compact should be disturbed, or that plighted faith in the slightest degree violated. But the subject assumes an entirely different character when a new state proposes to be admitted. With her there is no compact and no faith plighted." [The italics are mine.]

And he argues throughout on the assumption that a new state comes into the union by compact with the states already associated these being represented by their congress. Nay, more, he declares that the states in the union have, individually, "the exclusive possession of sovereignty." In reference to the formation of Kentucky and Maine, from the territories respectively of Virginia and Massachusetts, he says: 66 No person has ever doubted that any state, in acceding to a division of its territory, and the formation of a new state, has always possessed the right to impose its own terms and conditions, as a part of the grant. The ground of this right is the exclusive possession of sovereignty," etc.

I will close the evidence of Mr. Webster's real views with three remarkable extracts, which need no comment, and are absolutely inconsistent with any subordination of the commonwealths or republics of America, to their agencies of government, or to that formless myth called the nation.

"No such thing is known in North America" as "the sovereignty of government." [Speech of 1833.]

"Until the constitution was ratified by nine states, it was but a proposal, the mere draft of an instrument. It was like a deed drawn, but not executed; . . . it was inoperative paper; . . . it had no authority; it spoke no language." [Ibid.]

"It never entered into their conceptions that they were to consolidate themselves into one government, that they were to cease to be Maryland and Virginia, Massachusetts and Carolina. .. . The objects of the common defence and the general welfare, and afterwards the objects connected with commerce and revenue, .. were all they adopted as principles and objects of union and association, nothing beyond that. . . . Gentlemen, I hope for one never to see the original idea departed from." [Speech at Annapolis, 1852.]

There can be no doubt that these were and remained Mr. Webster's real ideas; for Massachusetts had prohibited him, and all her officers and citizens forever, from having any opinion on the subject. She then declared in her constitution (as she does now) that "the people of this commonwealth have the sole and exclusive right of governing themselves as a free, sovereign, and independent state, and do and forever hereafter shall, exercise and enjoy every power, etc., which is not... by them expressly delegated to the united states."

"By them delegated!" Why, here is absolute proof that Massa

chusetts is sovereign over the federal government! Mr. Webster's "opinion about the sovereignty of a state," indeed! Why, he could not have been her servant, if he had dared to opine on a question his sovereign had settled. "The Old Bay State was ever the stickler, par excellence, for absolute sovereignty of a state, and she was right. [See also constitutions of N. H., N. Y., and others.]

Now, in view of Mr. Webster's early and elaborate statements, and the consistent ones just quoted, made near the close of his life, and especially the Albany, Capon Springs, and Annapolis speeches, and the Cooper and Hickey letters, have I not shown, as I undertook to do, that Mr. Calhoun's resolution expressed the most studied and elaborate views of Mr. Webster himself? Might not the latter, consistently, truthfully, and properly, have submitted the said resolution to the United States Senate? Here it is:

"Resolved, that the people of the several states, composing these United States, are united as parties to a constitutional compact, to which the people of each state acceded as a separate sovereign community, each binding itself by its own particular ratification; and that the union, of which the said compact is a bond, is a union between the states ratifying the same."

Mr. Webster, in his speech of 1833, said: "Where sovereign communities are parties, there is no essential difference between a compact, a confederation, and a league. They all equally rest on the plighted faith of the sovereign party. A league or confederacy is but a subsisting or continuing treaty."

In giving this, and many other definitions as a publicist, statesman, or lawyer, Mr. Webster seems to forget that to sustain our position, we simply fill up his definitions with facts, just as lawyers prove the ingredients of murder, larceny, or other crime. In this instance, all the facts of history, as well as his own admissions, decisively prove the "league or confederacy."

Why was He on both Sides? Webster's views last exhibited, were popular in Massachusetts previous to 1830. They suited her interests. Indeed, during the era of good feeling, viz., in 1825, Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Everett agreed that "the constitution of the united states was a compact between independent nations ;" and, as we have seen, Mr. Webster and Mr. Calhoun were in "sweet communion joined." But in 1830-33 Massachusetts had vast interests staked in tariffs, navigation laws, fishing bounties, etc., which could be promoted by judicial opinions, commentaries and expoundings in favor of a nation. Naturally she then desired an advocate to controvert the following of Mr. Webster's own propositions, viz., that "the only parties to the constitution contemplated by it originally, were the

thirteen confederated states;" that the provisions of the said constitution "rest on compact and plighted faith;" and that the state in the union has "the exclusive possession of sovereignty." Did not Webster accept employment, and act as an advocate ?

