In order to constitute “one people,” in a political sense, of the inhabitants of different countries, something more is necessary than that they should owe a common allegiance to a common sovereign. Neither is it sufficient that, in some particulars, they are bound alike, by laws which that sovereign may prescribe; nor does the question depend on geographical relations. The inhabitants of different islands may be one people, and those of contiguous countries may be, as we know they in fact are, different nations. By the term people, as here used, we do not mean merely a number of persons. We mean by it a political corporation, the members of which owe a common allegiance to a common sovereignty, and do not owe any allegiance which is not common; who are bound by no laws except such as that sovereignty may prescribe who owe to one another reciprocal obligations; who possess common political interests ; who are liable to common political duties; and who can exert no sovereign power except in the name of the whole. Anything short of this, would be an imperfect definition of that political corporation which we call “ a people.”
Tested by this definition, the people of the American colonies were, in no conceivable sense, “one people.” They owed, indeed, allegiance to the British king, as the head of each colonial government, and as forming a part thereof ; but this allegiance was exclusive, in each colony, to its own government, and, consequently, to the king as the head thereof, and was not a common allegiance of the people of all the colonies, to a common head. These colonial governments were clothed with the sovereign power of making laws, and of enforcing obedience to them, from their own people. The people of one colony owed no allegiance to the government of any other colony, -
--------------------
In farther illustration of this point, let us suppose that some one of the colonies had refused to unite in the declaration of
independence ; what relation would it then have held to the others ? Not having disclaimed its allegiance to the British
Crown, it would still have continued to be a British colony, subject to the authority of the parent country, in all respects as before. Could the other colonies have rightfully compelled it to unite with them in their revolutionary purposes, on the ground that it was part and parcel of the “one people,” known as the people of the colonies ? No such right was ever claimed, or dreamed of, and it will scarcely be contended for now, in the face of the known history of the time. Such recusant colony would have stood precisely as did the Canadas, and every other part of the British empire. The colonies, which had declared war, would have c onsidered its people as enemies, but would not have had a right to treat them as traitors, or as disobedient citizens resisting their authority. To what purpose, then, were the people of the colonies “one people,” if, in a case so important to the common welfare, there was no right in all the people together, to coerce the members of their own community to the performance of a common duty ?
It is thus apparent that the people of the colonies were not “one people,” as to any purpose involving allegiance on the
one hand, or protection on the other.
Abel Upshur, The True Nature and Character of our Federal Government: A review - 1840