chase of Louisiana and Florida; and, under the doctrine contained in the cases I have referred to, Congress have a large and magnificent portion of territory under their absolute control and disposal. This immense property has become national and productive stock, and Congress, in the administration of this stock, have erected temporary governments under the provisions of the ordinance of the Congress under the confederation, and under the constitutional power; and they have appointed the officers

to each territory, and allowed delegates in Congress to * 259 be chosen by the inhabitants every second year, and with a right to debate, but not to vote, in the House of Representatives. (a)

The unpatented lands belonging to the United States, within the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and the territory of Wisconsin, arose from cessions from the states of Virginia, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York, before the adoption of the present Constitution of the United States. (6) North

(a) Ordinance of Congress of 18th July, 1787. Acts of Congress of August 7, 1789; January 14, 1805; March 3, 1817; February 16, 1819; April 24, 1820; March 30, 1822. The acquisition of the foreign territories of Louisiana and Florida by the United States, by purchase, was to be supported only by a very liberal and latitudinary construction of the incidental powers of the government under the Constitution. The objections to such a construction, which were urged at the time, are stated in 3 Story's Comm. 156-161. But the constitutionality of the acquisition of foreign territory is vindicated, established, and settled by the Supreme Court, as one necessarily flowing from the power of the Union to make treaties. American Ins. Co. v. Canter, 1 Peters, 511. It belongs, therefore, upon that principle, exclusively to the President, with the advice and consent of two-thirds of the members of the Senate present to make the acquisition. But in 1845, Congress, by joint resolution, under the power in the Constitution (art. 4, sec. 3), that "new states may be admitted by the Congress into this Union," admitted the foreign and independent state of Texas into the Union as a separate state, upon terms to which Texas afterwards acceded. Resolution of Congress of March 1, 1845. This was giving a new legislative construction, of enormous efficacy and extent, to the constitutional power to acquire foreign states, and would appear to be contrary to the principle of construction recognized by the Supreme Court, that the annexation of foreign states, out of the limits of the United States, must be the act of the treaty-making power.

(b) That of New York was made March 1, 1781, under the authority of the act of the legislature of that state, of the 19th February, 1780. That of Virginia was made March 1, 1784, under the authority of an act of the 20th December, 1783. That of Massachusetts, on the 19th of April, 1785, under the authority of the acts of that state, of 13th November, 1784, and 17th March, 1785; and that of Connecticut on the 14th September, 1786, under the authority of an act of that state of May, 1786. That of South Carolina, in August, 1787. The title to the lands belonging to the United States west of the Mississippi is supported by treaties made with Great Britain,

Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia made similar cessions of their unpatented lands, and which now compose the states of Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi. The lands so ceded were intended to be, and were considered, as constituting a common fund, for the benefit of the Union; and when the states in which the lands are now situated were admitted into the Union, the proprietary right of the United States to those unimproved and unsold lands was recognized. Those lands belong to the United States, as part of their public domain, subject to the Indian right and title of occupancy, in all cases in which the same has not been lawfully extinguished. It is not to be concealed, however, that the title of the United States to the unappropriated lands lying within the limits of the separate states has been seriously questioned by some of them, as by Mississippi, Illinois, and Indiana. The latter state, in January, 1829, advanced a claim to the exclusive right to the soil and eminent domain of all the unappropriated lands within her acknowledgd boundaries; and in 1830, Mississippi put forth a similar claim. But the cessions of the territorial claims of the separate states to the western country were called for by the resolutions of Congress of the 6th September and 10th of October, 1780, and were made upon the basis that they were to be "disposed of for the common benefit of the United States." (c) It was stipulated by Congress, in the last resolution, that the lands to be ceded should be disposed of for the common benefit of the United States; be settled and formed into distinct republican states, with a suitable extent of territory; become members of the American Union, and have the same rights of sovereignty, freedom, and independence as

the other states.

