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