officer who
should attempt to enforce the national laws beyond the national
territory would be a trespasser. If the limits are undetermined, the
government is not territorial, and can claim as within its jurisdiction
only those who choose to acknowledge its authority. The importance of
the question has been recently brought home to the American people by
the secession of eleven or more States from the Union. Were these
States a part of the American nation, or were they not? Was the war
which followed secession, and which cost so many lives and so much
treasure, a civil war or a foreign war? Were the secessionists
traitors and rebels to their sovereign, or were they patriots fighting
for the liberty and independence of their country and the right of
self-government? All on both sides agreed that the nation is
sovereign; the dispute was as to the existence of the nation itself,
and the extent of its jurisdiction. Doubtless, when a nation has a
generally recognized existence as an historical fact, most of the
difficulties in determining who are the sovereign people can be got
over; but the question here concerns the institution of government, and
determining who constitute society and have the right to meet in
person, or by their delegates in convention, to institute it. This
question, so important, and at times so difficult, the theory of the
origin of government in the people collectively, or the nation, does
not solve, or furnish any means of solving.

But suppose this difficulty surmounted there is still another, and a
very grave one, to overcome. The theory assumes that the people
collectively, "in their own native right and might," are sovereign.
According to it the people are ultimate, and free to do whatever they
please. This sacrifices individual freedom. The origin of government
in a compact entered into by individuals, each with all and all with
each, sacrificed the rights of society, and assumed each individual to
be in himself an independent sovereignty. If logically carried out,
there could be no such crime as treason, there could be no state, and
no public authority. This new theory transfers to society the
sovereignty which that asserted for the individual, and asserts social
despotism, or the absolutism of the state. It asserts with sufficient
energy public authority, or the right of the people to govern; but it
leaves no space for individual rights, which society must recognize,
respect, an