Constitution was a compromise between them both; and ever since its adoption there have been, as might be expected, two different views taken of the results. There has always been a Federalist and an anti-Federalist party: the one, asserting that the Union is a federative compact of independent and sovereign States; the other that it is the fusion of those States into one People, whose will is law when expressed by a majority in Congress. Let us glance at the facts.

When the American colonies revolted from Great Britain, the Government was carried on during the War of Independence by a body called Congress, composed of delegates from the different States which made common cause in the Rebellion. We need not stop to enquire by what process dependent colonies of one Crown converted themselves during the struggle into separate States. It is sufficient to say that in the Declaration of Independence in 1776, it was proclaimed that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES.' Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union were afterwards framed in Congress, which were to be proposed to the legislatures of all the United States to be considered, and, if approved of by them, they are advised to authorise their delegates to ratify the same in the Congress of the United States. Article 2 declares that Each State retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled." Article 13 provides that the Articles shall be inviolably observed by every State, and the Union shall be perpetual.' These Articles were agreed to by the several States acting in their separate capacities, and were finally adopted in Congress in 1781. They continued in force until 1787. But an important change then took place. As is observed by Mr. Curtis in his 'History of the Constitution of the United States,' by the judgment of the old Congress, and of every State in the Union save one- -Rhode Island, the Confederation had been declared defective and inadequate to the exigences of Government and the preservation of the Union. A convention was therefore summoned to amend the Articles, which met at Philadelphia in May, 1787, and was attended by delegates of twelve out of the thirteen States. But these delegates had not the power of binding the States they represented. The resolutions arrived at were to be

That the Constitution is a federative compact was asserted by Kentucky in 1797 and 1798; by Virginia in 1798 and 1829; by Georgia in 1825; by South Carolina in 1827 and 1833; by North Carolina in 1837. See Bernard's Lectures on the present American War,' p. 60, which we have placed at the head of this article.

submitted

submitted to each State separately, to be rejected or ratified as that State should determine according to its own Constitution. Eleven of the States adopted the Constitution, but North Carolina and Rhode Island for some time held out; and it was not until 1790 that the Constitution was ratified by all the States.

Now the question is, Did each of these States renounce for ever its right to withdraw from the partnership or union thus formed? The preamble of the Constitution declares that We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.' But the people here spoken of were not the people taken as one whole, but the people of the separate States agreeing to certain specified conditions of union for the purposes therein mentioned. In the ratifying Convention of the State of Virginia, Patrick Henry objected to the words We, the people,' lest it might be supposed that it meant the inhab itants of all the States as one homogeneous mass. But Madison replied: "The parties to it are to be the people, but not the people as composing one great society, but the people as composing thirteen sovereignties.' And this is proved by the fact that the question of acceptance or rejection was submitted to the people of each State separately, which came to a determination quite independently of the people of any other State; and the Articles are at the end declared to be 'Done in Convention by the unanimous consent of the States present.' Not a word is said in this document that the Union shall be perpetual. By the act of ratification each State surrendered certain rights, but it by no means follows that it surrendered the right to withdraw from the Union whenever it found it more to its advantage to retire than to remain. Such a surrender is nowhere expressed in the Constitution, and by the tenth Article of the Amendments which were afterwards added to quiet the jealous fears of some of the States it is provided that 'The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively or to the people.' In fact, Virginia at the moment of adopting the Constitution passed the following Act in Convention on the 26th of June, 1788:

"We, the delegates of the people of Virginia, duly elected in pursuance of a recommendation from the General Assembly, and now met in Convention, having fully and freely investigated and discussed the proceedings of the Federal Convention, and being prepared as well as the most mature deliberation hath enabled us, to decide thereon, DO, in their name and in behalf of the people of Virginia, declare and make known, that the powers granted under the Constitution, being derived from the people of the United States, may be resumed

by

by them, whenever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression; and that every power not granted thereby remains with them, and at their will. That therefore no right of any denomination can be cancelled, abridged, restrained, or modified by the Congress, by the Senate, or House of Representatives, acting in any capacity, by the President or any department or officer of the United States, except in those instances in which power is given by the Constitution for those purposes; and that among other essential rights, the liberty of conscience and of the press cannot be cancelled, abridged, restrained, or modified by any authority of the United States.'

And Virginia was admitted into the Union with the full knowledge that she had thus expressly reserved to herself the right of withdrawing if the powers granted by her then were perverted to her injury. The plea of the Confederate States is that in the case of all of them the powers granted have been so perverted, and that of this they have the right to be the judges. The truth is, that every clause in the Constitution is compatible with the principle -which might have been embodied at the end as a proviso without involving any contradiction to what had gone before— that all the enactments shall apply to each State only so long as it remains a member of the Union. For instance, Section III., 1, declares that treason against the United States shall consist in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies; and it may be said that as the Confederate States have levied war, they are guilty of treason. But it may well mean that levying war by a State shall be treason against the United States so long as the particular State is a member of the Union. But if it has the right to secede before levying war, and does secede, then it cannot be treason. And so of all the other provisions: they may be all read with the saving clause of a durante bene placito of the separate States.

