No. 5.

Am. 6843

MORMONISM EXPOSED.

The Constitution and the Territories.

A LAWYER'S VIEW.

By RICHARD W. YOUNG, ESQ.,

OF NEW YORK.

1885

THE

CONSTITUTION AND THE TERRITORIES.

AT the time of the adoption of the Constitution, the territory of the United States included the thirteen colonies and those districts west of the Alleghanies which have since been admitted as States into the Union, under the names of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Provisional governments had been extended over this western territory by the Congress of the old confederation in the ordinance of 1787. Among the first acts of the government under the existing Constitution was to sanction the republican system which it found established over these districts.

With the increasing population of the continent, the question of the power of Congress under the Constitution to admit new States, and acquire additional territory, grew in importance, and became a problem of great public interest.

The Constitution (Art. IV, Sec. 3) provides that:

New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the consent of the legislatures concerned, as well as of Congress.

This is the only reference to the subject in the instrument; and hence, to ascertain what new States come within the scope of this section, it is necessary to consult acknowledged author

ities.

Story says:

Although Congress has authority to admit new States into the firm, yet it is demonstrable that this clause had sole reference to the territory then belonging to the United States.

Mr. Pickering, Senator from South Carolina, one of the founders of the government, and the statesman from whom a large number of the provisions of the Constitution emanated, says, "that this provision of the Constitution only applied to new States from territory then possessed." It was announced by Mr. Webster, in the famous controversy of 1850, that he

Had always entertained and often expressed the opinion that the formation of new States, or their adoption into the Union out of territory not belonging to the United States, was not in the contemplation of the Constitution of the United States; although it had seemed to be in the comtemplation of the States of the old confederation, at least as far as regarded Canada. (Curtis' Life of Webster, p. 416.)

In 1811, Josiah Quincy made a violent speech against the admission of Louisiana, contending that the new States contemplated by the Constitution must be in the territory then held.

These authorities, taken in conjunction with those I shall introduce as to the absence of power in the government to acquire foreign territory, will establish the fact that the extension of the territorial limits beyond their original extent has been accomplished by a dangerously broad construction of the Constitution, if, indeed, the power exists at all.

The right to acquire foreign territory has been based upon either the section of the Constitution above quoted, or upon the treaty-making power, which is specifically mentioned among the powers of the government. It was laid down by the Supreme Court in the case of The American Insurance Co. v. Canter, 1 Peters, 511, that "the annexation of foreign States out of the