-not of
"sovereignty."

Connection between free States on free principles was regarded by the
Fathers as the proper and perhaps the normal condition. They
recognized that connection, while based on the assumption of the
original independence of the units, necessarily implied a surrender of
the right of final decision concerning all or a part of the common
purposes to a Justiciar State, or of the right of legislation for the
common purposes, expressly defined by written agreement, to a Central
Government. Political connection with European States was dissolved in
the Revolution, and thereafter refrained from, because the European
States stood for a law of nature and of nations which did not permit
of free states being connected on free principles.

Taking the whole Declaration together, and reading it in the light of
the political literature which was put forth on both sides of the
water between the years 1764 and 1776, which is too voluminous to be
referred to here specifically, it seems to be necessary to conclude
that the views of the American statesmen of the period concerning the
nature of the connection between Great Britain and the Colonies, in
its details, were these.

They considered, as I interpret their language, that the connection
between the American Colonies, as free states, and the free and
independent State of Great Britain had existed and of right ought to
have existed under the law of nature and of nations, interpreted in so
broad a sense that it may perhaps be called the American system of the
law of nature and of nations. They accordingly claimed, as I
understand them, that Great Britain, as a free and independent state,
had power, as Justiciar over the American free states for the common
purposes of the whole connection, to finally decide, in a judicial
manner, according to the principles of the law of nature and of
nations, upon all questions arising out of the connection between
them; and that each of the American free states had power, through its
legislature, to legislate according to the just public sentiment in
each, concerning its purely local matters, and had the right to have
its local legislation executed by its executive, and interpreted and
applied in private cases by its courts.

Some of the Americans, and those the most patriotic and conservative,
thought that Great Britain had jurisdiction to ascertain and execute
the law of nations for the common purposes, and in the exercise of