ionship being really one which implies "empire" or "dominion" on
one side, and "subjection" or "dependence" on the other. Such
connections are properly called "empires" or "dominions." So also all
connections in which the only connecting medium is a common executive,
whether a person, a body corporate or a state, are fictitious
connections, the relationship being one of "permanent alliance" or
"confederation" between independent states. Such connections are
properly called "alliances" or "confederations." The only true
connections are those in which there is a legislative medium, whether
a person, a body corporate or a state, whose legislative powers are
limited, by agreement of the connected states, to the common purposes,
and those in which there is a justiciary medium, whether a person, a
body corporate, or a state, which recognizes its powers as limited to
the common purposes by the law of nature and of nations, and which
ascertains and applies this law, incidentally adjudicating, according
to this law, the limits of its own jurisdiction. Just connections tend
to become unions, it being found in practice necessary, for the
preservation of the connection in due order, that the power of
adjudicating and applying the law for the common purposes should
extend not only to the states, but to all individuals throughout the
states.

Thus "dependence," as a fictitious and vicious form of connection, is,
it would appear, forever opposed to "connection" of a just and proper
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"?

Summarizing, then, the result of this examination of the philosophy of
the Declaration, so far as it relates to communities rather than
persons, it appears that the central conception of this philosophy is
that of a universal right of free statehood. This conception, more
specifically, is, it seems, that all communities on the earth's
surface, within limits of territorial extent of such reasonable
dimensions that within the area of each the just common sentiment
about local concerns and external relations can be conveniently
ascertained and executed, have an unalienable right to be free states
and as such to have their respective just local sentiments about local
matters ascertained and executed by their respective governments, this
being, according to