Page:Review of the Proclamation of President Jackson.djvu/54

 require, neither was or could be defined; and therefore, the connection to promote those general ends, being necessarily as indefinite as were its objects, their association was an Union, merely. It was this solemn league alone, which converted this general, simple and undefined association, into a particular confederation.—And here, I must remark, that although the author of this Proclamation, had announced in the former part of this very sentence, that we had proclaimed ourselves a Nation in the Declaration of Independence, yet when he comes now to give the character of this Nation, it turns out, and by his own acknowledgement too, to have been nothing more than a Confederacy. No man before this author, has ever considered these terms as convertible: but the new theory, which denies that these States every were sovereigns, can only be maintained by such a perversion of the well-settled meanings of words.

The quaintness and metaphysical formula, in which this annunciation is made, is well worthy of a passing remark. The Proclamation says, that "when the terms of our Confederation were reduced to form, it (that is to say the form) was in that of a solemn league." From this some casuist might infer, tha tthe purpose of this statement, was to affirm, tha tin substance we had been a Nation before, but when the terms of the existence of this Nation were reduced to form, this form was that of a solemn league; so that we still remained a Nation in fact, although but a Confederacy in form. As the author of this Proclamation however disdains to employ "metaphysical subtlety in pursuit of an impracticable theory," he surely could not have intended to draw himself, or to use any language which might justify another in drawing, that most subtle of all metaphysical distinctions, which seeks to distinguish the substance from the form under which it exists.

The new school of politicians must not, therefore, seek to derive any support for their doctrines, from this formula. Yet unless some such casuistry is employed, unless some distinction is taken between a nation and the form of its existence, it is impossible to conceive how by a solemn league of several States, said to have been intended to form their Confederation, they could have agreed, that they would collectively form one Nation.

The idea too of a Nation formed for certain purposes only,