Without stopping further for these diversions, I content myself with the testimony of Edmund Burke, who, in a striking passage, which seems to have been written for us, portrays the extinction of a political community; but I quote his eloquent words rather for suggestion than for authority:—­

“In a state of rude Nature there is no such thing as a people.  A number of men in themselves have no collective capacity.  The idea of people is the idea of a corporation.  It is wholly artificial, and made, like all other legal fictions, by common agreement.  What the particular nature of that agreement was is collected from the form into which the particular society has been cast.  Any other is not their covenant. When men, therefore, break p the original compact or agreement which gives its corporate form and capacity to a State, they are no longer a people; they have no longer a corporate existence; they have no longer a legal coactive force to bind within, nor a claim to be recognized abroad.  They are a number of vague, loose individuals, and nothing more.  With them all is to begin again.  Alas! they little know how many a weary step is to be taken before they can form themselves into a mass which has a true politic personality."[20]

If that great master of eloquence could be heard, who can doubt that he would blast our Rebel States, as senseless communities who have sacrificed that corporate existence which makes them living, component members of our Union of States?

STATE FORFEITURE.

But again it is sometimes said, that the States, by their flagrant treason, have forfeited their rights as States, so as to be civilly dead.  It is a patent and indisputable fact, that this gigantic treason was inaugurated with all the forms of law known to the States; that it was carried forward not only by individuals, but also by States, so far as States can perpetrate treason; that the States pretended to withdraw bodily in their corporate capacities;—­that the Rebellion, as it showed itself, was by States as well as in States; that it was by the governments of States as well as by the people of States; and that, to the common observer, the crime was consummated by the several corporations as well as by the individuals of whom they were composed.  From this fact, obvious to all, it is argued, that, since, according to Blackstone, “a traitor hath abandoned his connection with society, and hath no longer any right to the advantages which before belonged to him purely as a member of the community,” by the same principle the traitor State is no longer to be regarded as a member of the Union.  But it is not necessary, on the present occasion, to insist on the application of any such principle to States.

STATE ABDICATION.