tate
sovereignties.

The question is still clearer in regard to the public lands in the
States and Territories within the Louisiana and Florida purchases.
These lands were paid for out of the public Treasury from money raised
by taxation. Now if Congress had no power to appropriate the money with
which these lands were purchased, is it not clear that the power over
the lands is equally limited? The mere conversion of this money into
land could not confer upon Congress new power over the disposition of
land which they had not possessed over money. If it could, then a
trustee, by changing the character of the fund intrusted to his care for
special objects from money into land, might give the land away or devote
it to any purpose he thought proper, however foreign from the trust.
The inference is irresistible that this land partakes of the very same
character with the money paid for it, and can be devoted to no objects
different from those to which the money could have been devoted. If this
were not the case, then by the purchase of a new territory from a
foreign government out of the public Treasury Congress could enlarge
their own powers and appropriate the proceeds of the sales of the land
thus purchased, at their own discretion, to other and far different
objects from what they could have applied the purchase money which had
been raised by taxation.

It has been asserted truly that Congress in numerous instances have
granted lands for the purposes of education. These grants have been
chiefly, if not exclusively, made to the new States as they successively
entered the Union, and consisted at the first of one section and
afterwards of two sections of the public land in each township for
the use of schools, as well as of additional sections for a State
university. Such grants are not, in my opinion, a violation of the
Constitution. The United States is a great landed proprietor, and from
the very nature of this relation it is both the right and the duty of
Congress as their trustee to manage these lands as any other prudent
proprietor would manage them for his own best advantage. Now no
consideration could be presented of a stronger character to induce the
American people to brave the difficulties and hardships of frontier life
and to settle upon these lands and to purchase them at a fair price
than to give to them and to their children an assurance of the means of
education. If any prudent individual had held these lan