Page:Nature and Character of our Federal Government.djvu/49

 last, the only proposition involved. If Spain, Naples and Holland, while they were "dependencies" of the imperial crown of France, had united in declaring that they were oppressed, in the same mode and degree, by the measures of that crown, and that they did, for that reason, disclaim all allegiance to it, and assume the station of "free and independent states," would they thereby have become one people? Surely this will not be asserted by any one. We should see, in that act, nothing more than the union of several independent sovereignties, for the purpose of effecting a common object, which each felt itself too weak to effect, alone. Nothing would be more natural, than that nations so situated should establish a common military power, a common treasury, and a common agency, through which to carry on their intercourse with other powers; but that all this should unite them together, so as to form them into one nation, is a consequence not readily perceived. The case here supposed is precisely that of the American colonies, if those colonies were, in point of fact, separate, distinct, and independent of one another. If they were so, (and I think it has been shown that they were,) then the fact that they united in the declaration of independence does not make them "one people," any more than a similar declaration would have made Spain, Naples and Holland one people; if they were not so, then they were one people already, and the declaration of independence did not render them either more or less identical. It is true, the analogy here supposed does not hold in every particular; the relations of the colonies to one another were certainly closer, in many respects, than those of Spain, Naples and Holland, to one another. But as to all purposes involved in the present enquiry, the analogy is perfect. The effect attributed to the declaration of independence presupposes that the *colonies were not "one people" before; an effect which is in no manner changed or modified by any other circumstance in their relation to one another. That fact, alone, is necessary to be enquired into; and until that fact is ascertained, the author's reasoning as to the effect of the declaration of independence, in making them "one people," does not apply. He is obliged, therefore, to abandon the ground previously taken, to wit, that the colonies were one people before the declaration of