tself upon my mind, is its utter futility and want of
authority. This court has, in repeated instances, ruled, that whatever
may have been the force accorded to this ordinance of 1787 at the
period of its enactment, its authority and effect ceased, and yielded
to the paramount authority of the Constitution, from the period of the
adoption of the latter. Such is the principle ruled in the cases of
Pollard's Lessee _v._ Hagan, (3 How., 212,) Parmoli [Transcriber's
Note: Permoli] _v._ The First Municipality of New Orleans, (3 How.,
589,) Strader _v._ Graham, (16 How., 82.) But apart from the superior
control of the Constitution, and anterior to the adoption of that
instrument, it is obvious that the inhibition in question never had
and never could have any legitimate and binding force. We may seek in
vain for any power in the convention, either to require or to accept a
condition or restriction upon the cession like that insisted on; a
condition inconsistent with, and destructive of, the object of the
grant. The cession was, as recommended by the old Congress in 1780,
made originally and completed _in terms_ to _the United States_, and
for the benefit of the United States, i.e., for _the people, all the
people_, of the United States. The condition subsequently sought to be
annexed in 1787, (declared, too, to be perpetual and immutable,) being
contradictory to the terms and destructive of the purposes of the
cession, and after the cession was consummated, and the powers of the
ceding party terminated, and the rights of the grantees, _the people
of the United States_, vested, must necessarily, so far, have been _ab
initio_ void. With respect to the power of the convention to impose
this inhibition, it seems to be pertinent in this place to recur to
the opinion of one cotemporary with the establishment of the
Government, and whose distinguished services in the formation and
adoption of our national charter, point him out as the _artifex
maximus_ of our Federal system. James Madison, in the year 1819,
speaking with reference to the prohibitory power claimed by Congress,
then threatening the very existence of the Union, remarks of the
language of the second clause of the third section of article fourth
of the Constitution, "that it cannot be well extended beyond a power
over the territory _as property_, and the power to make provisions
really needful or necessary for the government of settlers, until ripe
for admission into the