rmountable in
endeavoring to account for the last member of the sentence, which
provides that "nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to
prejudice any claims of the United States or any particular State," or
to say how any particular State could have claims in or to a territory
ceded by a foreign Government, or to account for associating this
provision with the preceding provisions of the clause, with which it
would appear to have no connection.

The words "needful rules and regulations" would seem, also, to have been
cautiously used for some definite object. They are not the words usually
employed by statesmen, when they mean to give the powers of sovereignty,
or to establish a Government, or to authorize its establishment. Thus,
in the law to renew and keep alive the ordinance of 1787, and to
re-establish the Government, the title of the law is: "An act to provide
for the government of the territory northwest of the river Ohio." And in
the Constitution, when granting the power to legislate over the
territory that may be selected for the seat of Government independently
of a State, it does not say Congress shall have power "to make all
needful rules and regulations respecting the territory;" but it declares
that "Congress shall have power to exercise exclusive legislation in all
cases whatsoever over such District (not exceeding ten miles square) as
may, by cession of particular States and the acceptance of Congress,
become the seat of the Government of the United States.

The words "rules and regulations" are usually employed in the
Constitution in speaking of some particular specified power which it
means to confer on the Government, and not, as we have seen, when
granting general powers of legislation. As, for example, in the peculiar
power to Congress "to make rules for the government and regulation of
the land and naval forces, or the particular and specific power to
regulate commerce;" "to establish an uniform _rule_ of naturalization;"
"to coin money and _regulate_ the value thereof." And to construe the
words of which we are speaking as a general and unlimited grant of
sovereignty over territories which the Government might afterward
acquire, is to use them in a sense and for a purpose for which they were
not used in any other part of the instrument. But if confined to a
particular Territory, in which a Government and laws had already been
established, but which would require some alterations to