her own; and no such act is shewn in the present case. On the contrary, although that right was resisted for a time by some of the American colonies, it was finally yielded, as our author himself informs us, by all those of New England, and I am not informed that it was denied by any other. Indeed, the supremacy of parliament, in most matters of legislation which concerned the colonies, was generally-nay, universally-admitted, up to the very eve of the revolution. It is true, the right to tax the colonies was denied, but this was upon a wholly different principle. It was the right of every British subject to be exempt from taxation, except by his own consent; and as the colonies were not, and from their local situation could not be, represented in parliament, the right of that body to tax them was denied, upon a fundamental principle of English liberty. But the right of the mother country to regulate commerce among her colonies is of a different character, and it never was denied to England by her American colonies, so long as a hope of reconciliation remained to them. In like manner, the facts relied on by Mr. Jay, that 'all the people of this country were then subjects of the king of Great Britain, and owed allegiance to him,' and that 'all the civil authority then existing or exercised here flowed from the head of the British empire,' are but the usual incidents of colonial dependence, and are by no means peculiar to the case he was considering. They do, indeed, prove a unity between all the colonies and the mother coun try, and shew that these, taken altogether, are, in the strictest sense of the terms, 'one people;' but I am at a loss to perceive how they prove, that two or more parts or subdivisions of the same empire necessarily constitute ' one people.' If this be true of the colonies, it is equally true of any two or more geographical sections of England proper; for every one of the reasons assigned applies as strictly to this case as to that of the colonies. Any two countries may be 'one people,' or 'a nation de facto,' if they can be made so by the facts that their people are ‘subjects of the king of Great Britain, and owe allegiance to him,' and that all the civil authority exercised therein flows from the head of the British empire.'

"It is to be regretted that the author has not given us his own views of the sources from which these several

rights and powers were derived. If they authorize his conclusion, that there was any sort of unity among the people of the several colonies, distinct from their common connexion with the mother country, as parts of the same empire, it must be because they flowed from something in the relation betwixt the colonies themselves, and not from their common relation to the parent country. Nor is it enough that these rights and powers should, in point of fact, flow from the relation of the colonies to one another; they must be the necessary result of their political condition. Even admitting, then, that they would, under any state of circumstances, warrant the conclusion which the author has drawn from them, it does not follow that the conclusion is correctly drawn in the present instance. For aught that he has said to the contrary, the right of every colonist to inhabit and inherit lands in every colony, whether his own or not, may have been derived from positive compact and agreement among the colonies themselves; and this presupposes that they were distinct and separate, and not one people.' And so far as the rights of the mother country are concerned, they existed in the same form, and to the same extent, over every other colony of the empire. Did this make the people of all the colonies 'one people? If so, the people of Jamaica, the British East Indian possessions and the Canadas are, for the very same reason, 'one people' at this day. If a common allegiance to a common sovereign, and a common subordination to his jurisdiction, are sufficient to make the people of different countries' one people,' it is not perceived (with all deference to Mr. chief justice Jay) why the people of Gaul, Britain and Spain might not have been one people,' while Roman provinces, notwithstanding 'the patriots' did not say so. The general relation between colonies and the parent country is as well settled and understood as any other, and it is precisely the same in all cases, except where special consent and agreement may vary it. Whoever, therefore, would prove that any peculiar unity existed between the American colonies, is bound to shew something in their charters, or some peculiarity in their condition, to exempt them from the general rule. Judge Story was too well acquainted with the state of the facts to make any such attempt in the present case. The congress of the nine co

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lonies, which assembled at New York, in October 1765, declare, that the colonists' owe the same allegiance to the crown of Great Britain, that is owing from his subjects born within the realm, and all due subordination to that august body, the parliament of Great Britain.'-'That the colonists are entitled to all the inherent rights and liberties of his [the king's] natural born subjects within the kingdom of Great Britain.' We have here an all-sufficient foundation of the right of the crown to regulate commerce among the colonies, and of the right of the colonists to inhabit and to inherit land in each and all the colonies. They were nothing more than the ordinary rights and liabilities of every British subject; and, indeed, the most that the colonies ever contended for was an equality, in these respects, with the subjects born in England. The facts, therefore, upon which our author's reasoning is founded, spring from a different source from that from which he is compelled to derive them, in order to support his conclusion.

