the former bonds of association of its vanquished antagonists, incorporates them as a part of itself, under whatever conditions it may please to prescribe, and so creates and ordains a government for them. But when the foundation of government is not force, but consent, it would be a paradox to suppose the consent of any others than of those who had the right to consent, that is to say, of the members of that particular pre-existing and established Society for the regulation of whose affairs such government is designed. None then but the pre-existing established Societies in British America, could ordain a government for such Societies, except by force; and the government ordained by any one of these Societies, deriving all its powers from it, could have had no authority except over that Society itself.
When we apply this obvious general conclusion to the facts of the particular case, we must all be at once convinced, that all the primitive governments of the different revolted Colonies of Great Britain must have been ordained and established by the several Societies then existing in the revolted Colonies respectively, and for their own special and particular benefit. Therefore, that none of these governments could have had any other authority than to regulate the affairs of their own creators, and of none others. I say, that these governments must have been so established and so endowed, because at that time there did not exist, nor ever had existed, any such society or community as The People of America, or of the British Colonies in America, or of the revolted British Colonies in America, or under any other name or form, save that of the Colony of Georgia, of South Carolina, etc., etc. Therefore, by these several and distinct communities alone, all our primitive governments must have been, and in point of fact were, ordained and established; and governments being so established, these several communities, their respective authors, thereby assumed to be, and so far as they were severally concerned, became, that great moral and accountable being, a sovereign State, which, having chosen the Democratic form for its government, was known and styled the Commonwealth.
Doubtless the different revolted Colonies might, if they had thought proper, have consented to amalgamate and blend themselves together into one single Society, and then have established
