ritories in
the Constitution. What are the limits upon the operations of a
Government invested with legislative, executive, and judiciary powers,
and charged with the power to dispose of and to make all needful rules
and regulations respecting a vast public domain? The feudal system
would have recognised the claim made on behalf of the Federal
Government for supreme power over persons and things in the
Territories, as an incident to this title--that is, the title to
dispose of and make rules and regulations respecting it.

The Norman lawyers of William the Conqueror would have yielded an
implicit assent to the doctrine, that a supreme sovereignty is an
inseparable incident to a grant to dispose of and to make all needful
rules and regulations respecting the public domain. But an American
patriot, in contrasting the European and American systems, may affirm,
"that European sovereigns give lands to their colonists, but reserve
to themselves a power to control their property, liberty, and
privileges; but the American Government sells the lands belonging to
the people of the several States (i.e., United States) to their
citizens, who are already in the possession of personal and political
rights, which the Government did not give, and cannot take away." And
the advocates for Government sovereignty in the Territories have been
compelled to abate a portion of the pretensions originally made in its
behalf, and to admit that the constitutional prohibitions upon
Congress operate in the Territories. But a constitutional prohibition
is not requisite to ascertain a limitation upon the authority of the
several departments of the Federal Government. Nor are the States or
people restrained by any enumeration or definition of their rights or
liberties.

To impair or diminish either, the department must produce an authority
from the people themselves, in their Constitution; and, as we have
seen, a power to make rules and regulations respecting the public
domain does not confer a municipal sovereignty over persons and things
upon it. But as this is "thought their fort" by our adversaries, I
propose a more definite examination of it. We have seen, Congress does
not dispose of or make rules and regulations respecting domain
belonging to themselves, but belonging to the United States.

These conferred on their mandatory, Congress, authority to dispose of
the territory which belonged to them in common; and to accomplish that
object benef