Page:The Federal and state constitutions vol1.djvu/310

268 in “An act supplementary to the act entitled ‘An act for the admission of the State of Arkansas into the Union, and to provide for the due execution of the laws of the United States within the same, and for other purposes,’” be, and the same are hereby, freely accepted, ratified, and irrevocably confirmed, as articles of compact and union between the State of Arkansas and the United States.

And be it further ordained by the authority aforesaid, That the general assembly of the State of Arkansas shall never interfere, without the consent of the United States, with the primary disposal of the soil within said State, owned by the United States, nor with any regulations Congress may find necessary for securing the title in such soil to the bona-fide purchasers thereof; and that no tax shall be imposed on lands the property of the United States; and that in no case shall non-resident proprietors be taxed higher than resident; and that the bounty-lands granted, or hereafter to be granted, for military services during the late war, shall, while they continue to be held by the patentees or their heirs, remain exempt from any tax laid by order, or under the authority, of the State, whether for State, county, township, or any other purpose, for the term of three years from and after the date of the patents respectively.

Approved, October 18, 1836.

We, the people of the Territory of Arkansas, by our representatives in convention assembled, at Little Rock, on Monday, the 4th day of January, A. D. 1836, and of the Independence of the United States the sixtieth year, having the right of admission into the Union as one of the United States of America, consistent with the Federal Constitution, and by virtue of the treaty of cession, by France to the United States, of the Province of Louisiana, in order to secure to ourselves and our posterity the enjoyment of all the rights of life, liberty, and property, and the free pursuit of happiness, do mutually agree with each other to form ourselves into a free and independent State, by the name and style of “The State of Arkansas,” and do ordain and establish the following constitution for the government thereof :

We do declare and establish, ratify and confirm, the following as the permanent boundaries of said State of Arkansas, that is to say: Beginning in the middle of the main channel of the Mississippi river,