Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol I).djvu/224



§ 198. have now completed our survey of the origin and political history of the American colonies up to the period of the Revolution. We have examined the more important coincidences and differences in their forms of government, in their laws, and in their political institutions. We have presented a general outline of their actual relations with the parent country; of the rights, which they claimed; of the dependence, which they admitted; and of the controversies, which existed at this period, in respect to sovereign powers and prerogatives on one side, and colonial rights and liberties on the other.

§ 199. We are next to proceed to an historical review of the origin of that union of the colonies, which led to the declaration of independence; of the effects of that event, and of the subsequent war upon the political character and rights of the colonies; of the formation and adoption of the articles of confederation; of the sovereign powers antecedently exercised by the continental congress; of the powers delegated by the