nd Vice-President?... The President of the United States
shall govern this territory as he sees fit till Congress makes further
provision.... We have never had a territory governed as the United
States is governed.... I do not say that while we sit here to make laws
for these territories, we are not bound by every one of those great
principles which are intended as general securities for public liberty.
But they do not exist in territories till introduced by the authority
of Congress.... Our history is uniform in its course. It began with the
acquisition of Louisiana. It went on after Florida became a part of the
Union. In all cases, under all circumstances, by every proceeding of
Congress on the subject and by all judicature on the subject, it has
been held that territories belonging to the United States were to be
governed by a constitution of their own,... and in approving that
constitution the legislation of Congress was not necessarily confined
to those principles that bind it when it is exercised in passing laws
for the United States itself." Mr. Calhoun, in the course of this
debate, asked Mr. Webster for judicial opinion sustaining these views,
and Mr. Webster said that "the same thing has been decided by the
United States courts over and over again for the last thirty years."

I may add that it has been so held over and over again during the
subsequent fifty. Mr. Chief Justice Waite, giving the opinion of the
Supreme Court of the United States (in National Bank _v._ County of
Yankton, 101 U.S. 129-132), said: "It is certainly now too late to
doubt the power of Congress to govern the Territories. Congress is
supreme, and, for all the purposes of this department, has all the
powers of the people of the United States, except such as have been
expressly or by implication reserved in the prohibitions of the
Constitution."

Mr. Justice Stanley Matthews of the United States Supreme Court stated
the same view with even greater clearness in one of the Utah polygamy
cases (Murphy _v._ Ramsey, 114 U.S. 44, 45): "It rests with Congress to
say whether in a given case any of the people resident in the Territory
shall participate in the election of its officers or the making of its
laws. It may take from them any right of suffrage it may previously
have conferred, or at any time modify or abridge it, as it may deem
expedient.... Their political rights are franchises which they hold as
privileges, in the legislative discretio