rom the Union. But this is far from conclusive. No man
gets rid of the obligation of a bond by telling a witness that he does
not mean to be bound; the question is not what he means, but what the
party with whom he deals must naturally take him to mean. Now the
Constitution of the United States upon the face of it purports to create
a government able to take its place among the other governments of the
world, able if it declares war to wield the whole force of its country in
that war, and able if it makes peace to impose that peace upon all its
subjects. This seems to imply that the authority of that government over
part of the country should be legally indefeasible. It would have been
ridiculous if, during a war with Great Britain, States on the Canadian
border should have had the legal right to secede, and set up a neutral
government with a view to subsequent reunion with Great Britain. The
sound legal view of this matter would seem to be: that the doctrine of
secession is so repugnant to the primary intention with which the
national instrument of government was framed that it could only have been
supported by an express reservation of the right to secede in the
Constitution itself.

The Duke of Argyll, one of the few British statesmen of the time who
followed this struggle with intelligent interest, briefly summed up the
question thus: "I know of no government in the world that could possibly
have admitted the right of secession from its own allegiance." Oddly
enough, President Buchanan, in his Message to Congress on December 4, put
the same point not less forcibly.

But to say--as in a legal sense we may--that the Southern States rebelled
is not necessarily to say that they were wrong. The deliberate endeavour
of a people to separate themselves from the political sovereignty under
which they live and set up a new political community, in which their
national life shall develop itself more fully or more securely, must
always command a certain respect. Whether it is entitled further to the
full sympathy and to the support or at least acquiescence of others is a
question which in particular cases involves considerations such as cannot
be foreseen in any abstract discussion of political theory. But,
speaking very generally, it is a question in the main of the worth which
we attribute on the one hand to the common life to which it is sought to
give freer scope, and on the other hand to the common life which may