to them the Constitution of the United States is not only sovereign but supreme, ordained and established over the States by a power superior to the States. We have even met with one American writer who asserts that there were no States before the Union, and that their existence as States depends on their relation to the Union, otherwise they would relapse into the condition of territories. These writers appear to forget that the establishment of the Constitution was expressly made to depend on the acceptance and ratification of it by conventions of at least nine of the thirteen States of which the Union was originally composed. And when it was ratified and accepted, what was the result? That the Constitution was supreme, as far as it goes, that is in all matters expressly reserved to the Federal Government; but that all matters not so expressly reserved remain within the exclusive jurisdiction of the States. Slavery is one of these matters. Nothing is more true than that Congress is absolutely devoid of power to legislate on the subject of slavery, except for the purpose of enforcing its consequences beyond the limits of the State jurisdictions, as has been done by the Fugitive Slave Law. It is equally certain that the States which passed Personal Liberty Laws at variance with the Fugitive Slave Law, and which resisted, on the higher grounds of morality and independence, the Marshals of the United States in their attempts to enforce that detestable enactment, nullified a law of the Union, and thereby set at nought the Constitution of the United States. In point of fact, down to 1860, and as long as the executive power of the Union was in the hands of Southern men, friendly to slavery and slave institutions, the resistance to the Federal authority proceeded from the very parties in the North who are now most eager to enforce it. For fifteen years Wendell Phillips and the Abolitionists have been glorying in the name of Disunionists, and denouncing the Constitution of the United States as a compact with Hell. The Constitution itself was publicly burnt by Garrison one 4th July, to express his abhorrence of the connexion established by that instrument between the free North and the slave-holding South. Now, on the contrary, in what Mrs. Beecher Stowe calls the sublime uprising of the North,' for the purpose, as she also assures us, of carrying emancipation by war, the Constitution is described by the North as the vital principle of the nation, while it is repudiated by the South as an engine of foreign tyranny and domestic oppression. The Republican party now in power defends the high Federalist doctrines of the Unionists, and has in fact taken up arms to enforce them. But the Democratic party, which had till lately possessed a ma

jority in the country, is equally true to the fundamental principles of Jefferson in its declaration at Cincinnati in 1856 and 1860, that the Federal Government is one of limited power, ' derived solely from the Constitution, and the grants of power 'therein made ought to be strictly construed by all the departments and agents of the Government, and that it is inexpedient and dangerous to exercise doubtful constitutional 'powers.' The language here applied to the Constitution of the United States is in no degree stronger than that to be found in the xxxixth number of the Federalist,' in which the relations of the National and Federal character of the Union were skilfully and accurately drawn by Mr. Madison. He lays it down that the assent and ratification of the people of 'America was given to the Constitution, not as individuals 'composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong. The Constitution was so adopted, not by the majority of the people ' of the United States binding the minority, but by the volun'tary act of each State considered as a sovereign body, inde'pendent of all others.' And again : And again: The idea of a national 'government involves in it, not only an authority over the individual citizens, but an indefinite supremacy over all per'sons and things, so far as they are objects of lawful govern'ment. Among a people consolidated into one nation this su'premacy is completely vested in the national legislature. In this relation, then, the proposed government cannot be deemed ' a national one, since its jurisdiction extends to certain enume'rated objects only, and leaves to the States a residuary and 'inviolable sovereignty over all other objects.' We are at a loss to conceive how it can be asserted, in direct contradiction to the express dicta of the authors of the Constitution, that the Union has, or ever has had, the power of a national government supreme over the whole people of the United States. That doctrine, in its present violent and exaggerated form, is new in American constitutional law; and unhappily it no longer falls under the jurisdiction of that tribunal which was regarded by the authors of the Federalist' as clearly essential to prevent an appeal to the sword and a dissolution of the 'compact.'

The controversy between State sovereignties and Federal sovereignty is interminable, for it is inherent in the nature of all governments the members or subjects of which are in some measure sovereign. Absolute sovereignty, in the true and correct meaning of the term, does not exist in a Federal State, unless it be represented by the concurrence of all the members

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of the State, both collectively and severally in the absence of that concurrence the highest power is divided between two sovereignties, the one limited by the other, and neither supreme. In these things, as in many others, it is emphatically true that the letter killeth, the spirit giveth life. In this very defence of the principles of the Constitution, the Americans are every day violating it. Certainly the framers of that instrument never dreamed that a day would come when freedom of speech and of the press would be effectually abridged, when the intercourse of the post-office would no longer be secure, and a vigilant police control the movements of free citizens. These things may be necessary in civil war, but they are not constitutional. They demonstrate that the Executive has been obliged by the force of circumstances largely to encroach on the legal rights of the people, and that in the very act of defending the Constitution, it has been trampled under foot.

