f the Union and the several States. The
people of a Territory belonging to the United States or included in the
public domain not yet erected into a State and admitted into the Union,
are subjects of the United States, without any political rights
whatever, and, though a part of the population, are no part of the
sovereign people of the United States. They become a part of that
people, with political rights and franchises, only when they are
erected into a State, and admitted into the Union as one of the United
States. They may meet in convention, draw up and adopt a constitution
declaring or assuming them to be a State, elect State officers,
senators, and representatives in the State legislature, and
representatives and senators in Congress, but they are not yet a State,
and are, as before, under the Territorial government established by the
General Government. It does not exist as a State till recognized by
Congress and admitted into the Union. The existence of the State, and
the rights and powers of the people within the State, depend on their
being a State in the Union, or a State united. Hence a State erected on
the national domain, but itself outside of the Union, is not an
independent foreign State, but simply no State at all, in any sense of
the term. As there is no union outside of the States, so is there no
State outside of the Union; and to be a citizen either of a State or of
the United States, it is necessary to be a citizen of a State, and of a
State in the Union. The inhabitants of Territories not yet erected
into States are subjects, not citizens--that is, not citizens with
political rights. The sovereign people are not the people outside of
State organization, nor the people of the States severally, but the
distinct people of the several States united, and therefore most
appropriately called the people of the United States.

This is the peculiarity of the American constitution and is
substantially the very peculiarity noted and dwelt upon by Mr. Madison
in his masterly letter to Edward Everett, published in the "North
American Review," October, 1830.

"I In order to understand the true character of the constitution of the
United States," says Mr. Madison, "the error, not uncommon, must be
avoided of viewing it through the medium either of a consolidated
government or of a confederated government, whilst it is neither the
one nor the other, but a mixture of both. And having, in no model, the
s