Page:Nature and Character of our Federal Government.djvu/51

 "the representatives of the United States of America," and "in the name and by the authority of the good people of these colonies," they must of course be understood as speaking in the character in which they had all along acted; that is, as the representatives of separate and distinct colonies, and not as the joint representatives of any one people. A decisive proof of this is found in the fact that the colonies voted on the adoption of that measure in their separate character, each giving one vote by all its own representatives, who acted in strict obedience to specific instructions from their respective colonies, and the members signed the declaration in that way. So, also, when they declared that "these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states," they meant only that their respective communities, which until then had been dependent colonies, should thereafter be independent states, and that the same union, which existed between them as colonies, should be continued between them as states. The measure under consideration looked only to their relation to the mother country, and not to their relation to one another; and the sole question before them was, whether they should continue in a state of dependence on the British crown, or not. Having determined that they would not, they from that moment ceased to be colonies, and became states; united, precisely as before, for the common purpose of achieving their common liberty. The idea of forming a closer union, by the mere act of declaring themselves independent, could scarcely have occurred to any one of them. The necessity of such a measure must have been apparent to all, and it had long before engaged their attention in a different form. Men, of their wisdom and forecast, meditating a measure so necessary to their common safety, would not have left it as a mere matter of inference from another measure. In point of fact, it was already before them, in the form of a distinct proposition, and had been so ever since their first meeting in May, 1775. It is impossible to suppose *therefore, in common justice to the sagacity of congress, that they