"confederation" between independent states. Such connections are properly called "alliances" or "confederations." The only true connections are those in which there is a legislative medium, whether a person, a body corporate or a state, whose legislative powers are limited, by agreement of the connected states, to the common purposes, and those in which there is a justiciary medium, whether a person, a body corporate, or a state, which recognizes its powers as limited to the common purposes by the law of nature and of nations, and which ascertains and applies this law, incidentally adjudicating, according to this law, the limits of its own jurisdiction. Just connections tend to become unions, it being found in practice necessary, for the preservation of the connection in due order, that the power of limited legislation for the common purposes and the power of adjudicating and applying the law for the common purposes should extend not only to the states, but to all individuals throughout the states. Thus "dependence," as a fictitious and vicious form of connection, is, it would appear, forever opposed to "connection" of a just and proper kind. If it were attempted to sum up the issue of the American Revolution in an epigram, would not that epigram be: "'Colony,' or 'Free State?' 'Dependence,' or 'Just Connection?' 'Empire,' or 'Union?'" According to the opinion of the Revolutionary statesmen, as it would seem, a universal right of free statehood does not imply a universal right of self-government. Statehood and self-government are two different and distinct conceptions. The Americans claimed the right of free statehood as a part of the universal rights of man, but they claimed the right of self-government because they were Englishmen trained by generations of experience in the art of self-government and so capable of exercising the art. A state is not less or more a free state because it has self-government. It is a free state when its just public sentiment is to any extent ascertained and executed by its government,--however that government may be instituted,--free from the control of any external power. It does not prevent a region from being a free state that its government is wholly or partly appointed by an external power, if that government is free from external control in ascertaining and executing the just local sentiment to any extent. Nor does it interfere with the right of free statehood when an external power stands by merely to see that the local government ascertains and executes the just local sentiment to a proper extent. The external power in that case is upholding the free statehood of the region. It stands as surety for the continuance of free statehood.