Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/683

 authority to provide for the survey of the public lands, for securing preëmption rights to actual settlers, for the establishment of land offices in the several states and territories, for exposing the lands to private and public sale, for issuing patents and confirming titles, and, in short, for making all needful rules and regulations for protecting and disposing of the public domain and other property belonging to the United States.

These needful rules and regulations may be embraced, and usually are found in general laws applicable alike to states and territories, wherever the United States may be the owner of the lands or other property to be regulated or disposed of. It can make no difference, under this clause of the constitution, whether the "territory or other property belonging to the United States," shall be situated in Ohio or Kansas, in Alabama or Minnesota, in California or Oregon. The power of congress to make needful rules and regulations is the same in the states and the territories, to the extent that the title is vested in the United States. Inasmuch as the right of legislation in such cases rests exclusively upon the fact of ownership, it is obvious it can extend only to the tracts of land to which the United States possess the title, and must cease in respect to each tract the instant it becomes private property by purchase from the United States. It will scarcely be contended that congress possesses the power to legislate for the people of those states in which public lands may be located, in respect to their internal affairs and domestic concerns, merely because the United States may be so fortunate as to own a portion of the territory and other property within the limits of those states. Yet it should be borne in mind that this clause of the constitution confers upon congress the same power to make needful rules and regulations in the states as it does in the territories, concerning the territory or other property belonging to the United States.

In view of these considerations, your committee are not prepared to affirm that congress derives authority to institute governments for the people of the territories, from that clause of the constitution which confers the right to make needful rules and regulations concerning the territory or other property belonging to the United States; much less can we deduce the power from any supposed necessity, arising outside of the constitution and not provided for in that instrument. The federal government is one of delegated and limited powers, clothed with no rightful authority which does not result directly and necessarily from the constitution. Necessity, when experience shall have clearly demonstrated its existence, may furnish satisfactory reasons for enlarging the authority of the federal government, by amendments to the constitution, in the mode prescribed in that instrument; but cannot afford the slightest excuse for the assumption of powers not delegated, and which, by the tenth amendment, are expressly "reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." Hence, before the power can be safely exercised, the right of congress to organize territories, by instituting temporary governments, must be traced directly to some provision of the constitution conferring the authority in express terms, or as a means necessary and proper to carry into effect some one or more of the