“My dear Harold, you look at the subject as an enthusiast, and you allow your heart not to assist but to control your brain.  Men, by association, become attached to forms and symbols, so as in time to believe that upon their existence depends the substance of which they are but the signs.  Forty years ago, in the Hawaiian Islands, the death-penalty was inflicted upon a native of the inferior caste, should he chance to pass over the shadow of one of noble birth.  So would you avenge an insult to a shadow, while you allow the substance to be stolen from your grasp.  Our jewel, as freemen, is the right of self-government; the form of government is a mere convenience—­a machine, which may be dismembered, destroyed, remodelled a thousand times, without detriment to the great principle of which it is the outward sign.”

“You draw a picture of anarchy that would disgrace a confederation of petty savage tribes.  What miserable apology for a government would that be whose integrity depends upon the caprice of the governed?”

“It is as likely that a government should become tyrannical, as that a people should become capricious.  You have simply chosen an unfair word.  For caprice substitute will, and you have my ideal of a true republic.”

“And by that ideal, one State, by its individual act, might overturn the entire system adopted for the convenience and safety of the whole.”

“Not so.  It does not follow that the system should be overturned because circumscribed in limit, more than that a business firm should necessarily be ruined by the withdrawal of a partner.  Observe, Harold, that the General Government was never a sovereignty, and came into existence only by the consent of each and every individual State.  The States were the sovereignties, and their connection with the Union, being the mere creature of their will, can exist only by that will.”

“Why, Beverly, you might as well argue that this pencil-case, which became mine by an act of volition on your part, because you gave it me, ceases to be mine when you reclaim it.”

“If I had appointed you my amanuensis, and had transferred my pencil to you simply for the purposes of your labor in my behalf, when I choose to dismiss you, I should expect the return of my property.  The States made no gifts to the Federal Government for the sake of giving, but only delegated certain powers for specific purposes.  They never could have delegated the power of coercion, since no one State or number of States possessed that power as against their sister States.”

“But surely, in entering into the bonds of union, they formed a contract with each other which should be inviolable.”

“Then, at the worst, the seceding States are guilty of a breach of contract with the remaining States, but not with the General Government, with which they made no contract.  They formed a union, it is true.  But of what?  Of sovereignties.  How can those States be sovereignties which admit a power above them, possessing the right of coercion?  To admit the right of coercion is to deny the existence of sovereignty.”