Nation with full and complete National powers, or is it a mere thread upon which States are strung as are the beads upon a necklace?
Let us look back a hundred years. The War of the Revolution commenced merely as a rebellion of the Colonies against the Nation to which they belonged. Though all were located on the continent of America, each colony was under its own charter, separate and distinct from every other one. Each colony resisted what it deemed to be acts of oppression against itself. Therefore, the War of the Revolution began as the resistance of individual colonies, but with the progress of this resistance grew up a feeling of united interests, and in 1774 eleven of these colonies, and a portion of the twelfth, connected themselves under certain articles of association. The colonies still considered themselves as belonging to the British Empire, and in these articles avowed their allegiance to His Majesty, George the Third. Although we date the birth of our nation two years later, our nationality actually dates back to these articles of association, for the colonies bound themselves as one in regard to non-importation, non-exportation, and non-consumption; the first two pledges having National bearing as regarded commerce, and the last one regulating internal affairs in a National manner. This course of the colonies made them one, and has had a bearing on our every step since, even up to this day of grace, January 17, 1873. Resolutions of independence and freedom from all control of Great Britain were introduced into the Colonial Congress in June, 1776, and the committee which was then appointed to draft a declaration of independent government was required to base it upon the first resolution of the June declaration of rights, which said, "These United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent," etc. The veriest school-boy needs not to be told the date of this instrument, which we are fond of terming the "Great Charter of our Liberties;" yet even professed statesmen, from that day to this, have seemingly forgotten that this declaration was agreed to, and signed by the already United Colonies in their Congress assembled, and issued as the action of "one people." No new Congress met; the declaration was not the act of single colonies, or states, but the act of already united colonies, or states, and in this instrument we first find our National name of United States.
The members of Congress did not sign this declaration as New Yorkers, or Virginians, or New Englanders, but as Americans. Nor was it referred to different colonies for approbation, but on that very Fourth of July, 1776, Congress, with already National authority, flung to the world the announcement that these united colonies were a Nation, and ordered that copies of the declaration should be sent to the several colonial assemblies, conventions, councils of safety, and to each of the commanding officers of the Continental troops, and that it should be proclaimed in each of the United States, and at the head of the army. We see, therefore, that the Declaration of Independence, in being truly National, was wholly centralizing—and much more so than any act since, and is therefore the truest basis of our liberties.
Our age has annihilated space; danger lies in darkness and distance. With every newspaper, every railroad, every line of telegraph, danger from centralized National power grows less. With the newspaper, the railroad,