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It almost seems as if there were in American history two Daniel Websters one a statesman and jurisconsult, and the other a politician and advocate. One seems genuine, and the other counterfeit. The former, only, dwelt in, and breathed the pure atmosphere of truth. Perhaps it were better to say that the early stream of this great life descended, and, like an underground river, ran for years beneath the material interests and selfishness of his commonwealth, but finally flashed out and sparkled on to the ocean, reflecting the truth-beams of Heaven!

THE

CHAPTER IX.

LINCOLN'S PLAIN ENGLISH.

HE foregoing interpretations produced irrepressible conflict, Lincoln and war! The doctrines of Dane, Story, Webster and others (taught, as I have shown, by the original enemies of the constitution, to prevent its adoption) produced, as George T. Curtis correctly asserts, "that body of public convictions" which moved and enabled one part of the states, by the use of the governmental agency of all, to subjugate the rest. Conceding here, once for all, that under the jus gentium, the former had as good a right to coerce, as the latter to secede, I pass on.

One of these "public convictions was that the constitution was a law upon states, and not a compact between or among them; and it was this which made peace impossible in 1861. The successful party naturally said: "The constitution is the supreme law, and we are elected by the nation, to be the government; and to enforce the said law with the army and navy if necessary; and if states exercise judgment and will contrary to ours, in any affair, we must treat them as counties in rebellion. Power is given to us, by the nation, to rule them, and we are the final judges of the extent of that power.

"Subjugate" the states, I say, for all are subjugated, though of course the tame and obedient ones are not yet dealt with. By 1866, such progress had been made toward depotism, that the conservative convention, held at Philadelphia, declared "the government" to have "absolute supremacy!" and the states to be in "allegiance" to it!! The personnel of "the government" has become a corporate despot, wielding the stupendous enginery of imperialism over an empire of provinces. President Grant, standing near the close of his administration, and viewing the result of the war, of reconstruction, and of his own agency in shackling and coercing states, exclaimed, "What we have done in Louisiana and Arkansas, we will do in New York, Illinois, and Missouri, when necessary." Meanwhile, here, there, and yonder, all over the land, imperial acts were done, and significant emblems of central sovereignty set up each with all the meaning of the cap of Gesler in the market-place of Altorf!

The truth is, the change in the government, from agency to sovereignty, is come, and is now hardening down upon us, which, as Burke says, has heretofore "perverted from their purposes" "all the free magistracies of the world."

Let us now cursorily review the new doctrine, and see how it appears dressed up in

President Lincoln's Plain English. — It is much to be regretted that the expounders did not, in the great era of perversion-1830-33 -link on to their logical chain those candid and startling, but legitimate conclusions, afterwards stated with pen and sword by the late Abraham Lincoln as President; for such unfounded notions would then have been derided, and the utterers steadily prevented from exercising public functions.

We are sometimes startled, as well as amused, to see how poetry and oratory become nonsense and absurdity upon being put in plain English. Many a Lincoln has proved his own honesty and simplicity, while exhibiting his teacher as a mere sophist, or falsifier.

In 1861, after being elected to the presidency, Mr. Lincoln in a speech in Indiana, and in his inaugural address, said and assumed that the states are but counties, without sovereignty, and that the government is sovereign, and can rightfully coerce the states to obey it. In his extra-session message of the same year, he said: "The states have their status in the union, and they have no other legal status. . . . The union is older than any of the states, and, in fact, it created them as states. Originally, some dependent colonies made the union, and, in turn, the union threw off their old dependence for them, and made them states such as they are." "Our states have neither more nor less power than that reserved to them in the union, by the constitution, no one of them ever having been a state out of the union."

The deluded man had read Mansfield's Political Grammar, Webster's two great speeches, Jackson's Proclamation, and — to graduate on Story's Commentaries, taking it for granted that these authors were correct; and not knowing that their peculiar expositions were fallacious, and were, moreover, identical with the charges originally made against the constitution, by its foes; and that it was only because the said charges were most signally refuted by the advocates of the constitution, that the American commonwealths adopted it.

Justice to Mr. Lincoln.

It seems proper to say that after his nomination, he had no time—even if he had been competent — to investigate for himself, and deduce correct conclusions. Moreover, the dogmas and arguments of Dane, Story, Webster, and Jackson were the platform, nay, the very soul, of his party. Confiding in the honor