Page:Nature and Character of our Federal Government.djvu/37

 people. Indeed, as they *were called into existence by the colonies in 1775, and as they continued in existence, without any new election or new grant of power, it is difficult to perceive how they could form a "general or national government, organized by the people." They were elected by subjects of the king of England; subjects who had no right, as they themselves admitted, to establish any government whatever; and when those subjects became citizens of independent states, they gave no instructions to establish any such government. The government exercised was, as already remarked, merely a government de facto, and no farther de jure than the subsequent approval of its acts by the several States made it so.

This brief review will enable us to determine how far the author is supported in the inferences he has drawn, in the passages last quoted. We have reason to regret that in these, as in many others, he has not been sufficiently specific, either in stating his proposition or in citing his proof. To what people does he allude, when he tells us that the "first general or national government" was organized "by the people?" The first and every recommendation to send deputies to a general congress was addressed to the colonies as such; in the choice of those deputies each colony acted for itself, without mingling in any way with the people or government of any other colony; and when the deputies met in congress, they voted on all questions of public and general concern by colonies, each colony having one vote, whatever was its population or number of deputies. If, then, this government was organized by "the people" at all, it was clearly the people of the several colonies, and not the joint people of all the colonies. And where is the author's warrant for the assertion, that they acted "directly in their primary sovereign capacity, and without the intervention of the functionaries, to whom the ordinary powers of government were delegated in the colonies?" He is in most respects a close follower of Marshall, and he could scarcely have failed to see the following passage, which is found in a note in the 168th page of the second volume of the Life of Washington. Speaking of the Congress of 1774, Marshall says: "The members of this congress were generally elected by the authority of the colonial legislatures, but in some