*

It was likewise provided by the ordi- * 260 nance of July 13, 1787, for the government of the territory of the United States northwest of the river Ohio, that the legislatures of the districts or new states to be erected therein should "never interfere with the primary disposal of the soil by the United States, in Congress assembled, nor with any regula

in 1783, 1818, 1827, and with France, in 1803, and with Spain, in 1820, and with Mexico, in 1831. Vide Elliott's American Diplomatic Code, Washington, 1834, 2 vols., which is a most valuable compilation of all the treaties down to that date, in which the United States have any interest.

(c) Journals of the Confed. Congress, vi. 123, 147; viii. 256, 259; ix. 47; x. 92; xi. 160; xii. 92.

tions Congress may find necessary for securing the title in such soil to the bona fide purchaser. (a)

5. Effect of State Judgments. By the Constitution of the United States, Congress were, by general laws, to prescribe the manner in which the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every state should be proved, and the effect thereof in every other state. (x) In pursuance of this power, Congress, by the act

(a) For disposing of the lands of the United States, numerous land offices have been established by acts of Congress in the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Michigan, and Arkansas, and in the territories of Wisconsin, Iowa, and Florida. See Gordon, Digest of the Laws of the United States, 1837, 321–389, in which all the statute provisions relative to the disposition of the public domain of the United States are collected, and clearly and neatly arranged and digested. By the act of Congress of September 4, 1841, c. 16, ten per cent of the net proceeds of the sales of the public lands, to be made subsequent to the 31st of December, 1841, within the limits of the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Alabama, Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Michigan, were to be paid to those states respectively; and the residue of those net proceeds, subject to certain provisos, should be divided, half-yearly, among the twenty-six states of the Union, and the District of Columbia, and the territories of Wisconsin, Iowa, and Florida, according to their respective federal representative population, as ascertained by the last census, to be applied by the legislatures of the said states to such purposes as they should direct.

(x) The constitutional provision applies equally to the State courts and to the courts of the several territories. Susenbach v. Wagner, 41 Minn. 108. The implication from this requirement is that the public acts of each State are to be given the same effect by the courts of other jurisdictions that they have by law and usage at home; and for this purpose the law of such State must be proved as a fact. Chicago & Alton Railroad v. Wiggins Ferry Co. 119 U. S. 615. But in the Federal courts, the Circuit Court, and the Supreme Court on appeal or error therefrom, take judicial notice of the laws of every State in the Union, as domestic laws. Hanley v. Donoghue, 116 U. S. 1, 6; Fourth Nat. Bank v. Francklyn, 120 U. S. 747, 751; Liverpool Steam Co. v. Phenix Ins. Co., 129 U. S. 397, 445. As to suits, the true view appears to be that a judgment in one State, entered according to its laws and valid there, may be enforced in another

State, although an original judgment there entered in that form would be invalid. Renaud v. Abbott, 116 U. S. 277; Stewart v. Stewart, 27 W. Va. 167; Ritter r. Hoffman, 35 Kansas, 215; Simmons €. Clark, 56 Ill. 96; but see Wilbur v. Abbott, 60 N. H. 40. Such a judgment differs from a judgment recovered in a foreign country in no other respect than in not being re-examinable on its merits, not impeachable for fraud in obtaining it, if rendered by a court having jurisdiction of the cause and of the parties. Hanley v. Donoghue, 116 U. S. 1, 4; Wisconsin v. Pelican Ins. Co., 127 U. S. 265, 292.

The decrees of State probate courts cannot, if they have jurisdiction, be collaterally attacked in the courts of other States or of the United States. Herron v. Dater, 120 U. S. 464; Veach v. Rice, 131 U. S. 293; Simmons v. Saul, 138 U. S. 439; Holmes v. Oregon & Cal. R. Co., 9 Fed. Rep. 229; Mooney v. Hinds, 160 Mass.

of May 26, 1790, provided the mode by which records and judicial proceedings should be authenticated, and then declared

that they should have such faith and credit given to them in every court within the United States as they had by law or usage