sovereignty over the territory which is now embraced within the limits
of California, only in trust for the future State, and that such
rights at once vested in the new State upon her admission into the
Union. But the ownership of the precious metals found in public or
private lands was not one of those rights. Such ownership stands in
no different relation to the sovereignty of a State than that of any
other property which is the subject of barter and sale. Sovereignty
is a term used to express the supreme political authority of an
independent State or Nation. Whatever rights are essential to the
existence of this authority are rights of sovereignty. Thus the right
to declare war, to make treaties of peace, to levy taxes, to take
private property for public uses, termed the right of eminent domain,
are all rights of sovereignty, for they are rights essential to
the existence of supreme political authority. In this country, this
authority is vested in the people, and is exercised through the
joint action of their federal and State governments. To the federal
government is delegated the exercise of certain rights or powers of
sovereignty; and with respect to sovereignty, rights and powers are
synonymous terms; and the exercise of all other rights of sovereignty,
except as expressly prohibited, is reserved to the people of the
respective States, or vested by them in their local governments. When
we say, therefore, that a State of the Union is sovereign, we only
mean that she possesses supreme political authority, except as to
those matters over which such authority is delegated to the federal
government, or prohibited to the States; in other words, that she
possesses all the rights and powers essential to the existence of an
independent political organization, except as they are withdrawn
by the provisions of the Constitution of the United States. To the
existence of this political authority of the State--this qualified
sovereignty, or to any part of it--the ownership of the minerals of