conceived as a sovereign State, parting with a defined portion of its sovereignty to the federal government, but retaining the undefined residue. Whenever, therefore, any new question arises as to which the power is not clearly appropriated to Congress, it belongs to the legislation of the State.

Mr. Calhoun's Discourse on the Constitution and Govern'ment of the United States,' published after his death in 1853, exhibits what may be termed the Southern view of the Federal Constitution. He maintains that the States, though united into a Federation, retain their character of distinct, sovereign com munities that they established the Federal Constitution as a compact between them, not as a Constitution over them; that their allegiance is primarily due to their State, rather than to the Union; that the people of the several States still retain the supreme ultimate power called sovereignty, the power by which they established the Constitution; and that by the same power they can modify, amend, or abolish the Constitution. He is express in denying to the Government of the United States the character of a National Government. The States, he repeatedly declares, form a Federation, not a Nation. With respect to the reserved powers' mentioned in the Constitution, he gives the following explanation:

'The powers thus designated are divided into two distinct classes; those delegated by the people of the several States to their separate State governments, and those which they still retain, not having delegated them to either government. Among them is included the high sovereign power by which they ordained and established both, and by which they can modify, change, or abolish them at pleasure. This, with others not delegated, are those which are reserved to the people of the several States respectively.' (Calhoun, p. 143-4.)

If this view of the Federal Pact be admitted, it is not difficult to arrive, by logical steps, at the legitimacy of secession.

The probability of a dissolution of the American Union is discussed with great ability by M. de Tocqueville, in the chapter at the end of the second volume of his Démocratie en Amérique,' entitled, Quelles sont les chances de durée de l'Union Américaine. Quels 'dangers la menacent.' (Tom. ii. p. 366.) M. de Tocqueville particularly dwells on the inferior strength of the Federal Government when it comes into conflict with a State Government; and he distinctly shows that whenever any portion of the United States should think it for their advantage to cease to belong to the Union, the Federal Government will be utterly unable to prevent them from asserting their independence. The doctrine of the perpetuity of the Union, except in as far as it is based on the consent and common interests of all the States, is a manifest absurdity.

General Jackson declared in 1832, that if he had caught Mr. Calhoun in Washington, he would have hanged him high as Haman,' but it is not the less certain that the principles of the Nullification party have survived.

"The mode in which the assent of the States was given to the Constitution of 1789 deserves particular attention, for throughout this discussion anything which encroached on the free and independent sovereignty of each State was regarded with the utmost suspicion. When the plan of the Constitution was framed, it was first laid before the Congress of the Confederacy; secondly, before a convention of delegates chosen in each State by the people thereof, for their assent and adoption; and finally, by a separate convention in each State, to represent their independent sovereignty. Refusal at any of these stages would have defeated the project, except that it was provided that the ratification of the conventions of nine States (out of thirteen) should be sufficient for the establishment of the Constitution between the States so ratifying it. It was, in fact, extremely uncertain whether all would join: indeed, North Carolina and Rhode Island refused at first to ratify, and great doubt was entertained as to the final determination of Virginia. That great State, then the most powerful member of the young Confederacy, did at last ratify, but in the following remarkable terms: - "We, the "delegates of the people of Virginia, now met in convention, having fully and freely discussed the proceedings of the Federal Convention, "do, in the name and on the behalf of the people of Virginia, de"clare and make known that the powers granted under the Consti"tution being derived from the people of the United States, may be "resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury and oppression, and that every power not granted thereby "remains with them, and at their will: &c." So that the very act of ratification contained a direct assertion of the right of revocation and independence.' (Calhoun, p. 248.)

66

No writer on American constitutional law, with whom we are acquainted, has expressed the Federal theory with so much logic and precision as Mr. Calhoun, in this remarkable treatise; and as this is the very essence of the present dispute between the Southern Confederacy and the Cabinet of Washington, we shall quote another short passage which places it in the clearest light.

'The earliest and highest division of power resulted from, and is inseparably connected with, the primitive territorial division of the country itself-coeval with its settlement into separate and distinct communities; and which, though dependent at first on the parent country, became, by a successful resistance to its encroachments on their chartered rights, independent and sovereign States. In them generally or to express it more precisely, in the people composing them, regarded as independent and sovereign communities, the ultimate power of the whole system resided, and from them

