ates in which there are no such public lands land
scrip shall be issued to the amount of their distributive shares,
respectively, said scrip not to be entered by said States, but to be
sold by them and subject to entry by their assignees: _Provided_, That
none of it shall be sold at less than $1 per acre, under penalty of
forfeiture of the same to the United States.

Third. That the expenses of the management and superintendence of said
lands and of the moneys received therefrom shall be paid by the States
to which they may belong out of the treasury of said States.

Fourth. That the gross proceeds of the sales of such lands or land scrip
so granted shall be invested by the several States in safe stocks, to
constitute a perpetual fund, the principal of which shall remain forever
undiminished, and the interest to be appropriated to the maintenance of
the indigent insane within the several States.

Fifth. That annual returns of lands or scrip sold shall be made by the
States to the Secretary of the Interior, and the whole grant be subject
to certain conditions and limitations prescribed in the bill, to be
assented to by legislative acts of said States.

This bill therefore proposes that the Federal Government shall make
provision to the amount of the value of 10,000,000 acres of land for an
eleemosynary object within the several States, to be administered by the
political authority of the same; and it presents at the threshold the
question whether any such act on the part of the Federal Government
is warranted and sanctioned by the Constitution, the provisions and
principles of which are to be protected and sustained as a first and
paramount duty.

It can not be questioned that if Congress has power to make provision
for the indigent insane without the limits of this District it has the
same power to provide for the indigent who are not insane, and thus
to transfer to the Federal Government the charge of all the poor in
all the States. It has the same power to provide hospitals and other
local establishments for the care and cure of every species of human
infirmity, and thus to assume all that duty of either public
philanthropy or public necessity to the dependent, the orphan, the
sick, or the needy which is now discharged by the States themselves
or by corporate institutions or private endowments existing under the
legislation of the States. The whole field of public beneficence is
thrown open to the care and cultur