with their own sovereignty, the new sovereign state does not exist.Aprince can abdicate his power, because by abdicating he simply gives back to the people the trust he had received from them; but a nation cannot, save by merging itself in another.An independent state not merged in another, or that is not subject to another, cannot cease to be a sovereign nation, even if it would.
That no sovereign state can be formed by a agreement or compact has already been shown in the refutation of the theory of the origin of government in convention, or the so-called social compact.Sovereign states are as unable to form themselves into a single sovereign state by mutual compact as are the sovereign individuals imagined by Rousseau.The convention, either of sovereign states or of sovereign individuals, with the best will in the world, can form only a compact or agreement between sovereigns, and an agreement or compact, whatever its terms or conditions, is only an alliance, a league, or a confederation, which no one can pretend is a sovereign state, nation, or republic.
The question, then, whether the United States are a single sovereign state or nation, or a confederacy of independent sovereign states depends on the question whether the American people originally existed as one people or as several independent states.Mr.Jefferson maintains that before the convention of they existed as several independent sovereign states, but that since that convention, or the ratification of the constitution it proposed, they exist as one political people in regard to foreign nations, and several sovereign states in regard to their internal and domestic relations.Mr.Webster concedes that originally the States existed as severally sovereign states, but contends that by ratifying the constitution they have been made one sovereign political people, state, or nation, and that the General government is a supreme national government, though with a reservation in favor of State rights.But both are wrong.
If the several States of the Union were severally sovereign states when they met in the convention, they are so now; and the constitution is only an agreement or compact between sovereigns, and the United States are, as Mr.Calhoun maintained, only a confederation of sovereign states, and not a single state or one political community.
