I say, "independent and sovereign," because, as the colonies were, politically and in respect to each other, wholly independent — the sovereignty of each, regarded as distinct and separate communities, being vested in the British crown — the necessary effect of severing the tie which bound them to it was, to devolve the sovereignty on each respectively, and, thereby, to convert them from dependent colonies, into independent and sovereign States. Thus, the region occupied by them, came to be divided into as many States as there were colonies, each independent of the others — as they were expressly declared to be; and only united to the extent necessary to defend their independence, and meet the exigencies of the occasion — and hence that great and, I might say, providential territorial division of the country, into independent and sovereign States, on which our entire system of government rests.
Its next effect was, to transfer the sovereignty which had, heretofore, resided in the British crown, not to the governments of, but to the people composing the several States. It could only devolve on them. The declaration of independence, by extinguishing the British authority in the several colonies, necessarily destroyed every department of their governments, except such as derived their authority from, and represented their respective people. Nothing, then, remained of their several governments, but the popular and representative branches of them. But a representative government, even when entire, cannot possibly be the seat of sovereignty — the supreme and ultimate
