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[130] of the events which this work is designed to record and explain that it can not be dismissed without an effort in the way of recapitulation and conclusion, to make it clear beyond the possibility of misconception.

According to the American theory, every individual is endowed with certain unalienable rights, among which are “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” He is entitled to all the freedom, in these and in other respects, that is consistent with the safety and the rights of others and the weal of the community, but political sovereignty, which is the source and origin of all the powers of government—legislative, executive, and judicial—belongs to, and inheres in, the people of an organized political community. It is an attribute of the whole people of such a community. It includes the power and necessarily the duty of protecting the rights and redressing the wrongs of individuals, of punishing crimes, enforcing contracts, prescribing rules for the transfer of property and the succession of estates, making treaties with foreign powers, leving taxes, etc. The enumeration of particulars might be extended, but these will suffice as illustrations.

These powers are of course exercised through the agency of governments, but the governments are only agents of the sovereign—responsible to it, and subject to its control. This sovereign—the people, in the aggregate, of each political community—delegates to the government the exercise of such powers, or functions, as it thinks proper, but in an American republic never transfers or surrenders sovereignty. That remains, unalienated and unimpaired. It is by virtue of this sovereignty alone that the Government, its authorized agent, commands the obedience of the individual citizen, to the extent of its derivative, dependent, and delegated authority. The allegiance of the citizen is due to the sovereign alone.

Thus far, I think, all will agree. No American statesman or publist would venture to dispute it. Notwithstanding the inconsiderate or ill-considered expressions thrown out by some persons about the unity of the American people from the beginning, no respectable authority has ever had the hardihood to deny that, before the adoption of the federal Constitution, the only sovereign political community was the people of the state—the people of each state. The ordinary exercise of what are generally termed the powers of sovereignty was by and through their respective governments; when they formed a confederation, a portion of those powers was entrusted to the general government, or agency. Under the confederation, the Congress of the United States represented the collective power of the states; still, the people of each state alone

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