r
kind. If it were attempted to sum up the issue of the American
Revolution in an epigram, would not that epigram be: "'Colony,' or
'Free State?' 'Dependence,' or 'Just Connection?' 'Empire,' or
'Union?'"

According to the opinion of the Revolutionary statesmen, as it would
seem, a universal right of free statehood does not imply a universal
right of self-government. Statehood and self-government are two
different and distinct conceptions. The Americans claimed the right of
free statehood as a part of the universal rights of man, but they
claimed the right of self-government because they were Englishmen
trained by generations of experience in the art of self-government and
so capable of exercising the art. A state is not less or more a free
state because it has self-government. It is a free state when its just
public sentiment is to any extent ascertained and executed by its
government,--however that government may be instituted,--free from the
control of any external power. It does not prevent a region from being
a free state that its government is wholly or partly appointed by an
external power, if that government is free from external control in
ascertaining and executing the just local sentiment to any extent. Nor
does it interfere with the right of free statehood when an external
power stands by merely to see that the local government ascertains
and executes the just local sentiment to a proper extent. The external
power in that case is upholding the free statehood of the region. It
stands as surety for the continuance of free statehood.

The right of self-government, according to this view, is a conditional
universal right of free states. When a community, inhabiting a region of
such territorial extent that it is not too large to make it possible for
a just public sentiment concerning its affairs to be developed and
executed, and not so small as to make it inconvenient that it should be
in any respect free from external control, is of such moral and
intellectual capacity that it can form and execute a just public
sentiment concerning its internal affairs and its relations with other
communities, states and nations, it has not only the right of free
statehood,--that is, of political personality,--which is of universal
right, but also the right of self-government. The right of such a free
state to self-government is complete if there be no just political
connection or union between it and other free states, or par