ase require to be particularly noticed as fixing the opinion
of the parties, and particularly of Congress, on the important question
of the right. Passing through Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia,
it was thought necessary and proper to bring the subject before their
respective legislatures to obtain their sanction, which was granted by
each State by a legislative act, approving the route and providing for
the purchase and condemnation of the land. This road was founded on an
article of compact between the United States and the State of Ohio,
under which that State came into the Union, and by which the expense
attending it was to be defrayed by the application of a certain portion
of the money arising from the sale of the public lands within that
State. In this instance, which is by far the strongest in respect to
the expense, extent, and nature of the work done, the United States have
exercised no act of jurisdiction or sovereignty within either of the
States by taking the land from the proprietors by force, by passing acts
for the protection of the road, or to raise a revenue from it by the
establishment of turnpikes and tolls, or any other act founded on the
principle of jurisdiction or right. Whatever they have done has, on the
contrary, been founded on the opposite principle, on the voluntary and
unqualified admission that the sovereignty belonged to the State and not
to the United States, and that they could perform no act which should
tend to weaken the power of the State or to assume any to themselves.
All that they have done has been to appropriate the public money to
the construction of this road and to cause it to be constructed, for
I presume that no distinction can be taken between the appropriation
of money raised by the sale of the public lands and of that which
arises from taxes, duties, imposts, and excises; nor can I believe that
the power to appropriate derives any sanction from a provision to that
effect having been made by an article of compact between the United
States and the people of the then Territory of Ohio. This point may,
however, be placed in a clearer light by a more particular notice of
the article itself.

By an act of April 30, 1802, entitled "An act to enable the people of
the eastern division of the territory northwest of the river Ohio to
form a constitution and State government, and for the admission of such
State into the Union on an equal footing with the original States, and