by declaring the Colonies to be free and independent
States and following this statement by the statement that the
political connection between them and the State of Great Britain was
dissolved, leaves it doubtful whether the American claim was that the
Colonies had always been free and independent States in treaty
connection with Great Britain or merely free states in connection with
Great Britain under the law of nature and of nations. The arrangement
of the sentences was probably necessary to satisfy the extreme states
rights party, but the study of great documents discloses that nearly
all contain such compromises, and that the judgment of posterity
usually approves the judgment of the less extreme party. When we
consider, however, that even Jefferson, the most extreme of the states
rights party in the Continental Congress, has recorded his belief that
the whole issue of the Revolution could have been settled if Great
Britain had adopted the principle of Lord Chatham's bill, and if that
bill on the one side and the Fourth Resolution on the other had been
taken as the basis of settlement, it is at least not unreasonable to
conclude that the extreme states rights theory was put forward more in
order that the Americans might have something to concede in a bargain
with Great Britain than from any belief in the justness of it, and
that the real belief of the Americans was that the Colonies had always
been free states, but not independent until they so declared
themselves, and that their political connection with the State of
Great Britain was under the law of nature and of nations, and not by
implied treaty with the State of Great Britain.

Independence was regarded, if this interpretation be correct, as a
conditional universal right of free states. Those free states which
conform to the conditions necessary to independence--great physical
strength, great moral and intellectual ability, and great qualities of
leadership--were regarded as entitled to the right of independence.
But independence of a free state, as regarded other free states,
meant, to the Fathers, only leadership and judgeship. The law of
nature and of nations, being universal, they considered as abolishing
sovereignty in the European sense, so that the highest function of an
independent State was to be the Justiciar of other States. In the
literature of the Revolution we find the rights of free and
independent states described as rights of "jurisdiction"-