on of ideas as to its meaning. Of all the
terms employed in political science, it is one of the most definite and
intelligible. The definition of it given by that accurate and lucid
publicist, Burlamaqui, is simple and satisfactory--that "sovereignty is
a right of commanding in the last resort in civil society."[60] The
original seat of this sovereignty he also declares to be in the people.
"But," he adds, "when once the people have transferred their right to a
sovereign [i.e., a monarch], they can not, without contradiction, be
supposed to continue still masters of it."[61] This is in strict accord
with the theory of American republicanism, the peculiarity of which is
that the people _never do_ transfer their right of sovereignty, either
in whole or in part. They only delegate to their governments the
exercise of such of its functions as may be necessary, subject always to
their own control, and to reassumption whenever such government fails to
fulfill the purposes for which it was instituted.

I think it has already been demonstrated that, in this country, the only
political community--the only independent corporate unit through which
the people can exercise their sovereignty, is the State. Minor
communities--as those of counties, cities, and towns--are merely
fractional subdivisions of the State; and these do not affect the
evidence that there was not such a political community as the "people of
the United States in the aggregate."

That the States were severally sovereign and independent when they were
united under the Articles of Confederation, is distinctly asserted in
those articles, and is admitted even by the extreme partisans of
consolidation. Of right, they are still sovereign, unless they have
surrendered or been divested of their sovereignty; and those who deny
the proposition have been vainly called upon to point out the process by
which they have divested themselves, or have been divested of it,
otherwise than by usurpation.

Since Webster spoke and Story wrote upon the subject, however, the
sovereignty of the States has been vehemently denied, or explained away
as only a partial, imperfect, mutilated sovereignty. Paradoxical
theories of "divided sovereignty" and "delegated sovereignty" have
arisen, to create that "confusion of ideas" and engender those
"mischievous and unfounded conclusions," of which Judge Story speaks.
Confounding the sovereign authority of the _people_ with the delegated
powers con