In 1778, these colonies, while engaged in a common struggle for independence, and five years before their independence, or claim to the character of states, was established, entered into "Articles of Confederation and PERPETUAL UNION" under the "style" of the United States, and from these "Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union" they went into their present form of government, which was adopted, to make that which was already declared to be "perpetual" a "more perfect Union."

The argument used, that the mother country, by the treaty of peace in 1783, which recognized each state of the United States by name, thereby established their sovereignty and separate existence, is of no more weight than it would be to claim the same sovereignty for each of the counties of what now constitutes West Virginia, because the act creating the state mentioned by name the counties which composed the state.

When, where, and how, then, did any state forming the Union now or originally ever exercise, or claim the right to exercise, a sovereign power? Mr. Calhoun himself, the great leader of this states-sovereignty party, which claims every thing to suit itself, utterly repudiated the idea that there could be sovereignty in the government, and broadly asserted that all sovereignty was in the people of the states, united in their federal Union, and not a particle in the government. In 1833 he said, "No one will pretend that sovereignty is in the government. To make that assertion would be to go back to the Asiatic idea of government. It is scarcely European, as the most intelligent writers of the globe have long since traced sovereignty to a higher source. No, the sovereignty is not in the government, it is in the people. Any other conception is utterly abhorrent to the ideas of every American. There is not a particle of sover

eignty in the government. The sovereignty, then, is in the people of the several states, united in their federal Union. It is not only in them, but in them unimpaired. Not a particle resides in the government."

Without assenting to this doctrine of Mr. Calhoun's, it utterly annihilates, as far as his authority goes, all idea of sovereignty in the state government, for he embraces all governments-federal, state, European, and Asiatic.

Much, too, has been said about the "coercion of a state.” No such thing is known to the theory of our government as the "coercion" of a state. Under the Constitution, the government does not operate on states but upon the people. Under the old Articles of Confederation, the gov ernment operated upon states, and derived their revenue from the states, which was found not to answer a good purpose; and one of the distinctive features of the present form of government from the Confederation is that it operates on each individual citizen, and requires each and every citizen to obey the law; and if they resist, the law is enforced, or they are "coerced" to obedience by the magisterial power of the government; and if they resist by force of arms, or by combinations too powerful to be controlled by the magisterial or judicial powers, such resistance becomes treason, and must be suppressed by the military powers of the country. It would be about as difficult to "coerce" a state as it would be to try and hang a state for treason; while it is quite within the powers of the gov ernment to compel any citizen to obey the laws, as it would be first to try and then to hang him for the treason, in taking up arms to resist the authority and overthrow the gov ernment of the United States.

AN IMPORTANT NOTE.

July 1, 1864. I have just read in the Richmond Sentinel of the 18th of June the "manifesto" of the Confederate Congress, which that paper announces to be from the pen of the Hon. William C. Rives, and that, by joint resolution, is to be sent to "our commissioners abroad, to the end that the same may be laid before foreign governments."

This extraordinary document, coming from so distinguished a source, I think should be given entire, and therefore it is inserted here without mutilation or curtailment.

How far its assertions in reference to the origin of the war can be sustained by undeniable historical facts, each one can determine for himself; my impression is, that they are about as well founded as the predictions made as to the final result which will ere long be made manifest to all the world. Here is the MANIFESTO.

Manifesto of the Congress of the Confederate States of America relative to the existing war with the United States.

"The Congress of the Confederate States of America, acknowledging their responsibility to the opinion of the civilized world, to the great law of Christian philanthropy, and to the Supreme Ruler of the universe, for the part they have been compelled to bear in the sad spectacle of war and carnage which this continent has, for the last three years, exhibited to the eyes of afflicted humanity, deems the present a fitting occasion to declare the principles, the sentiments, and the purposes by which they have been and are still actuated.

"They have ever deeply deplored the necessity which constrained them to take up arms in defense of their rights and

of the free institutions derived from their ancestors; and there is nothing they more ardently desire than peace, whensoever their enemy, by ceasing from the unhallowed war waged upon them, shall permit them to enjoy in peace the sheltering protection of those hereditary rights and of those cherished institutions. The series of successes with which it has pleased Almighty God, in so signal a manner, to bless our arms on almost every point of our invaded borders since the opening of the present campaign, enables us to profess this desire of peace in the interests of civilization and humanity, without danger of having our motives misinterpreted, or of the declaration being ascribed to any unmanly sentiment, or any distrust of our ability fully to maintain our cause. The repeated and disastrous checks, foreshadowing ultimate discomfiture, which their gigantic army, directed against the capital of the Confederacy, has already met with, are but a continuation of the same Providential successes for us. We do not refer to these successes in any spirit of vain boasting, but in humble acknowledg ment of that Almighty protection which has vouchsafed and granted them.

"The world must now see that eight millions of people, inhabiting so extensive a territory, with such varied resources and such numerous facilities for defense as the benignant bounty of Nature has bestowed upon us, and animated with one spirit to encounter every privation and sacrifice of ease, of health, of property, of life itself, rather than be degraded from the condition of free and independ ent states into which they were born, can never be conquered. Will not our adversaries themselves begin to feel that humanity has bled long enough; that tears, and blood, and treasure enough have been expended in a bootless undertaking, covering their own land, no less than ours, with a

pall of mourning, and exposing them far more than ourselves to the catastrophe of financial exhaustion and bank- ruptcy, not to speak of the loss of their liberties by the despotism engendered in an aggressive warfare upon the liberties of another and kindred people? Will they be willing, by a longer perseverance in a wanton and hopeless contest, to make this continent, which they so long boasted to be the chosen abode of liberty and self-government, of peace and a higher civilization, the theatre of the most causeless and prodigal effusion of blood which the world has ever seen, of a virtual relapse into the barbarism of the ruder ages, and of the destruction of constitutional freedom by the lawlessness of usurped power?

"These are questions which our adversaries will decide for themselves. We desire to stand acquitted before the tribunal of the world, as well as in the eyes of omniscient justice, of any responsibility for the origin or prolongation of a war as contrary to the spirit of the age as to the traditions and acknowledged maxims of the political system of America.

"On this continent, whatever opinions may have prevailed elsewhere, it has ever been held and acknowledged by all parties that government, to be lawful, must be founded on the consent of the governed. We were forced to dissolve our federal connection with our former associates by their aggressions on the fundamental principles of our compact of union with them; and in doing so, we exercised a right consecrated in the great charter of American liberty -the right of a free people, when a government proves destructive of the ends for which it was established, to recur to original principles, and to institute new guards for their security. The separate independence of the states, as sovereign and co-equal members of the federal Union, had never

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