ve for more than three years
out of six, and might be recalled at any time by the states that sent
them. Once assembled on the floor of Congress, the delegates became
members of a secret body. The doors were shut; no spectators were
allowed to hear what was said; no reports of the debates were taken
down; but under a strict injunction to secrecy the members went on
deliberating day after day. All voting was done by states, each casting
but one vote, no matter how many delegates it had. The affirmative votes
of nine states were necessary to pass any important act, or, as it was
called, "ordinance."

To this body the Articles gave but few powers. Congress could declare
war, make peace, issue money, keep up an army and a navy, contract
debts, enter into treaties of commerce, and settle disputes between
states. But it could not enforce a treaty or a law when made, nor lay
any tax for any purpose.

%166. Origin of the Public Domain%.--In 1784 Massachusetts ceded her
strip of land in the west, following the example set by New York (1780),
and Virginia (1781).

As three states claiming western territory had thus by 1784 given their
land to Congress, that body came into possession of the greater part of
the vast domain stretching from the Lakes to the Ohio and from the
Mississippi to Pennsylvania.[1] Now this public domain, as it was
called, was given on certain conditions:

1. That it should be cut up into states.

2. That these states should be admitted into the Union (when they had a
certain population) on the same footing as the thirteen original states.

3. That the land should be sold and the money used to pay the debts of
the United States.

[Footnote 1: The strip owned by Connecticut had been offered to Congress
in October, 1789, but not accepted. It still belonged to Connecticut in
1785. In 1786 it was again ceded, with certain reservations, and
accepted.]

Congress, therefore, as soon as it had received the deeds to the tracts
ceded, trusting that the other land-owning states would cede their
western territory in time, passed a law (in 1785) to prepare the land
for sale by surveying it and marking it out into sections, townships,
and ranges, and fixed the price per acre.

%167. Virginia and Connecticut Reserves.%--When Virginia made her
cession in 1781, she expressly reserved two tracts of land north of the
Ohio. One, called the Military Lands, lay between the Scioto and Miami
rivers, and was held to pay b