Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol I).djvu/47

 CH. I.] ing the Catholic religion, Alexander the Sixth, by a Bull issued in 1493, granted to the crown of Castile the whole of the immense territory then discovered, or to be discovered, between the poles, so far as it was not then possessed by any Christian prince.

§ 6. The principle, then, that discovery gave title to the government, by whose subjects or by whose authority it was made, against all other European governments, being once established, it followed almost as a matter of course, that every government within the limits of its discoveries excluded all other persons from any right to acquire the soil by any grant whatsoever from the natives. No nation would suffer either its own subjects or those of any other nation to set up or vindicate any such title. It was deemed a right exclusively belonging to the government in its sovereign capacity to extinguish the Indian title, and to perfect its own dominion over the soil, and dispose of it according to its own good pleasure.

§ 7. It may be asked, what was the effect of this principle of discovery in respect to the rights of the natives themselves. In the view of the Europeans it created a peculiar relation between themselves and the aboriginal inhabitants. The latter were admitted to possess a present right of occupancy, or use in the soil, which was subordinate to the ultimate dominion of the discoverer. They were admitted to be the rightful occupants of the soil, with a legal as well as just, claim