of a private or
particular character under the supreme control of the latter. The
eminent domain of private estates is in the particular State, but the
sovereign authority in the particular State is that of the United
States expressing itself through the State government. The United
States, in the States as well as out of them, is the dominus, as the
States respectively would soon find if they were to undertake to
alienate any part of their domain to a foreign power, or even to the
citizens or subjects of a foreign State, as is also evident from the
fact that the United States, in the way prescribed by the constitution,
may enlarge or contract at will the rights and powers of the States.
The mistake on this point grows out of the habit of restricting the
action of the United States to the General government, and not
recollecting that the United States govern one class of subjects
through the General government and another class through State
governments, but that it is one and the same authority that governs in
both.

The analogy borrowed from the Roman constitution, as far as applicable,
proves the reverse of what is intended. The dominus of the sacred
territory was the city, or the Roman state, not the sacred territory
itself. The territory received the tenant, and gave him as tenant the
right to a seat in the senate; but the right of the territory was
derived not from the domain, but from the dominus, that is, the city.
But the city could revoke its grant, as it practically did when it
conferred the privileges of Roman citizenship on the provincials, and
gave to plebeians seats in the senate. Moreover, nothing in Roman
history indicates that to the validity of a senatus consultum it was
necessary to count the vacant domains of the sacred territory. The
particular domain must, under the American system, be counted when it
is held by a State, but of itself alone, or even with its population,
it is not a State, and therefore as a State domain is vacant and
without any political rights or powers whatever.

To argue that the territory and population once a State in the Union
must needs always be so, would be well enough if a State in the Union
were individually a sovereign state; for territory, with its population
not subject to another, is always a sovereign state, even though its
government has been subverted. But this is not the fact, for territory
with its population does not constitute a State in the Union;