tion of every State in the American Union, each citizen is guaranteed his natural rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and he, at the same time, is guaranteed a share of the sovereign power equal to that which can be assumed by any other citizen. This is the equality of men in the State. By the Constitution of the United States, there are no subjects. Every citizen of any one State is a free and equal citizen of the United States. Again, by the Constitution of the United States, there are no provinces, no dependencies. The Union is constituted by States, and all of them stand upon the same level of political rights.
The reduction of the two abstractions which I have mentioned into the concrete, in the Constitutions of the United States, was, like most other inventions, mainly due to accident. There were thirteen several States, in each of which, owing to fortunate circumstances attending their original colonization, each citizen was not only free but also practically equal, in his exercise of political power, to every other citizen of that State. The freedom and equality of the citizen, and the inalienability of his natural rights, were solemnly reäffirmed in the Declaration of Independence. These thirteen States were severally free and independent of each other. They therefore were equal States. Each was a sovereign. They needed free and mutual commerce among themselves, and some regulations securing to each equal facilities of commerce with foreign countries. A union was necessary to the attainment of these ends. But the citizens of each State were unwilling to surrender either their natural and inalienable rights or the guardianship of them to a common government over them all, even to attain the union which they needed so much. So a Federal Central Government was established, which was sovereign only in commerce, at home and abroad, and in the communications with other nations; that is to say, sovereign only in regard to the mutual internal relations of the States themselves, and in regard to foreign affairs. In this government the States were practically equal constituents, although that equality was modified by some limitations found necessary to secure the assent of some of the States. The States were not dissolved nor disorganized, but they remained really States, just as before, existing independently of each other and of the Union,
