tion in the general assembly of the territory; that judicial proceedings should be conducted "according to the common law and the laws and usages in force in said territory "; that the people of the territory should be entitled to the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus; that in criminal cases trials should be by a jury of good and lawful men of the vicinage; that all crimes should be bailable except capital offenses; that no cruel or unusual punishment should be inflicted; that no man should be deprived of his life, liberty or property "but by the judg ment of his peers and the law of the land"; that no ex post facto law or law impairing the obligation of contracts should be passed; and that no law should be enacted laying any person under any restraint, burden or disability on account of his religious opinions, profession or mode of worship. By the same act Congress declared that "religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall be encouraged and provided for from the public lands of the United States in said territory in such manner as Congress may deem expedient." (2 St. 747.)

The obligation which the Congress of the United States thus assumed by the Act of June 4, 1812, to foster the cause of education and good government within the Louisiana purchase, it afterwards fully discharged. The sixteenth section in each township of surveyed public lands was granted to the State of Louisiana for the support of public schools, and an entire township, or thirty-six sections, for the establishment of a seminary of learning. (2 St. 394.) A similar grant was made to the State of Missouri, together with a grant of four sections of land for the establishment of a seat of government. (3 St. 547.) The states of Arkansas and Iowa in like manner received from the federal government the sixteenth section in each township for the support of public schools, and two entire townships, or seventy-two sections, for the establishment of a seminary or state university. (5 St. 58, 789.)

In the other states that were carved out of the purchase,

the thirty-sixth section in each township, as well as the sixteenth section, was set apart for the benefit of public schools, and seventy-two sections in each state for the maintenance of a state university. The federal statutes disclose many other grants of lands, almost too numerous to mention, that have been made from time to time, either to aid in the erection of public buildings or to stimulate works of internal improvement, to say nothing of those munificent grants amounting to many millions of acres of the most productive land on the continent, that have been made to states and corporations to aid in the construction of railroads. It is not too much to say that there are few railroads now in operation within the Louisiana purchase but owe their existence in whole, or in part, to the generous if not far-sighted action of the federal government. The latest gift made by the government for the benefit of the inhabitants of the Louisiana purchase is that contained in the Act of June 17, 1902 (32 St. 388), whereby the proceeds of the sale of all public lands, save such part thereof as has heretofore been devoted to educational purposes, have been reserved and set apart as a fund to be used in the construction of irrigation works for the reclamation of arid and semi-arid lands.

In the light of all federal legislation affecting the Louisiana territory, no one can well deny that the United States dealt generously and wisely with the inhabitants of the territory so long as they remained under a territorial form of government. It has aided them by lavish grants of land and money in transforming what were once regarded as barren wastes into wealthy. and prosperous states. It has been equally generous in according to the people of the Louisiana purchase such political rights and privileges as were best calculated to promote their happiness and well-being. The main object of written constitutions is to secure to all men equal rights, privileges and opportunities under the law and to provide adequate protection for life, liberty and property. The best protection that can be afforded to life, liberty and property is a guaranty by the sov

ereign authority that no man shall be deprived of either without due process of law; that he shall be entitled to a trial by jury when either life, liberty or property is involved; to the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus and to freedom of opinion in matters of religion. The Congress of the United States not only permitted the inhabitants of the Louisiana purchase to enact laws adapted to their wants, but at a very early day it expressly extended to them these constitutional guaranties. It may be that without such an express grant from the Congress of the United States the rights in question, or some of them, belonged to the inhabitants of the territory as soon as it was ceded to the United States in virtue of the provisions of the federal Constitution, although the recent decisions of the Supreme Court leave us somewhat in doubt of the extent to which the guaranties of the federal Constitution and the limitations upon legislative power therein contained are applicable to the territories. If the rights in question were not secured to them by that instrument, it may be that some of them were secured by a species of constitutional common law prevailing throughout the United States, its territories and all of its dependencies. It is well known that during recent years some learned judges, when they have felt the pressure of the argument that it was never intended that absolute power should ever be exercised by our government or any of its departments, have strongly intimated that there are certain "inherent and fundamental principles for the protection of the individual" which are binding upon all of the departments of the federal government at all times and in all places subject to its jurisdiction, and are deducible from the history of the Anglo-Saxon race and the spirit of our organic law rather than from its letter. Downes vs. Bidwell, 182 U. S. 244, 280, 291; Mormon Church vs. United States, 136 U. S. 1, 44; Knowlton vs. Moore, 178 U. S. 41, 109. Be this as it may, if the purchased territory was at any time merely a colony or an appurtenant domain with which the Congress of the United States could deal at its mere pleasure without ref

erence to any constitutional provisions limiting its power, it never saw fit so to regard it or to exercise such authority. Its legislation with respect to the territory shows from the beginning a manifest desire to invest the inhabitants of the territory with all the rights and privileges which other citizens of the United States at the time enjoyed, and to bestow on them all the blessings incident to a constitutional form of government.

The states that have been carved out of the Louisiana purchase have, without exception, borrowed their constitutions, codes of municipal laws and local institutions from the older states, or, to speak more accurately, the people from the older states who migrated across the Mississippi, and there founded. new commonwealths, brought with them from the older states civil polities with which they were entirely familiar, and reestablished them without difficulty on what had previously been foreign soil. The result is that institutional growth and development in the Louisiana purchase has always kept pace with the growth of population, and both have been exceedingly rapid. As early as the year 1812, Congress enacted that all judicial proceedings within the Louisiana territory, which included at that time all of the purchase except the State of Louisiana, should be conducted according to the common law. The common law has accordingly prevailed, and still prevails, save as it has been modified by local statutes, in all of the purchase states except the State of Louisiana. The territory embraced by the Louisiana purchase is larger by fifty-four thousand square miles than the original thirteen states or colonies; it is said to be more than seven times the size of Great Britain and Ireland, and larger than Great Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal and Italy combined. When we reflect that as one of the immediate results of the purchase made one hundred years ago, republican institutions were planted throughout this vast region and the blessings of liberty secured to all of its present and future inhabitants, we may well assert that history affords no other instance where objects of such supreme importance to

the well-being of so many millions of people, have been attained, without bloodshed, by wise statesmanship and a small expenditure of treasure.

The purchase of the Louisiana territory not only served to extend a liberal and constitutional form of government over a large section of the North American continent, but viewed from a material standpoint, it has added immensely to the wealth and productive capacity of the United States. Some of the statistics showing the productive capacity of the purchase states I venture to state. The value of the agricultural products of these states, including only wheat, corn, oats, barley, rye, hay and potatoes is said to have been a little more than eight hundred and sixty-six millions of dollars for the year 1903. The value of the wool product of the same states for the same year is said to have been sixteen millions of dollars, or one million dollars more than the cost of the entire territory. If to the value of these products be added all other agricultural products, including the value of animals annually turned into provisions, it is estimated that the products of the purchase states for the year 1903 amounted in value to more than one hundred times the original cost of the territory, while their taxable wealth is now more than four hundred times the purchase money. If well tilled, these states would doubtless support more than twelve times their present population, since various European states, having no greater area than the Louisiana purchase and no greater fertility, now support a population of more than two hundred millions of people. It was not, however, the productive capacity of the territory, nor the wealth it might be made to yield, which induced its purchase, for neither Jefferson, nor Livingston, nor any other statesman who was immediately concerned in negotiating the purchase, nor any of the French statesmen, appears to have had an adequate conception of its productive capacity, or of the wealth that it would eventually produce. Talleyrand, in one of his interviews with Livingston when the latter proposed the purchase of New