Suppose this unhappy contest were suddenly to be brought to a termination, either by a signal defeat of the Southern army, or by a total collapse of the resources of the South, is any one sanguine enough to suppose that the constitution of the United States would, or could, stand where it did before the outbreak? Would the victorious party be content to take no advantage of their success, and to exact no securities for the future? Would the generals and statesmen who now lead hostile armies, and sit in hostile councils, unite again in the administrative bodies and legislative assemblies of one Commonwealth? Would the troops now in arms at their respective outposts, blend in one army for the defence of the same rights and the maintenance of the same law? These things are im

* Between the 8th and the 24th August no less than twenty of the Northern newspapers had their offices destroyed by mobs, or were suppressed by direct measures of the Federal Government; their offence apparently being that they continued to hold during the war the language which everybody had held previous to the war, namely, to deprecate the continuance of a ruinous and hateful contest. One of the most alarming features of the present crisis is that in these and many similar instances, such as the introduction of the passport system, the refusal to obey writs of habeas corpus, arrests, domiciliary visits, seizures of papers, &c., the authority of the law is virtually suspended. Martial law has not been proclaimed except in Missouri; but in point of fact the people of the United States, in the North as well as the South, seem to be living under it, and where it is not martial law it is mob law. It is scarcely less dangerous to express in the North opinions in favour of secession, or even of a peaceful compromise, than it would be in the South to advocate the abolition of slavery.

possible. It may be very well to call these seceding citizens rebels, but President Lincoln knows that the day peace is signed, they would resume all the rights they ever enjoyed. It would be impossible to proscribe or punish whole States and millions of men. In the heat of the contest the Federal Government has not ventured to inflict the penalties of treason on the prisoners who have fallen into its hands. Even after defeat, they must be treated with, and the terms on which it may be expedient or necessary to treat with them would become the terms of a new confederation-a confederation, be it observed, no longer framed in a spirit of concord, and freely ratified by equal States, but framed in a spirit of jealousy, if not of revenge, and imposed by a conquering on a conquered party.

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Its chances of duration would therefore be far inferior to those of the confederation which has already been so severely shaken. In truth, the immediate cause of this split in the Union, far from being anything new, is one of the oldest and most familiar results in the whole range of political experience. It is one of those divisions which have occurred in all times and countries, where the chief executive power of the state has been made elective. The founders of the Commonwealth imagined that they had found a remedy for this evil, by vesting the election in a college or jury of electors. But this part of their plan was a sheer delusion; for it was soon discovered that the true contest lay not in the choice of a President by the electors, but in the nomination of the electors by the people. As long as the presidential election was regarded as a question of persons, the danger was not insurmountable. long as the traditions of the government remained the same, no harm was done. But the election of Mr. Lincoln was a radical change in the policy of the Union. It involved the total subversion of the party which had long been in power. It was the absolute triumph of the North- the absolute defeat of the South. All compromise was at an end. This being the case, it was declared that though he might be the Presi dent of the North, the South refused to be governed for four years by a man whom it had with one voice rejected. The elective system breaks down the moment the minority feels itself strong enough to refuse to be bound by the adverse will of the majority; and the result we now witness is precisely that which has marked the course of elective sovereignty all over the world. A Constitution which fails to determine who is to be the prime ruler of the nation without an appeal to arms, fails altogether; for it fails to uphold legal authority, and

it fails to secure to the nation the first blessings of order, liberty, and peace.

These considerations, and many more of equal weight, have led the statesmen of Europe to the conviction that if there be in America a party who think they are contending for the maintenance of the Constitution of 1789, these men are selfdeluded. That instrument which they conceive to have been the palladium of their greatness had only a legal existence. Like a treaty of peace, its provisions were binding as long as there was a general disposition to accept them, or power competent to enforce them. The Constitution vested in the supreme judicial power the duty of interpreting its provisions and even of declaring Acts of Congress to be unconstitutional; but though the Supreme Court could interpret, it could not enforce its decrees. Its marshals are powerless against states and armies. Mr. Buchanan held, and stated in his farewell message, that the Constitution had not delegated to Congress the power to coerce a State into submission which is attempting to withdraw, or has withdrawn, from the confederacy; and he quoted in support of this opinion a far higher authority than his own, for on the 31st May, 1787, a clause, 'authorising 'an exertion of the force of the whole against a delinquent 'State' came up for consideration, but upon the opposition of Mr. Madison this clause was postponed, and never revived. Soon afterwards Mr. Madison said, Any Government of the United States, formed on the supposed practicability of using force against the unconstitutional proceedings of the States, would prove as visionary and fallacious as the Government of the Old Congress.'

The American writers on this subject have therefore, in our opinion, committed a gross error in the attempt to transfer to their Constitution the high doctrines of allegiance, which have in former times, more than at present, been asserted on behalf of the monarchies of Europe. In our time those doctrines have lost much of their authority in the Old World. We have seen constant and frequent secessions,' even where unions had been guaranteed by all the military strength and political authority of Europe; and we certainly were not prepared to meet the old code of treason and rebellion in full vigour on the other side the Atlantic. In like manner, we observe with astonishment, that writers of judgment and knowledge like Mr. Everett, have fallen into the mistake of comparing an insurrection in Ireland, or Scotland, to the secession of the Southern States. Before the unions of those crowns to the crown of England, their condition did present some analogy to