ress to well-defined specific powers, the
funds placed at their command, whether in land or money, should be
appropriated to the performance of the duties corresponding with these
powers. If not, a Government has been created with all its other powers
carefully limited, but without any limitation in respect to the public
lands.

But I can not so read the words "dispose of" as to make them embrace
the idea of "giving away." The true meaning of words is always to be
ascertained by the subject to which they are applied and the known
general intent of the lawgiver. Congress is a trustee under the
Constitution for the people of the United States to "dispose of" their
public lands, and I think I may venture to assert with confidence that
no case can be found in which a trustee in the position of Congress has
been authorized to "_dispose of_" property by its owner where it has
been held that these words authorized such trustee to give away the fund
intrusted to his care. No trustee, when called upon to account for the
disposition of the property placed under his management before any
judicial tribunal, would venture to present such a plea in his defense.
The true meaning of these words is clearly stated by Chief Justice Taney
in delivering the opinion of the court (19 Howard, p. 436). He says in
reference to this clause of the Constitution:

It begins its enumeration of powers by that of disposing; in other
words, making sale of the lands or raising money from them, which, as we
have already said, was the main object of the cession (from the States),
and which is the first thing provided for in the article.

It is unnecessary to refer to the history of the times to establish the
known fact that this statement of the Chief Justice is perfectly well
founded. That it never was intended by the framers of the Constitution
that these lands should be given away by Congress is manifest from the
concluding portion of the same clause. By it Congress has power not only
"to dispose of" the territory, but of the "other property of the United
States." In the language of the Chief Justice (p. 437):

And the same power of making needful rules respecting the territory is
in precisely the same language applied to the other property of the
United States, associating the power over the territory in this respect
with the power over movable or personal property; that is, the ships,
arms, or munitions of war which then belonged in common to the S