poses, but for every State purpose which Congress might deem
expedient or useful. This would be an actual consolidation of the
Federal and State Governments so far as the great taxing and money power
is concerned, and constitute a sort of partnership between the two in
the Treasury of the United States, equally ruinous to both.

But it is contended that the public lands are placed upon a different
footing from money raised by taxation and that the proceeds arising from
their sale are not subject to the limitations of the Constitution, but
may be appropriated or given away by Congress, at its own discretion,
to States, corporations, or individuals for any purpose they may deem
expedient.

The advocates of this bill attempt to sustain their position upon the
language of the second clause of the third section of the fourth article
of the Constitution, which declares that "the Congress shall have power
to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting
the territory or other property belonging to the United States." They
contend that by a fair interpretation of the words "dispose of" in this
clause Congress possesses the power to make this gift of public lands
to the States for purposes of education.

It would require clear and strong evidence to induce the belief that the
framers of the Constitution, after having limited the powers of Congress
to certain precise and specific objects, intended by employing the words
"dispose of" to give that body unlimited power over the vast public
domain. It would be a strange anomaly, indeed, to have created two
funds--the one by taxation, confined to the execution of the enumerated
powers delegated to Congress, and the other from the public lands,
applicable to all subjects, foreign and domestic, which Congress might
designate; that this fund should be "disposed of," not to pay the debts
of the United States, nor "to raise and support armies," nor "to provide
and maintain a navy," nor to accomplish any one of the other great
objects enumerated in the Constitution, but be diverted from them to
pay the debts of the States, to educate their people, and to carry into
effect any other measure of their domestic policy. This would be to
confer upon Congress a vast and irresponsible authority, utterly at war
with the well-known jealousy of Federal power which prevailed at the
formation of the Constitution. The natural intendment would be that as
the Constitution confined Cong