ignty. It is a gross
error to confound the *exercise* of sovereign powers with *sovereignty*
itself, or the *delegation* of such powers with the *surrender* of
them. A sovereign may delegate his powers to be exercised by as many
agents as he may think proper, under such conditions and with such
limitations as he may impose; but to surrender any portion of his
sovereignty to another is to annihilate the whole. The Senator from
Delaware (Mr. Clayton) calls this metaphysical reasoning, which he says
he cannot comprehend. If by metaphysics he means that scholastic
refinement which makes distinctions without difference, no one can hold
it in more utter contempt than I do; but if, on the contrary, he means
the power of analysis and combination--that power which reduces the
most complex idea into its elements, which traces causes to their first
principle, and, by the power of generalization and combination, unites
the whole in one harmonious system--then, so far from deserving
contempt, it is the highest attribute of the human mind. It is the
power which raises man above the brute--which distinguishes his
faculties from mere sagacity, which he holds in common with inferior
animals. It is this power which has raised the astronomer from being a
mere gazer at the stars to the high intellectual eminence of a Newton
or a Laplace, and astronomy itself from a mere observation of isolated
facts into that noble science which displays to our admiration the
system of the universe. And shall this high power of the mind, which
has effected such wonders when directed to the laws which control the
material world, be forever prohibited, under a senseless cry of
metaphysics, from being applied to the high purposes of political
science and legislation? I hold them to be subject to laws as fixed as
matter itself, and to be as fit a subject for the application of the
highest intellectual power. Denunciation may, indeed, fall upon the
philosophical inquirer into these first principles, as it did upon
Galileo and Bacon, when they first unfolded the great discoveries which
have immortalized their names; but the time will come when truth will
prevail in spite of prejudice and denunciation, and when politics and
legislation will be considered as much a science as astronomy and
chemistry.

In connection with this part of the subject, I understood the Senator
from Virginia (Mr. Rives) to say that sovereignty was divided, and that
a portion rem