Page:A legal review of the case of Dred Scott, as decided by the Supreme Court of the United States.djvu/33

 be derived, the possession of it is unquestioned." 1 Peters, 542, 543. And the court accordingly held that the power of congress was so general, that it might establish a local legislature in the Territory, with power to create a territorial judiciary; and that a judiciary so established might exercise jurisdiction over subjects intrusted by the Constitution to courts of the United States exclusively, although such territorial judges were appointed for a term of years only, while the Constitution requires that the judges of all the courts of the United States shall hold office during good behavior. The result, that the constitutional safeguards of the independence of the judiciary did not extend to the Territories, was reached by holding that congress possessed unlimited power to establish a government over the Territories, complete in all its departments, and organized in any way that congress in its discretion might think fit; and could not have been arrived at by any other course of reasoning.

Mr. Justice Thompson, in 1840, when delivering an opinion of the court, after referring to the power of congress to rule and regulate the Territories, and citing from the case just stated, says that "this power is vested in congress without limitation, and has been considered the foundation on which the territorial governments rest." United States v. Gratiot, 14 Peters, 537 And in 1854, Mr. Justice Wayne, in delivering the unanimous opinion of all the judges who took part in the decision of the case of Dred Scott, to the point that duties could be lawfully exacted on imports into California, after the treaty of peace with Mexico, by a collector appointed by the military governor of that Territory, said: "The Territory had been ceded as a conquest, and was to be preserved and governed as such until the sovereignty to which it had passed had legislated for it. That sovereignty was the United States under the Constitution, by which power had been given to congress to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the Territory or other property belonging to the United States, with the power also to admit new States into this Union, with only such limitations as are expressed in the section in which this power is given." The learned judge further stated that the right inference from the failure of congress at once to put an end to the military government was, that it was intended to be continued until changed by congress; and in confirmation of the views he had expressed, quoted the passage which we have given from the case in 1 Peters, and referred to the case in 14