"So far as the author's argument is concerned, the subject might be permitted to rest here. Indeed, one would be tempted to think, from the apparent carelessness and indifference with which the argument is urged, that he himself did not attach to it any particular importance. It is not his habit to dismiss grave matters with such slight examination, nor does it consist with the character of his mind to be satisfied with reasoning which bears even a doubtful relation to his subject. Neither can it be supposed that he would be willing to rely on the simple ipse dixit of chief justice Jay, unsupported by argument, unsustained by any references to historical facts, and wholly indefinite in extent and bearing. Why, then, was this passage written? As mere history, apart from its bearing on the constitution of the United States, it is of no value in this work, and is wholly out of place. All doubts upon this point will be removed in the progress of this examination. The great effort of the author, throughout his entire work, is to establish the doctrine, that the constitution of the United States is a government of the people of the United States,' as contradistinguished from the people of the several states; or, in other words, that it is a consolidated, and not a federative system. His construction of every con

tested federal power depends mainly upon this distinction; and hence the necessity of establishing a oneness among the people of the several colonies, prior to the revolution. It may well excite our surprise, that a proposition so necessary to the principal design of the work, should be stated with so little precision, and dismissed with so little effort to sustain it by argument. One so well informed as judge Story, of the state of political opinions in this country, could scarcely have supposed that it would be received as an admitted truth, requiring no examination. It enters too deeply into grave questions of constitutional law, to be so summarily disposed of. We should not be content, therefore, with simply proving that the author has assigned no sufficient reason for the opinion he has advanced. The subject demands of us the still farther proof that his opinion is, in fact, erroneous, and that it cannot be sustained by any other reasons.

"In order to constitute 'one people,' in a political sense, of the inhabitants of different countries, something more is necessary than that they should owe a common allegiance to a common sovereign. Neither is it sufficient that, in some particulars, they are bound alike, by laws which that sovereign may prescribe: nor does the question depend on geographical relations. The inhabitants of different islands may be one people, and those of contiguous countries may be, as we know they in fact are, different nations. By the term 'people,' as here used, we do not mean merely a number of persons. We mean by it a political corporation, the members of which owe a common allegiance to a common sovereignty, and do not owe any allegiance which is not common; who are bound by no laws except such as that sovereignty may prescribe; who owe to one another reciprocal obligations; who possess common political interests; who are liable to common political duties; and who can exert no sovereign power except in the name of the whole. Any thing short of this, would be an imperfect definition of that political corporation which we call a people.'

"Tested by this definition, the people of the American colonies were, in no conceivable sense, one people.' They owed, indeed, allegiance to the British king, as the head of each colonial government, and as forming a part

thereof; but this allegiance was exclusive, in each colony, to its own government, and, consequently, to the king as the head thereof, and was not a common allegiance of the people of all the colonies to a common head. (7) These colonial governments were clothed with the sovereign power of making laws, and of enforcing obedience to them from their own people. The people of one colony owed no allegiance to the government of any other colony, and were not bound by its laws. The colonies had no common legislature, no common treasury, no common military power, no common judicatory. The people of one colony were not liable to pay taxes to any other colony, nor to bear arms in its defence; they had no right to vote in its elections; no influence or control in its municipal government, no interest in its municipal institutions. There was no prescribed form by which the colonies could act together, for any purpose whatever; they were not known as one people' in any one function of government. Although they were all, alike, dependencies of the British crown, yet, even in the action of the parent country, in regard to them, they were recognized as separate and distinct. They were established at different times, and each under an authority from the crown, which applied to itself alone. They were not even alike in their organization. Some were provincial, some proprietary, and some charter governments. Each derived its form of government from the particular instrument establishing it, or from assumptions of power acquiesced in by the crown, without any connexion with, or relation to, any other. They stood upon the same footing, in every respect, with other British colonies, with nothing to distinguish their relation either to the parent country or to one another. The charter of any one of them might have been destroyed, without in any manner affecting the rest. In point of fact, the charters of nearly all of them were altered, from time to time, and the whole character of their governments changed. These changes were made in each colony for itself alone, some

(1) The resolutions of Virginia, in 1769, shew that she considered herself merely as an appendage of the British crown; that her legislature was alone authorized to tax her; and that she had a right to call on her king, who was also king of England, to protect her against the usurpations of the British parliament.