And hence, also, it equally appears how absurd is any claim on the part of the Nation to visit upon the State organism the penalties of the treason of individuals against itself. Let it be remembered that the State derives none of its rights from the Nation. How, then, can it be said to forfeit its rights to the Nation? The State is a separate and distinct organism, deriving its rights directly from the people within its territorial limit. They established it, and to them alone it is responsible. In the same manner, the people of the whole country, without regard to the territorial limits of States, established the Nation. The people of the whole country, therefore, have a permanent interest in the Nation, and no one portion of them may rightfully assume to set aside its supreme obligations, in disregard and violation of the organic law. If certain of the people of any State have rebelled against the National Government, attempting thus to set aside its paramount obligations, undoubtedly their lives and property are forfeit to the Nation. But how can their individual treason work a forfeiture of the State powers and functions? These have been usurped, indeed, by the armed combinations of the rebellion, but they are still complete, only awaiting the overthrow of the armed combinations to be resumed and controlled by those persons within the same territorial limit who have not rebelled. It is objected to this view that it assumes a substratum of loyal people still existing in the rebel States. The assumption is certainly warrantable when we read of the scenes--witnesses against the Southern Confederacy whose eloquence surpasses speech--that have attended the overthrow of the rebellion in Tennessee; and when we remember that even in South Carolina there are such names as Judge Pettigrew and Governor Aiken; and when in New York city alone there is to-day a large body of Georgians, whose loyalty has made them exiles, and who only await the day of their State's deliverance to return and restore their State's loyalty; and when the signs in North Carolina are so positive that a Union element yet survives there; and when even far-off Texas has her loyal exiles in our midst. Considering those 'signs of the times,' the assumption that there are loyal men in the rebellious States seems certainly a valid and proper one, and one on which fairly to rest an argument. But it is believed that the argument is good without this assumption. Suppose that, the rebellion being overthrown, not even one man remains loyal to the Nation within the territorial limits of any single State, has the State ceased to exist? A State is called, in the language of publicists, a body politic. It is, in effect, a sort of corporation, administered for the benefit of its inhabitants by trustees whom they appoint. One of the maxims of law is that a trust shall not fail for lack of a person to execute it. It might, therefore, in such a