ble
than any known to that quarter of the United States; that the
committee deem it highly dangerous and inexpedient to impair a
provision wisely calculated to promote the happiness and prosperity of
the Northwestern country, and to give strength and security to that
extensive frontier. In the salutary operation of this sagacious and
benevolent restraint, it is believed that the inhabitants will, at no
very distant day, find ample remuneration for a temporary privation of
labor and of emigration." (1 vol. State Papers, Public Lands, 160.)

The judicial mind of this country, State and Federal, has agreed on no
subject, within its legitimate action, with equal unanimity, as on the
power of Congress to establish Territorial Governments. No court,
State or Federal, no judge or statesman, is known to have had any
doubts on this question for nearly sixty years after the power was
exercised. Such Governments have been established from the sources of
the Ohio to the Gulf of Mexico, extending to the Lakes on the north
and the Pacific Ocean on the west, and from the lines of Georgia to
Texas.

Great interests have grown up under the Territorial laws over a
country more than five times greater in extent than the original
thirteen States; and these interests, corporate or otherwise, have
been cherished and consolidated by a benign policy, without any one
supposing the law-making power had united with the Judiciary, under
the universal sanction of the whole country, to usurp a jurisdiction
which did not belong to them. Such a discovery at this late date is
more extraordinary than anything which has occurred in the judicial
history of this or any other country. Texas, under a previous
organization, was admitted as a State; but no State can be admitted
into the Union which has not been organized under some form of
government. Without temporary Governments, our public lands could not
have been sold, nor our wildernesses reduced to cultivation, and the
population protected; nor could our flourishing States, West and
South, have been formed.

What do the lessons of wisdom and experience teach, under such
circumstances, if the new light, which has so suddenly and
unexpectedly burst upon us, be true? Acquiescence; acquiescence under
a settled construction of the Constitution for sixty years, though it
may be erroneous; which has secured to the country an advancement and
prosperity beyond the power of computation.

An act of James Mad