This explains what is meant by the
attachment of power to the territory, and the dependence of the
state on the domain. The state, in republican states, exists
only as inseparably united with the public domain; under
feudalism, power was joined to territory or domain, but the
domain was held as a private, not as a public domain. All
sovereignty rests on domain or proprietorship, and is dominion.
The proprietor is the dominus or lord, and in republican states
the lord is society, or the public, and the domain is held for
the common or public good of all. All political rights are held
from society, or the dominus, and therefore it is the elective
franchise is held from society, and is a civil right, as
distinguished from a natural, or even a purely personal right.
As there is no domain without a lord or dominus, territory alone
cannot possess any political rights or franchises, for it is not
a domain. In the American system, the dominus or lord is not the
particular State, but the United States, and, the domain of the
whole territory, whether erected into particular States or not,
is in the United States alone. The United States do not part
with the dominion of that portion of the national domain included
within a particular State. The State holds the domain not
separately but jointly, as inseparably one of the United States:
separated, it has no dominion, is no State, and is no longer a
joint sovereign at all, and the territory that it included falls
into the condition of any other territory held by the United
States not erected into one of the United States.
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