RIGHTS OF SELF GOVERNMENT.

These are founded on the sovereignty of each State, and the declaration of Independence.

State sovereignty is a doctrine or principle in America which the people have been taught to admire and respect both by education and tradition. It is upon this basis that the foundation of the Government and the liberties of the people rest as their chief corner stone. "Destroy it," said Governor Brown of Georgia, and the whole fabric falls to the ground; and centralised despotic power takes the place of constitutional liberty."

The

Some avow that as the preamble of the Constitution commences, "We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union," &c., the local individual sovereignties were merged into one united national sovereignty; or it would have been made to read "We, the several States;" or the "people of the respective States," &c. great centralised power of a national sovereignty exercising supreme power, and wielding unlimited sway over all the States is entirely subverted in the tenth article of the amendment to the Constitution, which says, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Believing in this doctrine, South Carolina threatened to use her pre

rogative in her war with the "Black Tariff" socalled. Influenced by the same belief, Massachusetts discovered an evident intention to do the same thing. The Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, who is now denouncing the doctrine of State sovereignty as a heresy, in a sermon preached October 30, 1859, proclaimed, as with the voice of a trumpet, "That these sovereign States are not united by any federal ligament, but by vital interests; by a common national life;" that "a people had a right to change their rulers, their government, their whole political condition ;" and that "it belonged to all men on the face of the globe without regard to complexion." On January 31, 1861, in Association Hall, Albany, New York, at the Annual Anti-slavery Convention, the following resolution was adopted :—

6. Resolved, therefore, That it is the solemn and imperative duty of the Senators and Representatives of the non-slaveholding States and Territories to return at once to their respective constituencies and take immediate measures for the formation of a new Northern Confederacy-that shall be indeed free! the asylum of the oppressed of all nations; uncursed by the presence of slaveholders, unstained by blood of slaves.

Surely abolitionists or emancipationists cannot complain when others claim the same rights and privileges as themselves.

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

THIS forms another basis of self-government in America; as it embodies the "rights of 1776, when both North and South threw off their allegiance to England, and proclaimed as sacred and supreme the sovereignty of the people, created by the following self-evident truths, viz., "that all men are created free and equal; are endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that when any form of government becomes destructive of these ends it is the right of the people to alter, or abolish, and institute a new government laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." In honour of these truths every fourth of July is ushered in, and celebrated by a magnificent display of bunting, peals of merry bells, arches of evergreens and flowers, processions, orations, the firing of cannon, bonfires, illuminations, fireworks, the blowing of trumpets, and the shoutings of the "free."

On the above basis the Southern States claimed an equal right with any of the Northern States to secede from the Union; and exercising it, passed the following ordinances of secession.

TEXAS ORDINANCE OF SECESSION.

[Passed Feb. 1, 1561.]

Sec. 1. Whereas, the Federal government has failed to accomplish the purposes of the compact of union between these States in giving protection either to the persons of our people upon an exposed frontier, or to the property of our citizens; and whereas, the action of the Northern States is violative of the compact between the States and the guarantees of the constitution; and whereas, the recent development in Federal affairs make it evident that the power of the Federal Government is sought to be made a weapon with which to strike down the interests and property of the people of Texas and her sister slaveholding States, instead of permitting it to be, as was intended, our shield against outrage and aggression: Therefore, we, the people of the State of Texas, by delegates in the Convention assembled, do declare and ordain that the ordinance adopted by our convention of delegates on the 4th day of July A.D., 1845, and afterwards ratified by us, under which the Republic of Texas was admitted into the Union with other States, and became a party to the compact styled, "The Constitution of the United States of America," be and is hereby repealed and annulled.

VIRGINIA ORDINANCE OF SECESSION.

[Passed April 17, 1861.]

The people of Virginia in the ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in Convention on the 25th day of June 1788, having declared that the powers granted under the said constitution were derived from the people of the United States, and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression, and the Federal government having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern slaveholding States.

Now, therefore we, the people of Virginia, do declare and ordain, that the ordinance adopted by the people of this State in Convention on the 25th day of June 1788, whereby the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified, and all acts of the General Assembly of this State ratifying or adopting amendments to said Constitution, are hereby repealed and abrogated; that the Union between the State of Virginia and the other States under the Constitution aforesaid is hereby dissolved, and that the State of Virginia is in the full possession and exercise of all the rights of sovereignty which belong and appertain to a free and independent State. And they do further declare that said Constitution of the United States of America is no longer binding on any of the citizens of this State.