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other than its own."-Austin's Province of Jurisprudence Determined, Vol. I, p. 189.

III.

Blackstone on Sovereignty.

However governments began, "or by what right soever they subsist, there is and must be in all of them, a supreme, irresistible, absolute, uncontrolled authority, in which the jura summi imperii, or the rights of sovereignty, reside.”—Blackstone's Com. (Sharswood's ed.), Vol. I, p. 48.

IV.

Bouvier on Sovereignty.

Sovereignty is "the union and exercise of all human power possessed in a State; it is a combination of all power; it is the power to do every thing in a State without accountability; to make laws, to execute and apply them; to impose and collect taxes, and to levy contributions; to make war or peace; to form treaties of alliance or of commerce with foreign nations, and the like.". Bouvier's Law Dic., Vol. II, p. 537.

V.

Political Sovereignty.

No form of human government can exist without the controlling presence of that political power which is called Sovereignty. Where sovereignty does not exist in one person, nor in a few persons, nor in the mass of the people, there is no government. There may be, in such a case, popular excitement, contention, anarchy, and warfare; but there cannot be any form of government. The

sovereign power of an independent State, or nation, is vested with an exclusive right to make, execute, and change laws, and to regulate persons and things, within its own territory, according to its own will.

VI.

Story on Sovereignty.

Mr. Justice Story, in his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, says: "The term 'sovereign' or 'sovereignty' is used in different senses, which often leads to a confusion of ideas, and sometimes to very mischievous and unfounded conclusions. By 'sovereignty' in its largest sense is meant supreme, absolute, uncontrollable power, the jus summi imperii, the absolute right to govern.”—B. II, p. 207. *** "Strictly speaking, in our republican forms of government, the absolute sovereignty of the nation is in the people of the nation; and the residuary sovereignty of each State, not granted to any of its public functionaries, is in the people of the State."-B. II, p. 209.

VII.

Views of Mr. Justice Blair.

In 1795, Justice Blair, of the Supreme Court of the United States, said: "It is true, that instrument" (the Articles of Confederation) "is worded in a manner, on which some stress is laid, that the several States should retain their sovereignties, and all powers not thereby expressly delegated to Congress, as if they were, till the ratification of that compact, in possession of all the powers thereby delegated; but it seems to me that it would be going too far, from a single expression, used perhaps in a loose sense, to draw an inference so contrary

to a known fact, to wit, that Congress was, with the approbation of the States, in possession of some of the powers therein mentioned, which, yet, if the word 'retain' be taken in so strict a sense, it must be supposed they never had."-Dallas' Reports, Vol. III, p. 112.

VIII.

Nathan Dane on Sovereignty.

Nathan Dane, who was a member of Congress in 1787, in referring to the use of the word "sovereignty" in the Articles of Confederation, says: "The word 'sovereignty,' in this case, is evidently used in a subordinate sense. Though the words sovereign and sovereignty are certainly too convenient, in speaking and writing, to be disused, yet it is clear that, in the strict and accurate use of words, they cannot be properly used as a part of our constitutional language in a constitutional sense; and this distinction is generally to be regarded."—Dane's Ab. Am. Law, Vol. IX, Appendix.

IX.

Austin on Sovereignty.

Mr. Austin, in the Province of Jurisprudence Determined, Vol. I, p. 178, says: "The definition of the abstract term independent political society, (including the definition of the correlative term sovereignty,) cannot be rendered in expressions of perfectly precise import, and is therefore a fallible test of specific or particular cases. The least imperfect definition which the abstract term will take, would hardly enable us to fix the class of every possible society."***"It would hardly enable us to determine of every political society, whether it were independent or subordinate."

X.

M. D'Alembert.

M. D'Alembert, in an Analysis of Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws, says: "We may distinguish three sorts of governments-the republican, the monarchic, the despotic. In the republican, the people in a body possess the sovereign power."

XI.

Views of James Madison on Sovereignty.

In 1835, James Madison said: "It is so difficult to argue intelligibly concerning the compound system of government in the United States, without admitting the divisibility of sovereignty, that the idea of sovereignty, as divided between the Union and the members composing the Union, forces itself into the view, and even into the language, of those most strenuously contending for the unity and indivisibility of the moral being created by the social compact.”—Selections from the Private Correspondence of James Madison, p. 374. In the same volume, pp. 412-413, Mr. Madison says: "Those who deny the possibility of a divided political system, with a divided sovereignty like that of the United States, must choose between a government purely consolidated and an association of governments purely federal.”

XII.

Opinion of Lewis Cass.

In a speech delivered in the Senate of the United States on the 22d of January, 1850, Lewis Cass said: "In the people of the United States resides the sove

reignty of this country, and no department of their government can claim that high prerogative, nor assume any functions arising out of it not to be found in that great act of the people which brought them into political existence."

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