VII.
The scene is again shifted and the Proclamation after asserting, and striving in vain to maintain, the doctrines of the new ultra Federal School, that these States never were Sovereign, at last comes down to the Old Federal Faith, that the States, although once Sovereign, are not so now, because, by the Constitution of the United Sates, to use the words of this Proclamation, "they surrendered many of their essential parts of sovereignty," and therefore, "were no longer Sovereign."
I freely admit the truth of this conclusion, if its premises are correct. Nay, I go further even than the author of this Proclamation; for I concede, that if the States have ever surrendered the smallest factional part of their sovereignty, they thereupon ceased to be sovereign; and so far from retaining "their entire sovereignty," they have lost not only all this, but with it their freedom and independence also. Show me, then, the transfer by the States of any portion of their Sovereignty, and I will willingly admit that all of it is lost. Nor do I regard it as worth an effort, to enquire, whether they may have saved in its wreck, any vain and useless bauble, to serve as a memorial of their former condition, in presenting perpetually to their view, the fact, that even this worthless plaything, must now be held under the mere courtesy of another. I care not much either, who the new Sovereign of the States may be, to whom their former Sovereignty had been surrendered. Whether he is the Ox Apis, who they had seen calved in their own fields, fatted in their won pastures, and had then in their own folly consecrated as an Idol; or whether he is the great King, the majority, the necessary and legitimate Sovereign of every "Nation," which has not yet appointed some other Chieftain to rule over it. The privilege of choosing a
