spiritual and intellectual education in justice. Such permanent groups
within territorial limits of suitable size for developing and
expressing a just public sentiment, are free states. Territorial
divisions of persons set apart for the purpose of convenience in
determining the local public sentiment, regardless of its justness or
unjustness, are not states, but are mere voting districts. Just public
sentiment, for its expression and application, requires the existence
of many small free states, disconnected to the extent necessary to
enable each to be free from all improper external control in educating
itself in the ways of justice; mere public sentiment, for its
expression and application, requires only the existence of a few great
states, unitary in their form and divided into voting districts. Just
public sentiment, as the basis of government, is a basis which makes
government a mighty instrument for spirituality and growth; mere
public sentiment, regardless of its justness or unjustness, as the
basis of government, is a basis which makes government a mighty
instrument for brutality and deterioration. Human equality,
unalienable rights, just public sentiment, and free statehood, are
inevitably and forever linked together, as reciprocal cause and
effect.

All the American public men were agreed that the American Colonies, so
called, were and always had been free states, and that the State of
Great Britain, acting through or symbolized by its Chief Executive or
its Chief Legislature, or both of them was a governmental agency, and
a connecting medium, of all the free states which were connected with
it, and which with it formed what they called "The British Empire."
Some based this right of free statehood and political connection on
the Colonial Charters; some on the doctrine of the extension to the
Colonies of the Constitution of the State of Great Britain in a