Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol I).djvu/242

 202 they established a national post-office; and finally they authorized captures and condemnation of prizes in prize courts, with a reserve of appellate jurisdiction to themselves.

§ 214. The same body, in 1776, took bolder steps, and exerted powers, which could in no other manner be justified or accounted for, than upon the supposition, that a national union for national purposes already existed, and that the congress was invested with sovereign power over all the colonies for the purpose of preserving the common rights and liberties of all. They accordingly authorized general hostilities against the persons and property of British subjects; they opened an extensive commerce with foreign countries, regulating the whole subject of imports and exports; they authorized the formation of new governments in the colonies; and finally they exercised the sovereign prerogative of dissolving the allegiance of all colonies to the British crown. The validity of these acts was never doubted, or denied by the people. On the contrary, they became the foundation, upon which the superstructure of the liberties and independence of the United States has been erected. Whatever, then, may be the theories of ingenious men on the subject, it is historically true, that before the declaration of independence these colonies were not, in any absolute sense, sovereign states; that that event did not find them or make them such; but that at the moment of their separation they were under the dominion of a superior controlling national government, whose powers were vested in and exercised by the general congress with the consent of the people of all the states.