erty, property, and the religion they profess." But this
article does not secure to them the right to go upon the public domain
ceded by the treaty, either with or without their slaves. The right or
power of doing this did not exist before or at the time the treaty was
made. The French and Spanish Governments while they held the country,
as well as the United States when they acquired it, always exercised
the undoubted right of excluding inhabitants from the Indian country,
and of determining when and on what conditions it should be opened to
settlers. And a stipulation, that the then inhabitants of Louisiana
should be protected in their property, can have no reference to their
use of that property, where they had no right, under the treaty, to go
with it, save at the will of the United States. If one who was an
inhabitant of Louisiana at the time of the treaty had afterwards taken
property then owned by him, consisting of fire-arms, ammunition, and
spirits, and had gone into the Indian country north of thirty-six
degrees thirty minutes, to sell them to the Indians, all must agree
the third article of the treaty would not have protected him from
indictment under the act of Congress of March 30, 1802, (2 Stat. at
Large, 139,) adopted and extended to this territory by the act of
March 26, 1804, (2 Stat. at Large, 283.)

Besides, whatever rights were secured were individual rights. If
Congress should pass any law which violated such rights of any
individual, and those rights were of such a character as not to be
within the lawful control of Congress under the Constitution, that
individual could complain, and the act of Congress, as to such rights
of his, would be inoperative; but it would be valid and operative as
to all other persons, whose individual rights did not come under the
protection of the treaty. And inasmuch as it does not appear that any
inhabitant of Louisiana, whose rights were secured by treaty, had been
injured, it would be wholly inadmissible for this court to assume,
first, that one or more such cases may have existed; and, second, that
if any did exist, the entire law was void--not only as to those cases,
if any, in which it could not rightfully operate, but as to all
others, wholly unconnected with the treaty, in which such law could
rightfully operate.

But it is quite unnecessary, in my opinion, to pursue this inquiry
further, because it clearly appears from the language of the article,
and it has