ment, though undoubtedly intended as a constitutional guaranty of the reserved rights of the several states, says nothing in favor of state sovereignty. It asserts indeed that the federal government is a government of delegated and limited powers, but it does not assert that the United States are created by state delegation, or that the political people called the United States have only delegated and limited powers. In the amendment the term United States must be taken in the sense of the government created or perfected by the constitution. The federal government has only delegated powers, but the powers are delegated by the people of the united, not the several states. It is a government of limited powers, because the people so willed, not because the powers of the people of the United States are limited by the rights of the people of the several states. The reservation, again, is to the states respectively, or to the people. But what people? The article does not say, to the people of the states respectively, or the people of the states seve rally, and therefore we must understand them to be the people of the United States, the very people assembled in convention to constitute the national government.

There is nothing in our view of the unity and sovereignty of the people of the United States to interfere with the federal element of our government. The states severally were never complete, that is, sovereign states, for, as we have seen, the British sovereignty over the colonies did not fall to the states severally, but to the states united, or, the United States. But the colonies, though created at different dates and differently constituted, had by royal grant, charter, or custom, certain political and civil rights, which they retained after independence. These rights rendered uniform in all the states, enlarged in some respects and abridged in others by the federal constitution, are in their substance and in their tenure anterior to that constitution, and are what we called the reserved rights of the states, that is to say, rights which the United States willed should be reserved and guarantied to the states severally. These rights, even as colonial rights, were rights the sovereign was bound to treat as sacred and inviolable, and it was for his alleged violation of them his sovereignty was abjured, and independence declared. Even under the British crown the colonies within the sphere of their rights were legally free and independent political communities. They remain so under the sovereignty of the United States, and the federal government

is bound to treat those rights as sacred and inviolable. They are recognized and guarantied by the constitution.

But we may remark that, after all, these rights were not original in the colonies as civil society, and could not be defended by them as their natural rights of government. They were rights held by them as British colonies and as British subjects, and were therefore of the nature of franchises, of chartered, or of vested rights. They were sacred and inviolable only so long as they who held them observed the conditions expressed or implied in the grant. They could be forfeited as all such rights may be forfeited, and the king might issue his writ quo warranto against any one of the colonies, and, on evidence of forfeiture, revoke the charter, as in several cases was actually done. The United States holds substantially the relation to the several states held by the British crown to the Anglo-American colonies. The. rights of the several states are the rights of those colonies, and are held by them as American states and American citizens, not as original, independent, and sovereign states. As long as the express or implied conditions of their charter or tenure are complied with, they are sacred and inviolable, and within their sphere the states are independent of the national government, and of one another. But if they break these conditions, if they cease to be American states, and their people to be citizens of the United States, they forfeit their liberties, and the United States as sovereign has the right to revoke their charters, or annul their state constitutions, and enter upon their possession as upon any other forfeited estate. The state by its own act has lapsed, and the sovereign only resumes what is his own. Hence Mr. Sumner was right in declaring state secession state suicide, as we proved by a slightly different line of argument in our last Review.

The right of a state to resist the federal government, in case it becomes tyrannical and oppressive, is precisely the right, neither greater nor less, of individuals to do the same, and what that is, has been already stated. So long as the federal government keeps within its constitutional powers, it governs by divine right, and no state or individual has any moral or political right to resist it. If the free and fair exercise of its legitimate powers bears unequally upon different sections, changes or reforms may be sought, but only in a constitutional way, and by peaceful means. No violence, no insurrection, no rebellion, no armed resistance is lawful. The condemnation of the southern seceders is that

they have resisted the federal government in the exercise of its legitimate powers, without having a single act of tyranny or in contravention of the constitution to allege against it. And they could not have such act without condemning themselves, for they have controlled the federal administration, and shaped its policy for more than three-fourths of the time since the organization of the government. For the twenty-four years next preceding the present administration they had every thing pretty much their own way, and if any portion of the people had any right to complain, it was not the people of the slave states. No doubt the abolitionists said and printed many things annoying to them, and some of the free states passed laws not acceptable to them; but the people of the free states had to complain of laws far more objectionable passed by them, and of numerous and gross outrages upon their citizens at the South, such as imprisonment, expulsion, lynching, tar-and-feathering, and hanging, for which no redress could be obtained. Yet the federal government, while it suffered unrebuked southern outrages upon northern citizens, was never restrained by the personal-liberty laws, and executed its own laws faithfully as far as the North was concerned. The South really had no grievance to complain of from the government, and the seceding states have never had a shadow of excuse for their rebellion. If the southern "chivalry" disliked being yoked with northern "mudsills," they were free to seek a separation by peaceful and constitutional means, but not by rebellion and civil war.

