The colonial history of the United States supplies several instances in which they associated themselves together for common defence. The New England colonies did so in the seventeenth century, and their association lasted without the notice of the mother country for forty years. Another union of a somewhat similar kind was attempted in the course of the eighteenth century, not out of any feeling of hostility to Great Britain, but simply for purposes of mutual assistance. During the War of Independence a third confederacy was formed, by the help of which the struggle with England was brought to a successful conclusion. Subsequently to the year 1783 the league between the thirteen States continued under another form; but their connection, as in former cases, was nothing more than a confederacy the units of which were States, and not individuals. The constitution which is at present undergoing the process of dissolution was framed by the principal statesmen of the nation in 1787, and by June, 1790, was finally ratified and accepted by all the States. No one who reads it with attention, and follows out its practical application in the subsequent history and present condition of the States, can fail to see that the language common amongst Englishmen in relation to the dissolution of the Union proceeds upon an inadequate notion of the importance of the benefits which the constitution confers, the magnitude of the interests which it protects, and the practical importance of the questions which would be at once raised by its dissolution. There cannot be a greater mistake than that of viewing the States as a mere league, some of the members of which are struggling to retain the rest as allies against their will; or as a sort of transatlantic Austria, insisting on the subjugation of a transatlantic Venice. The following sketch of the principal provisions of the constitution may serve to give a definite notion of what it is for which the Northerners are preparing to fight. Every one knows that the United States are governed by a President and a Congress, consisting of two Houses, the Senate and the House of Representatives; but viewing them, as we naturally do, principally from without, the way in which the powers of government are divided between Congress and the State legislatures, and the consequences which that division involves, are less familiar to us.