te
of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved."

In this it was necessarily implied that the Colonies had always been
free states or free and independent states, and that, by the
Declaration, at most their right of independent statehood came into
existence; that they had theretofore at all times been in political
connection, either as free states under the law of nature and of
nations, or as free and independent states by implied treaty, with the
free and independent State of Great Britain; that the dissolution of
the connection had not come about by an act of secession on their
part, but was due to the violation, by the State of Great Britain,
either of the law of nature and of nations, or of the implied treaty
on which the political connection was based.

The term "connection" was an apt term to express a relationship of
equality and dignity. "Connection" implies two things, considered as
units distinct from one another, which are bound together by a
connecting medium. Just connection implies free statehood in all the
communities connected. Union is a form of connection in which the
connected free states are consolidated into a unity for the common
purposes, though separate for local purposes. Merger is the fusion of
two or more free states into a single unitary state. Connection
between free states may be through a legislative medium, or through a
justiciary medium, or through an executive medium. The connecting
medium may be a person, a body corporate, or a state. States connected
through a legislative medium, whether a person, a body corporate or a
state, and whether wholly external to the states connected or to some
extent internal to them, whose legislative powers are unlimited or
which determines the limits of its own legislative powers, are
"dependent" upon or "subject" to the will of the legislative medium.
Such states are "dependencies," "dominions," "subject-states," or more
accurately "slave-states,"--or more accurately still, not states at
all, but mere aggregations of slave-individuals. States connected
through a legislative medium, whether a person, a body corporate or a
state, and whether wholly external to the states connected or in part
internal to them, whose legislative powers are granted by the states
and which has only such legislative powers as are granted, are in a
condition of limited dependence, dominion, and subjection; but their
relationship is by their voluntary act and