Such are the corrections we think are demanded, not of our institutions, but of popular opinion. Let public opinion conform, on the one hand, to our institutions, and, on the other, to the loyal and conservative practice of the people who have volunteered to defend the government, assert the majesty of law, and to save the life and integrity of the nation. We ask no more. These corrections, we trust, the southern rebellion and the civil war which has clothed with mourning almost every family in the Union will induce us to make. The minds and hearts of the people are now open to serious thought and to wise counsels. They are prepared to review the past, and to take a wise and fresh start for the future.

CONFISCATION AND EMANCIPATION.*

[From Brownson's Quarterly Review for July, 1862.]

VERY few of us who call ourselves loyal men and patriots had at the outbreak of the great southern rebellion a perfectly clear and distinct perception of the constitutional principles on which it was to be suppressed. All were anxious for its speedy suppression, and that, too, in strict accordance with the constitution, for, after saving the life and integrity of the republic, our dearest wish was to save constitutional government; but our minds were not clear as to the principles on which it was to be done. To many it was evident peace powers of the constitution were not adequate to the exigencies of the case, and to others it was not clear that the war power could be constitutionally invoked and exercised against our own citizens, even though in arms against the government.

The administration adopted in the outset the theory that the rebellion is not civil war, and the rebels are not enemies, but citizens criminally combined to obstruct the administration of justice, and to resist the execution of the laws. This is evident from the president's inaugural address, and his proclamation calling out the militia. Congress itself at the extra session, unless its partial confiscation act be an exception, appears to have adopted the president's theory of the rebellion, and we can call to mind no act of that session incompatible with it. But on this theory the government is restricted to the peace provisions of the constitution. The military forces are not an army operating against enemies, but a posse comitatus acting under the orders of the civil magistrate in aid of the civil authority, just as when called out to aid in suppressing a riot. On this theory, any and every assumption of war powers, or appeal to the rights of war would be manifestly unconstitutional, and unjustifiable on any recognized principles of law. Yet the government,

*Indemnity for the Past and Security for the Future. Speech of Hon. CHARLES SUMNER, of Massachusetts, on his Bill for the Confiscation of Property and the Liberation of Slaves belonging to Rebels. In the Senate of the United States, May 19, 1862.

while apparently adopting this theory, which we call the peace theory, and assuming the country to be at peace, has blockaded the southern ports, has made prizes, sent and received flags of truce, treated captured rebels as prisoners of war, released them on parole, or exchanged them, and done various other things which imply a state of war, and which would be highly improper, in some respects criminal, if the rebels are not enemies as well as criminal citizens.

The adoption of the peace theory by the government as the constitutional theory, and many of its acts being defensible only on the war theory, has continued and increased the confusion in loyal minds, and at the same time given the opposition in and out of congress some show of reason in organizing themselves as a constitutional party, and in professing to oppose the government on strictly constitutional grounds. If the government adopts and insists on the peace theory, many of its acts are undeniably open to the strictures of such men as Powell of Kentucky, Saulsbury of Delaware, Vallandigham of Ohio, and Diven of New York. On this theory the various bills introduced into congress, one of which has passed the house while we are writing, for confiscating the property of rebels and emancipating their slaves, are, if regarded as penal statutes against the rebels, of doubtful constitutionality. It may be plausibly argued, to say the least, that such measures are not within the purview of the peace powers of the constitution, and, if defensible at all, are defensible only under the war power,-only on the supposition that the property and slaves in question, are the property and slaves of enemies.

The constitution says expressly that, "The congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture, except during the life of the person attainted." This, taken in an untechnical sense and as usually understood, positively forbids congress to pass any confiscation laws, as a penalty for treason, except during the life of the traitor. Confiscation of rebel property as a punishment for treason for a longer period than the life of the traitor, would, consequently, according to this interpretation, be manifestly unconstitutional, and the courts would be obliged to treat the act of congress authorizing it as null and void. So of emancipation. As a peace power neither congress nor the president has any power over the emancipation question.