Great Britain, either of the law of nature and of nations, or of the
implied treaty on which the political connection was based.

The term "connection" was an apt term to express a relationship of
equality and dignity. "Connection" implies two things, considered as
units distinct from one another, which are bound together by a
connecting medium. Just connection implies free statehood in all the
communities connected. Union is a form of connection in which the
connected free states are consolidated into a unity for the common
purposes, though separate for local purposes. Merger is the fusion of
two or more free states into a single unitary state. Connection
between free states may be through a legislative medium, or through a
justiciary medium, or through an executive medium. The connecting
medium may be a person, a body corporate, or a state. States connected
through a legislative medium, whether a person, a body corporate or a
state, and whether wholly external to the states connected or to some
extent internal to them, whose legislative powers are unlimited or
which determines the limits of its own legislative powers, are
"dependent" upon or "subject" to the will of the legislative medium.
Such states are "dependencies," "dominions," "subject states," or more
accurately "slave-states,"--or more accurately still, not states at
all, but mere aggregations of slave individuals. States connected
through a legislative medium, whether a person, a body corporate or a
state, and whether wholly external to the states connected or in part
internal to them, whose legislative powers are granted by the states
and which has only such legislative powers as are granted are in a
condition of limited dependence, dominion, and subjection, but their
relationship is by their voluntary act and they may, and by the terms
of the grant always do to some extent control the legislative will to
which they are subject and on which they are dependent. Where states