We cannot understand how Mr. Justice Story came to assert in his 'Commentaries,' vol. i., p. 281, that the Constitution was neither made nor ratified by the States as sovereignties or political communities. The doctrine that the States are parties is a gratuitous assumption.' Still less can we agree with Mr. Motley in his 'Causes of the Civil War in America,' who says that 'the Constitution was not drawn up by the States-it was not promulgated in the name of the States-it was not ratified by the States.' On the contrary, we think the very reverse is the fact. In the case of the Bank of Augusta v. Earle (13 Peters' Reports,' p. 590), it was decided that the rules of international law apply to the States inter se, and the Chief Justice declared that they are sovereign States.' The Constitution was a Federative compact, 'done in Convention by the unanimous consent of the States

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present;'

present; and by the second of the Articles of Confederation it is declared that each State retains its sovereignty.' Our limits prevent us from pursuing the subject farther; but we would suggest an imaginary case as a test for trying the soundness of the view of the Unionists. Suppose that the question of Secession had been submitted to Congress and negatived in the House of Representatives by a majority of one. It is quite possible, under the system of representation that prevails in the United States, that more than one-half of the States might have voted through their members in the minority. Nay, owing to special causes influencing the growth of population, it might be that the members for New York and Pennsylvania in the House of Representatives outnumbered those of all the other States put together; and it might also be that in the Senate, where each State has two votes, all the members voted for Secession except those for New York and Pennsylvania, while in the House of Representatives all the members of the States except those two voted in the same way, but were still in a minority. Would, then, these two States have the legal right to hold the immense majority of dissenting States fast bound for all time to an Union which they detested and abhorred? Is not this contrary to the whole spirit and theory of the American Constitution, the great principle of which is Quod POPULO placuerit, id lex esto? When the people of eight States, containing many millions of inhabitants, unanimously determine to leave the Union, is it not a contradiction of that principle to employ force to compel them to remain? The right to use such force has been expressly repudiated by great American authorities. We will quote only two. Madison declared that the use of force against a State would be more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment, and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts.' Hamilton said, 'To coerce a State would be one of the maddest projects ever devised: no State would ever suffer itself to be used as the instrument of coercing another.' And it does seem the most monstrous of anomalies that a Government founded on the sacred right of insurrection,' should pretend to treat as traitors and rebels six or seven millions of people who withdraw from the Union, and merely ask to be let alone.

But we must hasten on from argument to narrative. South Carolina seceded. She was joined by five other States-Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Florida, and Texas; and at a later period by Arkansas and Mississippi. Mr. Jefferson Davis was elected President of the new conglomeration of republics, which assumed the title of the Confederate States. Fort Sumter, which was garrisoned by Federal troops, was cannonaded and taken by the Confederates,

Confederates, and on the 15th of April a proclamation was issued by President Lincoln, in which he cautiously abstained from characterising the Secessionists as traitors or rebels, but merely spoke of the execution of the laws of the United States being obstructed in seven specified States by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, and he called out the militia of the Union.

When authentic information reached this country that civil war had broken out in America the British Government advised her Majesty to issue on the 13th of May a proclamation enjoining the strictest neutrality on all her subjects between both the contending parties. It stated in the preamble that hostilities had unhappily commenced between the Government of the United States of America and certain States styling themselves the Confederate States of America,' and that the Queen being at peace with the Government of the United States had declared her Royal determination to maintain a strict neutrality in the contest between the contending parties. And all subjects of the Crown were forbidden to do any acts in derogation of their duty, as subjects of a neutral Sovereign in the said contest, or in violation or contravention of the Law of Nations in that behalf.'

The language here used gave great offence to the Federal States. They were very angry that the laws of neutrality should be invoked in favour of those whom they called traitors. And yet no other course could fairly have been taken by our Government. Were we to decide off-hand the knotty question of the sovereign or dependent character of the seceding States, and determine it against them? Were we at once to place them in the category of rebels in revolt against a Power with which we were in amity? And even in that point of view, looking at the extent of the Secession and the dimensions of the conflict, it was impossible for us not to concede the rights of belligerents to both parties. We did so when Greece revolted from Turkey, and when the war was beyond all doubt an insurrectionary war. The Turkish Government remonstrated, but Mr. Canning answered the remonstrance thus :—

The character of belligerency is not so much a principle as a fact. A certain degree of force and consistency acquired by any mass of population engaged in war entitles that population to be treated as a belligerent, and even if their title were questionable, renders it the interest, well understood, of all civilized nations so to treat them. For what is the alternative? A power or community (whichever it may be called) which is at war with another, and which covers the sea with its cruisers, must either be acknowledged as a belligerent or treated as a pirate. But what monstrous consequences

Vol. 111.-No. 221.

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