The object of this argument, (confessed in its conclusion,) is to prove that the People of some of these now United States, while in their colonial state, declared themselves to be a Nation, by the Declaration of Independence made in 1776, under which they became "One People." The necessary and inevitable result of this would be, that the People having once resolved themselves into one Nation, could not thereafter create themselves into separate and independent sovereignties, otherwise than by force, or by common consent.
But as no one has presumed, as yet at least, to establish, or to attempt to establish sovereignty here, by force; and as there exists not the slightest memorial of any common consent on the part of this supposed Nation, to its own dismemberment, therefore the sovereignty of the States never could have existed. The author of this Proclamation, does not seem to have been aware of the fact, which I stated in my last number, that before the declaration of Independence in July 1776, the People of Virginia certainly, and of several of the other Colonies, I believe, had severally announced their own sovereignty and independence, in totally dissolving their former government, and ordaining new governments for themselves respectively. But if such a fact had been known to him, it would not have changed the intended effect of his conclusion; because, as this new Nation is said to have been created by the People, a part of which People the creators of State sovereignties were, their last act would of course have abrogated and annulled their first, and so put an end to the sovereignty which they had created but a short time before. So that the Sovereignty of all the States which had declared themselves sovereign before the declaration of Independence in July 1776, is as certainly annulled, as the existence of the sovereignty of those States who had not then declared it, is prevented, by the mere assertion of this simple fact of our existence as one nation, if that fact was true. A matter so important in its consequences ought not, and would not be conceded, to the mere say-so of any man, although that man might be the President; therefore, it became indispensably necessary, that he should prove it. Hence the attempt to do so.—Let me now examine what these proofs are.
As the object was to prove the existence of a Nation, the first
