Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1857-12-26
WASHINGTON NEWS AND GOSSIP.

of politicians We thought no other person
could more quickly discover than oursef the
difference twixt tweedle DUN and tweedle dee.
If. however, that man lives who can make
common sense out of the Governors learned
and polemical disquisition on the essence and
philosophy of sovereignty, we admit that we are
mentally blind as bat, in comparison to him.
His letter of resignation we regard as one of
those rare productions which, the more we
study and ponder over it, the more are we per-
picked to ascertain the authors meaning But
in these days, when many believe that the
Presidential tenure is limited to four years
only, and the country is so replete with patri-
otic gentlemen, perhaps we ought not to be
surprised at the discoveries made by the Gov.
ernor of the unconsttu tionality of the action Of
former Congresses, and that &" the Government,
Constitution and laws of the United States are
not sovereign"
But this is no original idea; Senators Sum-
ner, Seward and Hale, and Mr.. Greeley, were
certainly far ahead of Governor Walker in pro-
claiming higher law than the Constitution of
their country. They are in advance of him,
and all the thunder he can flch from them will
not amount to the crack Of that Sharps rife
subscribed by Miss Dutton.
"Misery makes men acquainted with strange
bed-fellows,' and so does ambition. Who
would have thought to find the Hon. R.. j.
Walker, the sympathizer and cO-labOrer, with
such politicians as Horace Greeley Co; and
that too, on mere abstraction But, it is not
worthy either Of the Star or the Governor to
deal in inuendoes, when there are facts and
arguments to face. 1Io pleads in defence of
his present position that the doctrine contained
in his letter of resignation is only reiteration
of the principles averred in his Texas letter of
1888, and in his inaugural to the people of
Kansas in 1857. This we are not disposed to
question; our intention il merely to exami4e
his position, and to show our fellow citizens
the sorereigHs-whethe it is tenable or not
and to this end we have re-read his letter with
great care and have como to the conclusion
that his arguments would have been irrefuta-
BILE, were it not that they had been drawn from
false premises
Lie says of sovereignty that it grants pow
ers, but not sovereign powers, hence " the gov
ernment, constitution and laws of the United
States are not sovereign, but only the dele
gated powers of sovereignty" Now, a, SOW
ereignty in the abstract is simply power"
how can that which is an emanation from it
differ in its nature? How can it differ except
in intensity or degree, If what he is pleased
to term the delegated power Of sovereignty"
is not sovereign, pray tell US what is9 His
reasoning amounts to this only-the stream is
not the spring, nor the spring the stream, and
we must not cOnfound the one with the other
although the one is from the other, and they
both are the same water.
lie urges that - the constitution of the United
States is the supreme law, and obligatory as
such, and yet that it is not sovereign, but an
act of sovereignty because all laws imply law
makers" Just, we suppose, as an egg implies
the hen that laid it; or as the hen implies the
egg from which she was Matched but a hen is
not an egg, nor is an egg hen, and we should
be careful not to mistake the one for the other
the sovereign for the delegate or the delegate
for the sovereign. Now, the power of the hen
to lay an egg is sovereign, immutable and indi-
visible, to wit power which cannot be dele
gated. And so the power of the egg to produce
ii chicken is sovereign and inalienable-but we
must not mistake the hen and the egg for SOW
The Government of the United States is a
''powsr,' the Constitution is power and
the laws are power which the Governor
says, are not sovereign, and yet that "sover-
eighty is the highest political power" 1t
seems to US, that to preserve his consistency,
he should have said, sovereignty is no power
at all but only the source of power
This idea of sovereignty however, is a mere
abstractiOn-there is nothing practical in it.
and the reasoning in defence of it, is so circu-
tOus, that after hours Of hard study, we find
Ourself where we started nor do we believe any
furtherprogress can be made in the calculation
of the subject until the grave question of pr-
ority is settled as to whether the sovereignty
OF the hen or the egg was first in the order of
creation. If it should be decided in favor of
the egg, we all have reason to be thankful that
the first chicken was not a rooster.