tion was the joint act of the representatives of any single body, previously known as a Community or Nation, besides the historical error committed, he states what must be unintelligible to all, except to those who can comprehend how any single body can do any joint act.
I should have been disposed to consider this sentence as a mere inaccuracy, caused by the precipitate haste in which this State paper was probably prepared, and therefore, to have passed it by unnoticed, but that it is in exact keeping with all the previous parts of this argument, and moreover, is in substance repeated more impressively, in the next sentence, wherein it is said, that "we declared ourselves a Nation by a joint, not by several acts." Now, if we were a Nation before the Declaration of Independence was uttered, (as it was the purpose of all the previous parts of this argument to prove,) it would have been impossible for us as a Nation, to proclaim this fact by any joint act: and if before that event occurred, we were not a Nation, but separate communities or individuals, it seems difficult to conceive how we (whether the Colonies or Colonists) could have declared ourselves as a Nation, by any other than several acts.
The reason of all this mystification and apparent absurdity, will be obvious, when we come to consider the declarations actually made in the Declaration of Independence itself. We shall then find, that this instrument, instead of proclaiming the Colonies to be one Nation, declared them to be "free and independent States," in terms. Hence, as it was impossible to infer the existence of one nation from such terms, in which this idea is so plainly and positively negatived, resort was had to the manner in which this declaration was made; and we are told, "that decisive and important step was taken jointly," and that "we declared ourselves a Nation by a joint, not be several acts"—as if the plain and obvious meaning of the act itself, could be changed by any such extrinsic circumstances.
I have now done with this part of the argument of the President, the design of which is to show, that these States never were sovereign, in showing that they constituted but parts of another sovereignty called the Nation.
I will now proceed to give my account of the Declaration of
