ment to the Constitution of the United States, proposed as aforesaid, has been ratified by the legislatures of the States of Maine, North Carolina, West Virginia, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Louisiana, Michigan, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, New York, New Hampshire, Nevada, Vermont, Virginia, Alabama, Missouri, Mississippi, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Nebraska, and Texas-in all, twenty-nine States;

And, further, that the States whose legislatures have so ratified the said proposed amendment constitute three-fourths of the whole number of States in the United States;

And, further, that it appears from an official document on file in this department that the legislature of the State of New York has since passed resolutions claiming to withdraw the said ratification of the said amendment, which had been made by the legislature of that State, and of which official notice had been filed in this department;

And, further, that it appears from an official document on file in this department that the legislature of Georgia has by resolution ratified the said proposed amendment :

Now, therefore, be it known that I, Hamilton Fish, Secretary of State of the United States, by virtue and in pursuance of the second section of

the act of Congress, approved the twentieth day of April, in the year eighteen hundred and eighteen, entitled "An act to provide for the publication of the laws of the United States, and for other purposes," do hereby certify that the amendment aforesaid has become valid, to all intents and purposes, as part of the Constitution of the United States.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the Department of State to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington this thirtieth day of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and seventy, and of the independence of the United States the ninety-fourth. [L. S.] HAMILTON FISH.

The Congress of 1868-70 were the first to "count in" States. "Counting in" New Jersey, Ohio, and New York was disfranchisement of sovereign States. It was an act of numerical force, and a Cromwellian usurpation. This fractional body of factionists initiated the Electoral Commission of 1877.

Is the title "Secretary of State" proper?

It is not. The title and signature should be Secretary of the United States. The United

States are not a State. Each State has a Secretary of State, presiding over a Department of State. The United States established prior to 1789 a Department of Foreign Affairs. The chief was then known as Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Subsequently his office was renamed. He now outranks all other Cabinet members because his office is the oldest, and he is the first of them to succeed to the Presidency, by a late law, in case of the death, disability, resignation, or removal of both the President and Vice-President. Jefferson was the first "Secretary of State" under the new Constitution.

Will you describe the evolution of constitutional government?

The Stamp Act, which was an internal revenue tax on written instruments used in judicial and commercial proceedings, and upon articles which were necessary to the ordinary transactions of business, such as deeds, indentures, pamphlets, newspapers, advertisements, almanacs, and degrees conferred by schools, and other things, moved Patrick Henry to introduce into the Virginia Assembly a burning protest. This led to a call from Massachusetts for the assembling of a first Congress on the 7th October, 1765, which issued a declaration of rights and grievances.

Nine colonies were represented. This was called the Stamp Act Congress. The act passed by the British Parliament to force the tea of the East India Company on the colonies, assembled the second Congress. There were other "grievances," such as taxing the imports of one colony carried into another.

The Colonists rebelled, and fought inside the British Union. Then came the atrocities of a German contingent of the British army, by which the people of the United Colonies suffered. These acts caused the Declaration of Independence to pass without submitting the measure to the people. It had no constituency. Congress could repeal it at any moment during their session. Thus to the inhumanity of the Waldeckers and Hessians is to be ascribed the transfer of hostilities of the United Colonists to the outside of the British Crown.

Before it was called rebellion; thenceforth it was called a war for independence. In 1778 Great Britain sent, in advance of the treaty of alliance with France, acts of Parliament granting in full a "redress of grievances." Washington and Congress suppressed them. The war had gone too far. Ambition on one hand and justice on the other declared dually for complete independence. Dr. Franklin was the author of the "Perpetual

Union" Articles of Confederation. They went down before the sovereign idea of consent. Dean Swift had given Jefferson and Franklin a great hint. It was this: "Government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of tyranny." Jefferson engrafted this caustic truth upon the Declaration. Franklin, as a member of the "Federal Convention," retreated from Perpetual Union." Out of the mere commercial convention at Annapolis originated a political movement from which, with the general plan of the Articles of Confederation, sprung the Constitution of 1787. Only Rhode Island and North Carolina clung to the first Constitution, refusing to enter the new Union.

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So, then, Tariff or Tax was the father of Colonial Rebellion, Independence the grandchild, and Constitutional Government the great-grandchild. Truly a strange political evolution!

Are there new developing historic chapters?

Yes. It is charged that the French Premier, the Count Vergennes, stimulated the Colonists through the agency of spies and gold. The Baron De Kalb was said to have been one of his reliable agents.

It is charged that ratification of the Constitution was secured in some cases by the undue