umption of sovereign power, and the institution
of civil government, are all acts of transcendent authority, which
the people alone are competent to perform; and, accordingly, it is
in the name and by the authority of the people, that two of these
acts--the dissolution of allegiance, with the severance from the
British empire, and the declaration of the United Colonies, as free
and independent States, were performed by that instrument.

But there still remained the last and crowning act, which the people
of the Union alone were competent to perform--the institution of
civil government, for that compound nation, the United States of
America.

At this day it cannot but strike us as extraordinary, that it does
not appear to have occurred to any one member of that assembly,
which had laid down in terms so clear, so explicit, so unequivocal,
the foundation of all just government, in the imprescriptible rights
of man, and the transcendent sovereignty of the people, and who in
those principles had set forth their only personal vindication from
the charges of rebellion against their king, and of treason to their
country, that their last crowning act was still to be performed upon
the same principles. That is, the institution, by the people of the
United States, of a civil government, to guard and protect and
defend them all. On the contrary, that same assembly which issued
the Declaration of Independence, instead of continuing to act in the
name and by the authority of the good people of the United States,
had, immediately after the appointment of the committee to prepare
the Declaration, appointed another committee, of one member from
each colony, to prepare and digest the form of confederation to be
entered into between the colonies.

That committee reported on the twelfth of July, eight days after the
Declaration of Independence had been issued, a draft of articles of
confederation between the colonies. This draft was prepared by John
Dickinson, then a delegate from Pennsylvania, who voted against the
Declaration of Independence, and never signed it, having been
superseded by a new election of delegates from that State, eight
days after his draft was reported.

There was thus no congeniality of principle between the Declaration
of Independence and the articles of confederation. The foundation of
the former was a superintending Providence--the rights of man, and
the constituent revolutionary power of the people. Tha