o have not studied the
nature of our Government sufficiently to see the radical error on which
it rests.

The people of the United States formed the Constitution, acting through
the State legislatures in making the compact, to meet and discuss its
provisions, and acting in separate conventions when they ratified those
provisions; but the terms used in its construction show it to be a
Government in which the people of all the States, collectively, are
represented. We are _one people_ in the choice of President and
Vice-President. Here the States have no other agency than to direct the
mode in which the votes shall be given. The candidates having the
majority of all the votes are chosen. The electors of a majority of
States may have given their votes for one candidate, and yet another may
be chosen. The people, then, and not the States, are represented in the
executive branch.

In the House of Representatives there is this difference, that the
people of one State do not, as in the case of President and
Vice-President, all vote for the same officers. The people of all the
States do not vote for all the members, each State electing only its own
representatives. But this creates no material distinction. When chosen,
they are all representatives of the United States, not representatives
of the particular State from which they come. They are paid by the
United States, not by the State; nor are they accountable to it for any
act done in the performance of their legislative functions; and however
they may in practice, as it is their duty to do, consult and prefer the
interests of their particular constituents when they come in conflict
with any other partial or local interest, yet it is their first and
highest duty, as representatives of the United States, to promote the
general good.

The Constitution of the United States, then, forms a _government_, not a
league; and whether it be formed by compact between the States or in any
other manner, its character is the same. It is a Government in which all
the people are represented, which operates directly on the people
individually, not upon the States; they retained all the power they did
not grant. But each State, having expressly parted with so many powers
as to constitute, jointly with the other States, a single nation, can
not, from that period, possess any right to secede, because such
secession does not break a league, but destroys the unity of a nation;
and any injury to