leadership--were regarded as entitled to the right of independence.
But independence of a free state, as regarded other free states,
meant, to the Fathers, only leadership and judgeship. The law of
nature and of nations, being universal, they considered as abolishing
sovereignty in the European sense, so that the highest function of an
independent State was to be the Justiciar of other States. In the
literature of the Revolution we find the rights of free and
independent states described as rights of "jurisdiction"--not of
"sovereignty."

Connection between free States on free principles was regarded by the
Fathers as the proper and perhaps the normal condition. They
recognized that connection, while based on the assumption of the
original independence of the units, necessarily implied a surrender of
the right of final decision concerning all or a part of the common
purposes to a Justiciar State, or of the right of legislation for the
common purposes, expressly defined by written agreement, to a Central
Government. Political connection with European States was dissolved in
the Revolution, and thereafter refrained from, because the European
States stood for a law of nature and of nations which did not permit
of free states being connected on free principles.

Taking the whole Declaration together, and reading it in the light of
the political literature which was put forth on both sides of the
water between the years 1764 and 1776, which is too voluminous to be
referred to here specifically, it seems to be necessary to conclude
that the views of the American statesmen of the period concerning the
nature of the connection between Great Britain and the Colonies, in
its details, were these.