n
object of the cession (from the States), and which is the first thing
provided for in the article." It is unnecessary to refer to the history
of the times to establish the known fact that this statement of the
Chief Justice is perfectly well founded. That it never was intended by
the framers of the Constitution that these lands should be given away
by Congress is manifest from the concluding portion of the same clause.
By it Congress has power not only "to dispose of" the territory, but of
the "other property of the United States." In the language of the Chief
Justice (p. 437): "And the same power of making needful rules respecting
the territory is in precisely the same language applied to the other
property of the United States, associating the power over the territory
in this respect with the power over movable or personal property; that
is, the ships, arms, or munitions of war, which then belonged in common
to the State 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.

2. It will prove unequal and unjust in its operation among the actual
settlers themselves.

The first settlers of a new country are a most meritorious