heir sovereignties when they organized themselves as Independent communities. Their autonomous condition did not date from the promulgation of the treaty of peace with the mother country, but, if any precise date can be assigned to it, from the signing of the Declaration of Independence. This doctrine was accepted by the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of McIlvaine v. Coxe's Lessee3 in the opinion in which case it is said: "The several States which compose this Union, so far at least as regards their municipal regulations, became entitled, from the time when they declared themselves independent, to all the rights and powers of sovereign States, and they did not derive them from concessions made by the British King. The treaty of peace contains a recognition of their independence, not a grant of it."

A somewhat different proposition is presented when a new State emerges from the Union of two or more sovereign States. The juristic interpretation of this political transaction will receive full consideration in the chapter dealing with the so-called Composite State. It is sufficient here to say that where there is such a merger of formerly sovereign States and the creation of a single new sovereign body, the original States must be conceived to have gone out of existence, and the bodiespolitic which continue to bear their name and apparently continue their existence, must be regarded as new bodiespolitic of an essentially different nature. They are nonsovereign bodies, which, in contemplation of constitutional law, are the creations of the new sovereignty, and have a status only insofar as they are conceived of as products of its will. The original sovereignties cease to exist; and the new sovereignty rests upon its own basis

*2 Cranch 280.

Whether or not they may properly be termed States will be later considered.

and is not the product of their union. Their agreement to unite, as evidenced in a treaty or other instrument, is thus of no juristic significance. Its importance is purely political, marking, as it does, merely the acquiescence of the peoples of the original States, or, at least, of their governing bodies, in their dissolution as independent bodies-politic, and their willingness to live under the new sovereignty which is to come into being.

Where a portion of the lands and the citizens of one State are transferred from beneath one sovereignty and brought under the jurisdiction of another sovereignty, there is clearly no transfer of its sovereignty by the one State to the other. Both States remain in existence with their several sovereignties unimpaired.5

To the historian it may be convenient to date the origin of a new State from the adoption of a constitution, as, for example, to date the birth of the United States from 1789; but, to the jurist, the Constitution must be viewed as a Law, as the product of the legislative will of a State already in existence, and as providing an outline for its governmental machinery. The State itself must be conceived of as the product of the desire and will of a people to maintain a political existence as a group, as a sovereign legal person, acknowledging no legal control arising outside of its own will. Synchronously with the establishment of this political unity is the estab

It is, of course, possible for a State to relinquish and consent to the incorporation into another State, of a portion of its own territory without at the same time surrendering, or the annexing State claiming, the primary allegiance of the inhabitants of the territories which are concerned. Where such allegiance is not altered, these inhabitants, by the transfer of the territory which they occupy, become resident aliens in their relation to the annexing State. It may, indeed, be said that it is now the practice of civilized States, when territories are transferred from one to another sovereignty, to provide that their inhabitants may have the option whether or not they will become citizens of the annexing State. See, for example, the treaty by which the jurisdiction of Spain over the Philippines and Porto Rico was surrendered and the jurisdiction of the United States over these islands asserted.

lishment, more or less spontaneously and informally, of new instrumentalities for the expression of the State's will or the adoption as its own for the same purpose of old governmental organs already in existence. Thus, if we conceive that a sovereign national state existed in 1789, we must view that State as accepting ad hoc, as its own organs the conventions in the several States which ratified the Constitution.

Non-Juristic Origin of Sovereignty. In result, then, we may say that, strictly speaking, a juristic origin cannot be ascribed to sovereignty. Legally, each sovereign State starts, as it were, de novo, and cannot have any legal bonds that unite it to any previously existing political body. Juristically a new State can take its origin only by the entire withdrawal of the people organized under it from the civic bonds under which they may have been living, and the establishment by them of a new body-politic. Not until the old State has been destroyed, either peaceably or by force, can the new State take its rise. It cannot derive its vitality from the old, for, as we have seen, the transference of sovereignty is a legal impossibility.

A State Cannot Commit Juristic Felo de Se. It has been earlier pointed out that the sovereign State may, through its constitutional law, fix the manner in which and the governmental organs through which, its sovereignty is to be exercised, but that these self-set constitutional limitations are necessarily repealable by the State, acting in pursuance of that same sovereign authority which enabled it to establish them in the first place, and that thus the State's sovereignty is neither destroyed nor impaired. It has also been shown that a change in form of the governmental organization of a State does not mean that the existence of the State has been destroyed and a new sovereignty created.

Dicey in his Law of the Constitution says: "The impossibility of placing a limit on the exercise of sovereignty, does not in any way prohibit either logically or as a matter of fact, the abdication of sovereignty. This is worth observation because a strange dogma is sometimes put forth that a sovereign power, such as the Parliament of the United Kingdom, can never by its own act divest itself of sovereignty. The position, however, is clearly untenable. An autocrat, such as the Russian Czar, can undoubtedly abdicate; but sovereignty, or the possession of a supreme power in a State, whether it be in the hands of a Czar or of a Parliament, is always one and the same quality. If the Czar can abdicate, so can Parliament. To argue or imply that because sovereignty is not limitable (which is true) it cannot be surrendered (which is palpably untrue) involves the confusion of two distinct ideas. It is like arguing that because no man can, while he lives, give up, do what he will, his freedom of volition, so no man can commit suicide. A sovereign power can divest itself of authority in two ways, and (it is submitted) in two ways only. It may simply put an end to its own existence. Parliament could extinguish itself by legally dissolving itself and leaving no means whereby a subsequent Parliament could be legally summoned. A sovereign, again, may transfer sovereign authority to another person or body of persons."

Here it is clear that Dicey is confusing the existence of the sovereign State with the continuance of the governmental machinery through which its sovereignty is exercised. The abdication of an absolute monarch or the surrender of power by a legally omnipotent legislative body does not operate to destroy the State which stands back of those governmental agencies."

Fourth ed., p. 65.

'Westlake in his International Law, p. 63, is thus correct when he says: "It is impossible that the extinction of a State, or even its union with

The Annexation of the Hawaiian Islands by the United States Juristically Analyzed. Instances have occurred, however, in which one State, by its own official act, has consented to its own absorption into another State and thus to a cessation of its own independent existence. An illustration of this was exhibited in 1897-1898, when the Hawaiian Islands were incorporated into and became an integral part of the territory of the United States. Article XXXII of the Constitution of the Republic of Hawaii, adopted in 1894, expressly authorized the President, with the approval of his Cabinet and ratification of the Senate, to make a treaty of political union between the Republic and the United States of America. The power thus granted was exercised in 1897, a treaty providing for union with the United States being negotiated by the President with the approval of his Cabinet and ratified by the Hawaiian Senate. This treaty was not, however, ratified by the treaty-making organ of the United States-the President and Senate. Instead, a Joint Resolution was adopted on July 7, 1898, by the two Houses of the American Congress, which read, in part, as follows:

"Whereas, the Government of the Republic of Hawaii having in due form signified its consent, in the manner provided by its Constitution, to cede absolutely and without reserve to the United States the absolute fee and ownership of all public Government or crown lands, public buildings or edifices, ports, harbors, military equipment, and all other public property of every kind and description belonging to the Government of the

another State on terms involving the loss of its separate existence as a State of International Law, can ever be effected by voluntary arrangement in a constitutional manner. This is so, even when the extinction or union is voted by a parliament which, for all purposes comprised in carrying on the State as it exists, is regarded as omnipotent."