Page:Review of the Proclamation of President Jackson.djvu/79

 time since: nor can any man living point to the act or instrument by which she has ever surrendered it. Not one word of any such transfer is seen, or ought to be expected to appear in the declaration of Independence. Not one word of any such transfer is found in the Articles of Confederation; so far from it, that instrument directly repudiates any such notion in the strong and emphatic words which it employs. Not one word of such a transfer is to be met with in the Constitution of the United States, which in all its provisions, addresses itself to the People, not as the people of the United States, but as the people of the several States, the obedience of which people to the legitimate mandates of the government thereby created, is claimed, only because such obedience has been promised, in their behalf, by their respective Sovereigns, the States, in their several ratifications of that Instrument. Nor have the citizens of any State ever taken, or been required to take, any oath of allegiance to the United States, or to their government; for Congress could find no authority for doing so, in the Constitution, and therefore have never presumed to prescribe any such oath. It is true, many swear to support the Constitution of the United States, but there is no more of incompatibility between the obligations of this oath, and those of their oath of allegiance to a State, than there is between the latter, and the obligations of the oath administered to any witness in a Court of Justice. The oaths relate to different subjects; and in swearing to support the Constitution of the United States, the party taking the oath, but reaffirms his fidelity to his State, which has chosen to adopt this Constitution as its supreme law, and so made it a part of its own code.

But Congress may punish Treason against the United States, and the Proclamation says, "Treason is an offence against Sovereignty, and Sovereignty must reside with the power to punish it." Let me here remark, that the power to punish Treason, is not cited to prove, the transfer by the States of the allegiance of their Citizens to the government of the United States. The author knew very well, that even the acknowledged subjects of any foreign power, might be punished for an act of Treason, just as properly, as the subjects of the Sovereign of the country within which the Treason was committed. In this respect, therefore, citizens and