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declaration in the Articles of Confederation that each state was sovereign has to him no force as against the fact to the contrary. And the absence of such a declaration in the Constitution of 1789 is of no significance one way or the other. Sovereignty is a conception wholly apart from the form and powers of government, and the latter alone are the subject-matter of a constitution. Such a theory obviously leaves no room for a constitutional right of secession. The union-state was established for the whole population and territory included within it. Whatever rights any one of the constituent states possessed were but incidental to membership in the union. Renunciation of such membership would be ipso facto the disappearance of the state. So Dr. Hurd holds that Rhode Island and North Carolina, if they had persisted in their refusal to ratify the Constitution of 1789, far from assuming the rank of independent nations, would merely have become subject territory of the union-state.

The author thus disposes of state rights and state sovereignty; but he has a very serious grievance against recent writers of a strongly nationalistic type. While he will not see the union-state separated into lesser sovereignties, no more will he see the individual states absorbed into the greater unit. The state which resulted from the revolution was federal, not national. Its essence was in the association of thirteen political corporations, not in the aggregation of the human units contained in these corporations. The author has no patience with the rather fashionable theory that sovereignty de facto vested in the Continental Congress by virtue of its actual exercise of governmental functions. Such a view, he thinks, confuses the sovereign with its agent. He can see no ground for the assertion that under the Confederation the several states usurped sovereignty from the people, who by peaceful revolution regained it under the Constitution of 1789. No single state ever possessed sovereignty, original or usurped, and the people of the United States as a whole never appears in history as a political fact. The Constitution of 1789, like the Articles of Confederation, was a frame of government resting for its authority upon the collective will and force the sovereignty of the states which united in its ratification. The question settled by the Civil War was simply one of fact, viz. whether the states voluntarily remaining together and composing the continuing union-state had the will and force to maintain the former dominion over all the territory and population pertaining to it.

Without discussing here the difficult points in the author's theory points with which our history since 1861 fairly bristles-it must be remarked that Dr. Hurd's antipathy to the advocates of the national theory leads him at times into misconceptions of their views. He refuses to distinguish between political and legal sovereignty. His own

doctrine refers wholly to the former, but he occasionally administers a castigation to a supposed adversary whose arguments are concerned as exclusively with the latter. He is right in seeking to limit the application of the term to a single conception, but, until the terminology of political science is much more perfect than at present, some allowance must be made. The embodiment of superior force which lies back of all political organization is no doubt the ultimate sovereign. shall we call that supreme legislative authority which must exist somewhere in the organization as completed? The sovereign which makes the constitution of the United States possible is, according to Dr. Hurd, such states in combination as have the will and force to maintain the union. Two states sufficiently powerful would seem to be enough under this definition. Yet, under the existing constitution, no change in the fundamental law of his union-state can be made save through the action of more than thirty. New York and Pennsylvania might preserve the union by force; but three-fourths of forty-four commonwealths must work together to strengthen the legal ties that bind it. Obviously there is a marked distinction between the political and the legal sovereign. Dr. Hurd seems to think that every one who speaks of a sovereign other than the political must mean the government, and hence must fall into a very silly confusion. His error is in the insufficiency of his own analysis, which fails consistently to discriminate between the power which makes any government possible and that which determines the form and authority of a particular government, — between the sovereignty back of the constitution and what may be called the sovereignty in the constitution.

With this distinction in mind Dr. Hurd would not have so much difficulty with the theory of revolution in 1787. He will hear of "revolution" only when there is a change in the political sovereign; but some at least of the nationalistic writers apply the term to a change in the legal sovereign, and such a change undoubtedly occurred. Under the Articles of Confederation an amendment of the supreme organic law of the union-state required the action of every state; under the new constitution, the action of three-fourths was made sufficient. Many other of the barriers that separate our author from the national school disappear under the solvent power of this distinction. In fact, the essential principle of his theory and theirs is the same, viz. the continued existence of a single political entity in the region separated from Great Britain by the Revolutionary War. He calls this entity a union-state; they call it a nation. Another might say that, before 1865, the former name was more accurate; after that date, the latter.

WM. A. DUNNING.

The Veto Power. Its Origin, Development and Function in the government of the United States (1789-1889). By 'EDWARD CAMPBELL MASON, A.B. [Harvard Historical Monographs. Edited. by Albert Bushnell Hart, Ph.D. No. 1.] Boston, Ginn and Company, 1890. — 8vo, 232 pp.

Mr. Mason has made a valuable contribution to our constitutional history. His first chapter, entitled "Genesis of the Veto Power," is perhaps a trifle meagre when compared with the very full chapters that follow; but this deficiency must, it seems, be set down to the exigencies of space which deprived us of the contemplated chapters on the workings of the veto in the states and in modern constitutions.

The next three chapters discuss the entire series of Presidential vetoes, and the basis of classification is found in the fact that "all measures of Congress relate either to the form of the government or to the exercise of its powers." Accordingly the second chapter deals with vetoes affecting the form of government (a limited class); the third, with those affecting the distribution of powers, and the fourth, with those affecting the exercise of powers. The various subdivisions adopted cannot be noted, but they are indicated in the headings of the chapters and can be easily followed.

