In this sudden transformation where was the sovereignty? It was declared that the _United_ Colonies are and _of right_ ought to be free and independent States. It was never declared that the _separate_ Colonies were so _of right_. Plainly they never were so _in fact_. Therefore there was no separate sovereignty either of right or in fact. The sovereignty anterior to Independence was in the mother country; afterwards it was in the people of the United States, who took the place of the mother country. As the original sovereignty was undivided, so also was that sovereignty of the people which became its substitute. If authority were needed for this irresistible conclusion, I might find it in the work of the great commentator, Mr. Justice Story, and in that powerful discourse of John Quincy Adams entitled “The Jubilee of the Constitution,” in both of which the sovereignty is accorded to the People, and not to the States. Nor should I forget that rarest political genius, Alexander Hamilton, who, regarding these things as a contemporary, declared most triumphantly that “the Union had complete sovereignty”; that “the Declaration of Independence was the fundamental constitution of every State”; and, finally, that “the union and independence of these States are blended and incorporated in one and the same act.”[20] Such was the great beginning of national life. * * * * * A beautiful meditative poet, whose words are often most instructive, confesses that we may reach heights we cannot hold:-- “And the most difficult of tasks to keep Heights which the soul is competent to gain.”[21]