amily, and is republican as distinguished from despotic
constitutions, but it comes under the head of neither monarchical nor
aristocratic, neither democratic nor mixed constitutions, and creates a
state which is neither a centralized state nor a confederacy. The
difficulty of understanding it is augmented by the peculiar use under
it of the word state, which does not in the American system mean a
sovereign community or political society complete in itself, like
France, Spain, or Prussia, nor yet a political society subordinate to
another political society and dependent on it. The American States are
all sovereign States united, but, disunited, are no States at all. The
rights and powers of the States are not derived from the United States,
nor the rights and powers of the United States derived from the States.

The simple fact is, that the political or sovereign people of the
United States exists as united States, and only as united States. The
Union and the States are coeval, born together, and can exist only
together. Separation is dissolution--the death of both. The United
States are a state, a single sovereign state; but this single sovereign
state consists in the union and solidarity of States instead of
individuals. The Union is in each of the States, and each of the
States is in the Union.

It is necessary to distinguish in the outset between the United States
and the government of the United States, or the so-called Federal
government, which the convention refused, contrary to its first
intention to call the national government. That government is not a
supreme national government, representing all the powers of the United
States, but a limited government, restricted by its constitution to
certain specific relations and interests. The United States are
anterior to that government, and the first question to be settled
relates to their internal and inherent Providential constitution as one
political people or sovereign state. The written constitution, in its
preamble, professes to be ordained by "We, the people of the United
States." Who are this people? How are they constituted, or what the
mode and conditions of their political existence? Are they the people
of the States severally? No; for they call themselves the people of
the United States. Are they a national people, really existing outside
and independently of their organization into distinct and mutually
independent States? No; for they defi