Page:The American Democrat, James Fenimore Cooper, 1838.djvu/24

18 The polity of the United States is that of a confederated republick, but the power of the federal government acting in most instances on the body of the community, without the intervention of the several states, it has been better styled a Union. This word, which is original as applied to a political system, was first given to this form of confederation, and is intended to express the greater intimacy of the relations of the parties, than those of all previous examples. It exists in the constitution, however, only as it is used in setting forth the motives for substituting that instrument for the old articles of confederation: the constitution being silent as to the particular polity of the country, except as it recognizes the general term of a republick.

The word constitution, of itself, properly implies a more identified form of government, than that which is usually understood to exist under a confederation; the first inferring a social compact, fundamental and predominant, the last a league between independent sovereignties. These distinctions have a certain weight, though they are rather arbitrary than logical, since men may create any degree of allegiance, or of liability they may deem expedient, under any form, or modes of government. To deny this is to deny to bodies of human beings the right of self-government, a gift of nature. Though possessing a common end, governments are, in reality, subject to no laws but those of their own establishing.

The government of the United States was formed by the several states of the Union, as they existed at the period when the constitution was adopted, and one of its leading principles is, that all power which is not granted to the federal authority, remain in the states themselves, or what is virtually the same thing, in the people of the states. This principle follows as a