In the fifth chapter, entitled "Constitutional Procedure as to Vetoes," Mr. Mason, with good reason, controverts Mr. J. H. Benton's proposition that the objections assigned must be objections to the intrinsic merits of the bill. The sixth and final chapter treats of the political development of the veto power. Then follow six appendices, three of which are by the editor of the series. These add much to the value of the treatise, especially the first, which gives a chronological list of all (433) the bills vetoed from April 6, 1789 to March 4, 1889. Ten of these vetoes had been overlooked by the Senate Committee on Printing in their report of 1886. A good index concludes the book, and the proof-reading has been careful, only a few unimportant mistakes having been noticed.

Mr. Mason's treatment of the vetoes discussed is clear and to the point. His freedom from political bias is shown everywhere, especially when he has to deal with the vetoes of Jackson, Tyler, Johnson and Cleveland. His researches have been thorough and the conclusions he has drawn from them are worthy of attention; but only two can be quoted here:

The record forcibly demonstrates the wisdom and foresight of the founders of the constitution, in their expectation that the veto would be an efficient instrument in maintaining the balance of power between the executive and legislative departments.

It may be said that the veto has been used to prevent Congress from undu'y extending its authority; that in almost all cases it has been used wisely; and that it has failed only in those cases in which Congress has been supported by a strong public opinion, or in which the majority of the people took no interest.

In conclusion the hope may be expressed that the "irregular intervals" at which this series is announced to appear may not turn out to mean infrequent intervals. W. P. TRENT.

Essays in the Constitutional History of the United States in the Formative Period, 1775-1789. Edited by J. FRANKLIN JAMESON, PH.D. Boston and New York, Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1889. -xiii, 321 pp.

The essays comprised in this volume all deal with some phase of the social or political life of the United States during the epoch which the editor calls the formative period (1775-1789). They seek to exhibit in various organizations the workings of that national and humanitarian spirit which is embodied in the Declaration of Independence, the Ordinance for the Government of the Northwestern Territory and the Constitution of 1789. Mr. Guggenheimer's essay on "The Development of the Executive Departments" forms the exception to this statement. It is a careful and thorough study in the history of administrative law. The author takes up the executive departments seriatim and by comparison shows how all follow the same law in the process of the separation of the executive from the legislative. The article is somewhat disfigured by an annoying flippancy of tone. It is based on original research, and the author has evidently convinced himself of the correctness of his statements; still, the reader would like to be acquainted with the reasons for some of them.

The first essay, by Professor Jameson, deals with the predecessors of the present federal judiciary: the tribunal for territorial disputes; the commonwealth courts appointed to try charges of piracies and felonies committed upon the high seas; and the court of appeal in cases of capture. It contains a very interesting summary of the origin, history and procedure of these courts; but it is unfortunately brought into comparison with J. C. Bancroft Davis's longer and completer essay on the same subject, contained in the centennial volume of Supreme Court reports. "The Movement toward a Second Constitutional Convention" (Professor Edward P. Smith) is merely a re-threshing of straw already threshed by Bancroft, Curtis and Fiske. Far more original are the fourth and fifth essays. The former, by Professor Wm. P. Trent, treats of the movement toward a national organization in ecclesiastical bodies. The author traces this tendency in each of the several denominations

established in the United States and indicates the reciprocal action of these national movements in political and ecclesiastical affairs.

In "The Status of the Slave," Dr. Jeffrey R. Brackett examines the legal condition of slaves, indentured servants and freedmen in each of the colonies, and shows the effect thereon of the humanitarian spirit already referred to. He examines first the police laws enacted to protect society against servile insurrections; next, the incapacity of slaves to contract; then, the adjective law of servile persons, the peculiar organization of the courts established to try offences committed by them, and their disabilities in giving testimony, contrasting the severity of the penalties annexed to crimes and misdemeanors committed by them, with the lightness of the punishment for offences against them. then takes up the subject of manumission and exhibits the difficulties attending it because of administrative and political obstacles. Finally, he shows how these obstacles melted away in the Eastern and Middle states under the heat of the spirit of liberty and equality, but how the Southern states were little affected thereby. This essay goes far to demolish the popular belief that these latter commonwealths were on the high road to emancipation when the invention of the cotton-gin checked them. Dr. Brackett's paper is well written, and like the others is based on a careful examination of original records. All four of these articles show how much stronger was particularism south of the Potomac than north of it.

Taken as a whole, the volume is highly creditable to its editor and furnishes plenty of ammunition for use against Gladstone's "theory of inspiration" of the constitution, — the target against which Professor Jameson has directed his guns.

ROBERT WEIL.

History of the United States of America during the first administration of James Madison. By HENRY ADAMS. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1890. 2 vols., 428, 488 pp.

Madison was in more senses than one the residuary legatee of Jefferson's policy. As a member of Jefferson's cabinet and the President's most trusted confidant, he had largely assisted in framing the measures intended to carry out that policy, and commercial restriction and embargo were favorite weapons with him to attain its end. In Gallatin he had the ablest member of the former administration, and until Monroe entered his cabinet, the ablest of his own; but in his other appointments he obtained gross incompetency and even active intrigue. against himself. He was President and secretary of State, until Monroe was summoned to fill the latter position, and at the outbreak of the war of 1812, he was President and secretary of War and of the Navy, with

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