v._
Pitot, 6 Cr., 336; Am. Ins. Co. _v._ Canter, 1 Pet., 542.) With these
in view, I turn to examine the clause of the article now in question.

It is said this provision has no application to any territory save
that then belonging to the United States. I have already shown that,
when the Constitution was framed, a confident expectation was
entertained, which was speedily realized, that North Carolina and
Georgia would cede their claims to that great territory which lay west
of those States. No doubt has been suggested that the first clause of
this same article, which enabled Congress to admit new States, refers
to and includes new States to be formed out of this territory,
expected to be thereafter ceded by North Carolina and Georgia, as well
as new States to be formed out of territory northwest of the Ohio,
which then had been ceded by Virginia. It must have been seen,
therefore, that the same necessity would exist for an authority to
dispose of and make all needful regulations respecting this territory,
when ceded, as existed for a like authority respecting territory which
had been ceded.

No reason has been suggested why any reluctance should have been felt,
by the framers of the Constitution, to apply this provision to all the
territory which might belong to the United States, or why any
distinction should have been made, founded on the accidental
circumstance of the dates of the cessions; a circumstance in no way
material as respects the necessity for rules and regulations, or the
propriety of conferring on the Congress power to make them. And if we
look at the course of the debates in the Convention on this article,
we shall find that the then unceded lands, so far from having been
left out of view in adopting this article, constituted, in the minds
of members, a subject of even paramount importance.

Again, in what an extraordinary position would the limitation of this
clause to territory then belonging to the United States, place the
territory which lay within the chartered limits of North Carolina and
Georgia. The title to that territory was then claimed by those States,
and by the United States; their respective claims are purposely left
unsettled by the express words of this clause; and when cessions were
made by those States, they were merely of their claims to this
territory, the United States neither admitting nor denying the
validity of those claims; so that it was impossible then, and has ever
since