America has chosen to be, in many respects and to many purposes, a Nation; and for all these purposes her government is complete, to all these objects it is competent. The people have declared, that, in the exercise of all powers given for these objects, it is supreme. It can, then, in effecting these objects, legitimately control all individuals or governments within the American territory. The Constitution and laws of a State, so far as they are repugnant to the Constitution and laws of the United States, are absolutely void. These States are constituent parts of the United States; they are members of one great empire.--CHIEF JUSTICE MARSHALL, _Cohens_ v. _Virginia_, Wheaton, Rep., Vol. VI. p. 414. * * * * * This Address was prepared as a lecture, and was delivered on a lecture-tour reaching as far as Milwaukee, Dubuque, and St. Louis. On its delivery in New York, Dr. Francis Lieber was in the chair. It became the subject of various local notice and discussion. The idea of Nationality had prevailed with Mr. Sumner from the beginning of his public life. In his appeal to Mr. Webster before the Whig State Convention, as early as September 23, 1846, while calling on the eminent Senator and orator to become _Defender of Humanity_, he recognized his received title, _Defender of the Constitution_, as justly earned by the vigor, argumentation, and eloquence with which he had “upheld the Union and that interpretation of the Constitution which makes us a Nation.”[1] And from that time he had always insisted that we were a Nation,--believing, that, while many things were justly left to local government, for which the States are the natural organs, yet the great principles of Unity and Human Rights should be placed under central guardianship, so as to be everywhere the same; and this he considered the essence of the Nation.--The word “Federal” Mr. Sumner habitually rejected for “National.” Courts and officers under the United States Government he called “National.” ADDRESS.