interests, to enforce the execution of contracts and of wills, and the administration of estates. It has in its scope those institutions, so fundamental in the civil order, the contract and the will. The form in which these are executed is of consequence, since they are to be maintained and enforced as positive law. It is thus requisite that all wills shall be proven, and all deeds and titles are to be given in the name of the commonwealth, and it is to provide for the probate of wills and the recording of deeds.1

It belongs to the commonwealth, in the securance of interests, to regulate the relations of capital and labor, and to maintain and protect the division and coöperation and freedom of labor. It is to adjust the legal rate of interest upon capital. It is to charter corporations and to provide for their privileges, immunities, and estates. In the direction of intercourse in trade and exchange, it has the supervision of roads and highways, excepting only military and post-roads which are in the immediate control of the nation. In the security of health and in sanitary provisions, it is to institute officers and boards of health, and hospitals, and asylums, and homes for the infirm or incapable, or aged or insane, and it is to provide for the poor and to appoint overseers of them.2

It is for the commonwealth to establish municipalities, and to grant and convey municipal rights or privileges, and to institute the order and confer the powers which are requisite for the civil administration, in the organization of counties, towns, and boroughs within its limits. The execution of its powers is through a police and constabulary.

There is in this summary the substantial content of the constitution of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, to which reference was made in illustration of the commonwealth in itself. This which was ascertained to be its necessary conception, has been its realization in its normal 1 Constitution of the Commonwealth, Art. V. sec. 10. 2 Ibid, Art. VII. sec. 6.

process. With the formal exception which is to be noticed, and which is not in all respects inconsistent with its administration, this is all there is in it. There is no power beyond this that could be actualized or strive for actualization in it without involving some contradiction. There is beyond this only the sphere of legal fictions, of empty theories, and political abstractions. There is beyond no solid ground. It is the field of restless visionaries and political dreamers; and instead of the domain of substantial order, it has proven the confine of anarchy and secession and rebellion. In it an evil ambition has wrought, and the forces of disorder and division have mustered.

The powers which alone remain to be noticed, and which constitute an exception to the preceding, are those which refer to divorce, to education, to the resident qualifications of an elector, and to the militia as a local or constabulary force. These powers are such as in part are properly related to the normal administration and economy of the commonwealth, and therefore in certain aspects may be referred to it, or they are powers which, when left to the commonwealth, fail to obtain any substantial actualization. There is nothing in them to justify the speculation, which has assigned the most limitless scope to the commonwealth. The limitless in human affairs is indeed that only which is untravelled by thought. There is, in the civil and political life, no sphere of arbitrary and indefinite powers; the arbitrary is without the domain of law, and the indefinite is the unformed thought and purpose, the vagueness and weakness which appears in incapacity of thought and irresolution of will.

There is an article on divorce, defining certain restrictions of the legislative power in its action upon it, and then referring it to the courts. The administration in divorce, in its connection with the common law, passes consistently to the commonwealth; but the nation has an

immediate obligation in the maintenance of the family in its moral unity and moral order, and if it fails to attain this in its action through the commonwealth, it is imperative that it shall assume its immediate authority. There is no form that can intervene by which it can be divested of its obligation to maintain a moral order.

There is an article on public instruction, which provides for the institution of schools, so that all may be taught free. But while the administration of a system of education may be referred to the commonwealth, its institution is of national importance, and also of national obligation, and in the defect of the commonwealth, its authorization should proceed from the nation.

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There is an article on the qualifications of an elector, in which the conditions of electoral power in the commonwealth are defined, while its electors are described as "citizens of the United States," and its special provision in respect to the commonwealth, is the limitation of the term of residence necessary before any election for “a citizen of the United States who had previously been a qualified voter" in the commonwealth, in order to vote at an ensuing election. The constitution of the United States describes the qualifications of an elector, but its definition is simply inclusive of the qualifications of the lower house in each commonwealth, and the more specific qualification is referred to the commonwealth; but since the right to vote is a political right, and integral in the nation, the provision for it should be in the fundamental law, and its guaranty in the supreme law of the people. The terms and conditions of electoral power cannot be left to the discretion of each separate commonwealth, without the risk of unequal qualifications which might act as a disturbing force, or tend to create alienation or division, and the definition of political power belongs to the nation.

There is an article which provides for the arming, organizing, and disciplining of the militia, and describes the

governor as the commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the commonwealth. Of this it is only to be said that the commonwealth has no right to declare war, and over the militia the governor has power only within the limits of the commonwealth, and he is thus only commander-inchief, "except when they are carried into the service of the United States." It is only for internal order and administration that the governor has immediate command, and as the militia acts as a constabulary or police, to prevent a breach of the peace of the commonwealth within its borders. When the governor is represented as the "commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the commonwealth," the office is not further defined. Since the commonwealths of the nation have for the most part no sea-ports and no sailors, and, in some instances, no navigable waters, the title can scarcely be supported. It is a name for which there is no reality, and except for lawyers it leads beyond all soundings. No navy, has ever set sail, and no sailor has ever trod its deck, only constitutional lawyers have exchanged its signals and answered its salutes. It is as a legal fiction, if it can make that claim, but a painted ship upon a painted ocean, although for the lawyers who sail upon it, out on the limitless expanse, it is as good as oak and iron. And the gov

ernor in this character, on the streams to which he may often be confined, is like Wordsworth's fisherman, "tricked out in proud disguise." But this assumption of military and naval authority in its consequent weakness, is indicative of the neglect of the nation in its own sphere, to provide for the instruction and organization of the whole people, as a military force, which is its express obligation. The commonwealth is necessarily itself concerned with the militia only as a constabulary; and when the military organization has been left to it, it has been at the most defective, and its display a masquerade to fill an idle holiday. There is in the commonwealth no conception, and

no power of war, and it may neither declare war nor conclude peace.

These powers, in divorce, in education, in the definition of electoral laws, and in the instruction and organization of the militia for local purposes, are alone those which have any description in the constitution of the commonwealth, that are not exclusively within its normal conception, and they in certain respects are not inconsistent with its administrative order. But they are in a necessary and immediate relation to the nation, and their exclusive reference to the commonwealth becomes the defect in their institution, or the source of weakness and of radical error in the organization of the whole.

The nation and the commonwealth exist in a two-fold relation: firstly, the nation is immanent in the commonwealth; and secondly, the nation is external to the commonwealth.

The nation is immanent in the commonwealth.

The commonwealth of itself is incomplete, and presumes the being of the nation in which it subsists. The commonwealth of itself has no permanence, and in the nation alone it has its consistent end. It is only as the nation is immanent in it, that it is brought into relation to its object in the unity of the whole. Then it is no longer simply the private interest of the individual which is its end, but it is the end of the nation itself, -a moral interest which gives to justice alone its strength. It still institutes and administers justice with reference to the individual, and acts in the maintenance of private interests; but its work is no more for a private end alone, nor simply that each individual shall be secure in his special rights, but that all sources of disorder shall be removed, and all that hinders the administration of justice shall be overcome. It is thus, as the commonwealth subsists in the nation and its moral order, that it brings to individual rights a perma

nence.