the whole system emanated. Their first act was, to ordain and establish their respective separate constitutions and governments,— each by itself, and for itself, without concert or agreement with others; and their next, after the failure of the Confederacy was to ordain and establish the constitution and government of the United States, in the same way in every respect, as has been shown; except that it was done by concert and agreement with each other. That this high, this supreme power, has never been either delegated to, or vested in, the separate governments of the States, or the Federal Government, and that it is, therefore, one of the powers declared, by the tenth article of amendments, to be reserved to the people of the respective States; and that, of course, it still resides with them, will hardly be questioned. It must reside somewhere. No one will assert that it is extinguished. But according to the fundamental principles of our system, sovereignty resides in the people, and not in the government; and if in them, it must be in them as the people of the several States; for politically speaking, there is no other known to the system. It not only resides in them, but resides in its plenitude, unexhausted and unimpaired. If proof be required, it will be found in the fact,-which cannot be controverted, so far as the United States are concerned, -that the people of the several States, acting in the same capacity and in the same way, in which they ordained and established the federal constitution, can, by their concurrent and united voice, change or abolish it, and establish another in its place; or dissolve the Union, and resolve themselves into separate and disconnected States. A power which can rightfully do all this, must exist in full plenitude, unexhausted and unimpaired; for no higher act of sovereignty can be conceived.* (Calhoun, p. 273.)

No one disputes that it would be competent to the people of the United States, by their concurrent and united voice,' to alter, amend, or even abolish their Constitution; and indeed that Constitution contains an express provision for the amendment of it by the will of three-fourths of the whole Union. This argument, however, does not materially help the claim of the minority to break up the Union by withdrawing from the compact; and Mr. Calhoun himself added that the exercise of such a power must be based on sufficient grounds, such, for example, as a manifest attempt on the part of the Confederation to crush or override its weaker members. In the present case,

* The distinction between a supreme Federal State and a system of Confederate States has been discussed, with his usual acuteness, by the late Professor Austin in his Province of Jurisprudence Determined,' (p. 259.) of which most valuable work a second edition has just appeared. Mr. Austin's view of the American Constitution was that the sovereignty resided in the States' Governments as forming one aggregate body, and not merely in the individual States as forming a collective whole. See also 'The Federalist,' No. 39.

and at the present time, no such grounds exist. Nothing whatever has been done, attempted, or even threatened, by the Executive or by Congress against the interests of the South. The mere election of Mr. Lincoln the mere accession of the Republican party to office are the sole grounds on which the seceding States at present attempt to justify their conduct. Here, then, their case utterly breaks down. They have acted upon a mere apprehension of some evil or injustice supposed to be impending over them, but which even their own political adversaries repudiate and deny. As therefore their avowed motives are clearly insufficient to explain and justify such a proceeding, we must look to other motives which are not avowed.

Such having been the causes of the late secessionary movement in the United States, we have next to consider what its probable course will be, so far as our present indications enable us to judge.

The seven States which have formally seceded from the Union, extend in a continuous line along the coast of the Atlantic and of the Gulf of Mexico, from South Carolina in the East to Texas in the West, for 25 degrees of longitude. They form the extreme southern zone of the old Union, and they are all Slave States. Their population, free and slave, according to the last census, stands thus:

In two of these States, viz. South Carolina and Mississippi, the slave population exceeds the free population. In the other five, the free population is the more numerous. The total population of the new confederacy of seven States, including beth freemen and slaves, is somewhat greater than that of the kingdoms of Belgium or of Bavaria. The population of the Free and Slave States of the entire Union, as it existed before the late secession, according to the census of 1860, was as follows:

With respect to the Slave States which are not included in the Southern Confederacy, and which still adhere to the North, their population, free and slave, stands thus: —

The entire population of the Slave States which have not seceded exceeds therefore the entire population of the States which have seceded. Their free population is in still greater excess. But the slave population of the seceding States is considerably greater than the slave population of the non-seceding Slave States.

The leaders of the Southern secession have hitherto shown no disposition to recede. They were evidently prepared for action; they declared themselves as soon as the result of the presidential election was known; they have since marched forwards with an unfaltering pace; they have used no conciliatory language, but in their declarations have parodied, with respect to the old Union, the language of the Union itself with respect to the mother country. They have formed a Southern Confederacy on the model of the former Union; have elected a President and Vice-president; have organised a federal administration; and have despatched Commissioners to Europe to obtain the recognition of foreign governments. All the leading men in the seceding States are irrevocably and openly committed to secession. In this state of things, it is scarcely possible to find any common ground on which negotiators could meet. The seceders are now masters of their own confederacy, and can direct its policy with an exclusive regard to the interests of the slave-owning class. They will not consent to return to the old Union, and resume their alliance with the Free States, except upon terms which the victorious Republican party of the North must repudiate with disdain. Nothing can satisfy the South short of slavery being a completely neutral question for purposes of joint action and federal legislation. The claborate compromise recently projected by the Peace Congress' at Washington, and voted by the delegates of nine against eight States, four States not voting,