Sovereignty's Delegations. It is obvious that the rulers in our system must be "substitutes and agents' of the people, as all the fathers, and all the people, in their constitutions and bills of rights declared them to be.

Massachusetts said, in her first constitution, as she has done in all of them since: "All power residing originally in the people, and being derived from them, the several magistrates and officers of government vested with authority, whether legislative, executive, or judicial, are their substitutes and agents, and are at all times accountable to them."

These "substitutes and agents" being and acting in a representative capacity, must, in all their legitimate actions as such, have used "powers" not their own, but belonging to those whose "substitutes and agents" they were, and whose members, citizens, and subjects. they must have been, - that is to say, the commonwealths.

Remembering, then, that the commonwealth, i. e. the people-government, aimed to govern itself in the most methodical and the safest way, let us suppose that she, by virtue of that sovereignty which all the states agreed that each possessed [First Fed. Const., Art. I1.], and with a view to rule through her agents, had caused her powers to be carefully prepared, in written form, by her ablest jurisconsults, and labelled, numbered, and pigeon-holed. The following diagram will present the conception. When the process of constituting government, and endowing it with trusted powers, begins, the repository or treasury is full, and contains 120 formulated "powers."

Now suppose the commonwealth, which thus chooses, to have a treasury of prepared powers, which she may as easily have, as a coffer for her money or a strong-box for her titles, puts in her state government 67 powers; 23 in the agency of herself and sisters for federal government; and retains the rest, prohibiting the use of all powers not thus entrusted, and exacting an oath of every official to USE and NOT TO USE "powers," just as the said organic law requires. Keep it in mind that every official is a member, a subject, and a chosen agent of a commonwealth. And every delegated power is an entity, and a trusted delegation of a commonwealth.

The " powers" numbered 1 to 67 inclusive, are trusted to the state governmental agency, thus really forming the state constitution; and those numbered 68 to 90 inclusive, are trusted to the united states, to be administered by their agency; the rest remain in the repository, as indicated by the little figure in each pigeon-hole from 91 to 120 inclusive. [See illustration on opposite page.]

The following corollaries are so plain that he that runs may read:

1. "Reserved," or "retained" [see Fed. Const. Amendments IX. and X.], necessarily means kept out of the constitution and in the repository. Hence the absurdity of state rights and powers, not delegated, being reserved in the federal pact; and of "state sovereignty being effectually controlled" thereby.

2. As the same mind creates both agencies, and delegates both sets of powers, conflicts of jurisdiction should seldom occur.

3. If a ruler take a prohibited power from a state's repository, it seems like theft or burglary - a crime !

4. Moreover, the use, by rulers, of reserved powers is perjured usurpation.

5. The status of the commonwealth is not changed by the federal pact, and she has all the authority she ever had, the only powers out of her, being temporary delegations or trusts.

6. President Lincoln, misled by Story, Webster, and Jackson, was grossly in error in thinking states like counties, with only such status and rights as are "reserved" to them by the federal constitution.

7. President Jackson was mistaken in thinking that the mere delegation of powers to trustees and agents by a commonwealth, was a transfer of citizenship, and consequently a dissolution of the state; for the citizens are the state, and the state is the citizens.

The investigating and thoughtful reader will find entire support to the above illustration in the following authorities :

Amendment X. of the constitution declares that "all powers not delegated to the united states . . . are reserved," etc. showing, 1st. That no powers but delegated ones are in the instrument. 2d. That the only delegator must be the then sovereign state that was to ratify, and thereby establish. 3d. That there was no delegatee but the united states, and that hence the acting government is an agency. 4th. That all powers and rights not put in the constitution, were kept out -i. e. "retained" and "reserved" as expressed in Amendments

IX. and X.

Next read the unanimous letter of the convention to congress, characterizing the whole federal instrument as "the DELEGATING of an extensive TRUST."

Next read Chancellor Pendleton, supra, 107; III. Ell. Deb. 298, 299, 301 — the last especially; also Madison, Federalist, 39, 40, 46; and Marshall, III. Elliott's Debates, 227, 233.

Next read Governor Bowdoin and Theophilus Parsons, supra, 84. And, finally, look at the statements of the three greatest of New York's sons, in the light of the following, which she has declared and re-declared from 1776 to this day, and which every true son of New York will defend, and ought to defend, to the death: "No

authority can, on any pretence whatsoever, be exercised over the citizens of this state, but such as is, or shall be, derived from, or granted by, the people of this state." [Const. N. Y. Art. I. § 1.]

Read Chancellor Livingston, supra, 93; Alexander Hamilton, Federalist, 85; and II. Elliott's Debates, 353 et seq.; and John Jay, supra, 92.

The sure conclusion of every line of honest and logical thought is, as John Jay expresses it, that the government receives "the part of the people's business entrusted to them, not for themselves, but as the agents and overseers of the people,” ― the true idea being that the individual sovereign states delegated all the powers granted, to themselves, as associate sovereign states, the latter necessarily administering them through an agency or joint commission of their subjects, chosen by themselves respectively.

Sovereignty owns all the "powers" of government; it governs through mind and by will; it delegates its powers in trust, and for its own use, to its chosen subjects and agents.

The powers it does not delegate, it keeps back; and it is a crime for agents and servants to take and use them.