to say that Great Britain ever recognized that the American Colonies
were free states and that she was only a Justiciar State with power of
final decision according to the law of nature and of nations over the
whole British-American Union for common purposes, yet I think it may
not be wholly incorrect to say that from 1700 to 1763, the King and
the Parliament of Great Britain, advised by the Committee of the Privy
Council for Plantation Affairs assisted by the Board of Commissioners
for Trade and Plantations, really acted as the Supreme Administrative
Tribunal for applying the principles of the law of nature and of
nations in the decision of the questions common to all the free states
of a _de facto_ British-American Union and as a necessary incident
thereto, decided the limits of the jurisdiction of Great Britain as
the Justiciar State of this _de facto_ British-American Union.

In this view, the actions of the Americans show the evolution of a
continuous theory and policy, and the application of a single system
of principles,--a system which was based upon free statehood, just
connection and union. The British-American Union of 1763 was a Union
of States under the State of Great Britain as Justiciar, that state
having power to dispose of and make all rules and regulations
respecting the connected and united free states, needful to protect
and preserve the connection and union, according to the principles of
the law of nature and of nations. The dissolution of this Union,
caused by the violation by the State of Great Britain of its duties as
Justiciar State, gave a great impetus to the extreme states' rights
party, and the next connection formed,--that of 1778 under the
Articles of Confederation,--was not a Union, the Common Government
(the Congress) being merely a Chief Executive. Such a connection
proving to be so slight as to be little more than a fiction, they
formed, under the Constitution of 1787, the only other kind of a union