the right to respect, was the necessity of the time.
To answer this necessity was a very different thing from conducting the
war. Commerce was now to take the place of naval conflict; mutual
intercourse in the interest of trade was to replace the performance of
those duties which the common defence had imposed. The life of the
people was now to be saved, not by armed struggles in its defence, but
by nurturing its resources, opening its various channels, and freeing it
for the performance of its healthful and renewing functions.

For this purpose, a system which could not make treaties of commerce
without leaving it in the power of thirteen States to break them by
retaliation, which could not prevent one or all of these States from
utterly prohibiting the import or export of such commodities as they
chose, and which left the people powerless to induce or compel
advantages from foreign commerce, while it was even more helpless in
regard to domestic commerce--for this purpose such a system was
absolutely useless.

After struggling for a few years under the cramping and confusing
effects of this system, it was given up, and the Constitution, as framed
in 1787, was adopted. The relations assumed by the States at this time
were marked. By the Articles, each State had retained its sovereignty,
freedom, and independence. By the Constitution, the people and the
States reserved such powers as were not expressly given to the United
States, or prohibited to the States. The omission of the claim to
sovereignty and independence in the Constitution, is as significant as
is its presence in the Articles. It appears as a definite surrender of
those attributes, as complete, as binding, as permanent as language
could make it. Nor must we forget, while the momentous questions of our
times are yet undecided, that sovereignty once surrendered can never be
'resumed.' The relations, the duties, and the attributes of the life to
which it belongs have been completely and forever given up, while those
of another have been as entirely and irrevocably assumed.

The States had thus passed from one into another sphere of existence,
whose relations were as different as their objects. The Articles were a
league of friendship for common defence, the security of liberties, and
the general and mutual welfare. No identity of interest was supposed to
exist or sought to be served. Such needs as were, at the time of the
adoption, felt in common, were provide