ciples. But a true and
indisputable doctrine of State Rights there is, which ought to be as
jealously maintained and guarded as the doctrine of National
Sovereignty. The _Atlantic_ author asserts that, because the State
offices in the rebel States have been vacated, therefore Congress has
the authority to govern them, and intimates that all powers not reserved
to the respective States belong to Congress, _because there is no other
to wield them_. This is not true. Every power possessed of the Federal
Government must be actually granted. It must attach to that Government,
not because it belongs to no other, but because it is granted by the
Constitution.

Our author quotes Mr. Phillimore as saying 'a state, like an individual,
may die, by its submission and the donation of itself to another
country.' Very true; but the word _state_ must, in that sense, be
equivalent to _nation_; and our author admits that a State cannot
perform the first act necessary to be done in so giving itself away,
viz., withdrawing itself from the Union. If, therefore, it cannot
withdraw itself from the authority of the Federal Government, very
clearly it cannot donate itself to the self-styled Confederate
Government. If a thief sell or give his ill-gotten possession to
another, it in no way affects the right of the owner. He cannot give
away that which he does not own; and so of a State. Another error into
which the _Atlantic_ author has fallen, is that, in assigning the three
sources of Congressional power, 'ample and hospitable,' he enumerates as
one of them 'the necessity of the case;' but, as we have already seen,
Congress possesses no powers but those expressly granted by the
Constitution. If Congress may assert its authority in this instance,
from the necessity of the case, and be itself the judge of that
necessity, when no authority is given by the instrument, which expressly
declares that all powers not granted by it are reserved, where are we to
find a limit, and why may not that body assert itself in any number of
instances, until, at length, the rights of the States are wholly
absorbed by the overmastering power of the Federal Government? There is
but _one_ rightful source of authority to Congress, and that is the
Constitution, which itself so declares, and which is the supreme law of
the land.

But the true course to be pursued is, we think, to allow the rebel
States (as indeed we cannot help doing) to be governed by the military
po