In the Senate, and voting with the Administration party on the Louisiana treaty and legislation relating thereto, were Jonathan Dayton, of New Jersey; Pierce Butler, of South Carolina, and Abram Baldwin, of Georgia, all three of them members of the convention that framed the Constitution. Jefferson was President and Madison Secretary of State. Alexander Hamilton and Gouverneur Morris were still living, and commended the purchase. Justice Story, in Martin v. Hunter's Lessee (1 Wheat., 326), discussing the principle of construction to be applied to our Constitution, expressed himself thus: "The Constitution unavoidably deals in general language. It did not suit the purposes of the people, in framing this great charter of our liberties, to provide for minute specifications of its powers, or to declare the means by which those powers should be carried into execution. It was foreseen that this would be a perilous and difficult, if not an impracticable, task. The instrument was not intended to provide merely for the exigencies of a few years, but was to endure through a long lapse of ages, the events of which were locked up in the inscrutable purposes of Providence. It could not be foreseen what new changes and modifications of power might be indispensable to effectuate the general objects of the charter; and restrictions and specifications which at the present might seem salutary might in the end prove the overthrow of the system itself. Hence its powers are expressed in general terms, leaving to the legislature, from time to time, to adopt its own means to effectuate legitimate objects, and to mold and model the exercise of its powers as its own wisdom and the public interests should require." Chief Justice Marshall, in Cohens v. Virginia, declared that our Constitution was framed for ages to come, and designed to approach immortality as nearly as human institutions can approach it. In Holden v. Hardy (169 U. S., 366, 385), Mr. Justice Brown, speaking as to a case claimed to arise under the fourteenth amendment of the Federal Constitution, declared: "This court has not failed to recognize the fact that the law is, to a certain extent, a progressive science; that in some of the States methods of procedure which at the time the Constitution was adopted were deemed essential to the protection and safety of the people or to the liberty of the citizen have been found to be no longer necessary; that restrictions which had formerly been laid upon the conduct of individuals, or of classes of individuals, had proved detrimental to their interests. "Of course, it is impossible to forecast the character or extent of these changes, but in view of the fact that from the day Magna Charta was signed to the present moment amendments to the structure of the law have been made with increasing frequency, it is impossible to suppose that they will not continue, and the law be forced to adapt itself to new conditions of society. "In the future growth of the nation, as heretofore, it is not impossible that Congress may see fit to annex territories whose jurisprudence is that of the civil law. One of the considerations moving to such annexation might be the very fact that the territory so annexed should enter the Union with its traditions, laws, and systems of administration unchanged. It would be a narrow construction of the Constitution to require them to abandon these, or to substitute for a system which represented the growth of generations of inhabitants a jurisprudence with which they had had no previous acquaintance or sympathy." In so far as any fugitive expressions in former opinions of this court may seem to conflict with the position maintained by the AttorneyGeneral on behalf of the United States in these cases, they are to be weighed and valued only in accordance with the wise and just rule of interpretation formulated by Chief Justice Marshall in Cohens v. Virginia: "It is a maxim not be disregarded that general expressions in every opinion are to be taken in connection with the case in which these expressions are used. If they go beyond the case"As he seems to have done in Loughborough v. Blake "they may be respected, but ought not to control the judgment in a subsequent suit when the very point is presented for judgment." In the case of Genesee Chief the ancient rule which confined the maritime and admiralty jurisdiction of the United States to tidal waters was departed from, on the express ground that the great importance of the question, in view of the later growth and expansion of the country, was not appreciated or understood, Chief Justice Taney saying: "It is the decision in the case of the Thomas Jefferson which mainly embarrasses the court in the present inquiry. [That was a case decided by Mr. Justice Story, which the Chief Justice concurred in.] We are sensible of the great weight to which it is entitled. But at the same time we are convinced that if we follow it we will follow an erroneous decision into which the court fell when the great importance of the question, as it now presents itself, could not have been foreseen, and that the subject, therefore, did not receive the deliberate consideration which at this time would have been given it by the eminent men who presided here when the commerce on the rivers of the West and on the lakes was in its infancy and of little importance and but little regarded compared with that of the present day." (12 How., 443.) Is not this a similar case? Is not this a case where new events, crowded and pressed upon us against our will, have seemed to require from the Government that it should strike and maintain an attitude which, while possibly in advance, was not in conflict with the conduct and precedent of our forefathers? I have endeavored in this imperfect way to support the action of the Executive and Congressional branches of the Government in dealing with these momentous questions; grave and difficult they have always appeared to me to be; but I feel a serene confidence when I reflect that nothing that I have advised, that nothing the Government has done, but has had its precedent and its forerunner in the action of such men as Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, and James Monroe, and Andrew Jackson, and Albert Gallatin, and the other great men of their day and generation. That nothing has been done except in accordance H. Doc. 509—22 with the doctrine and principle declared in the case of Fleming v. Page by the great Chief Justice of that day. That nothing has been done or thought of which was not believed to tend toward the extension, the exaltation, and the greater glory of our country, and the greater benefit and progress and improvement of the new peoples who have come under our control. We have not sought a doctrine which by subtle disputation would entangle and embarrass. We have remembered that a great world power, extending its domain from the frozen seas on the North to where the encircling palm trees grow in the Pacific islands, must not be bound by rules too strict or too confining; that what might tend toward progress and development in one place might only hamper in another. Therefore we have sought an interpretation which should continue in the great legislative body which represents the American people that wise and sound discretion which it would be a slander and an imputation upon our country for a moment to believe they would not always exercise. And confidently might we trust that, actuated only by wise and honest and patriotic purpose, representing as they do only for a little while "the people" by whom they are chosen, and by whom they can quickly be displaced, they should seek not only to work out the highest welfare and advancement of the States and the people they represent, but also to bring these other peoples (as Congress and the Administration, I submit, have tried to do) into the lines of progress and development, so that the day might be hastened when we can give them more than the Constitution demands or requires, when we can give them self-government-that which the people of the District and the Territories by the decision of this court, and admission of counsel, are not entitled to under the Constitution; when we can give some of them, perhaps, a place in the galaxy of States. We have endeavored, as I said, to work not only for the honor and glory and welfare of our people, but to follow a course of enactment and administration that shall increase the comfort, the enlightenment, and the general welfare of every new inhabitant who stands under the protec tion of the American flag. I thank your honors for your very patient attention. IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES. October Term, 1900. ELIAS S. A. DE LIMA ET AL., PLAINTIFFS IN ERROR, v. GEORGE R. BIDWELL. SAMUEL B. DOWNES ET AL., PLAINTIFFS IN ERROR, v. GEORGE R. HENRY W. DOOLEY ET AL., PLAINTIFFS IN ERROR, v. THE HENRY W. DOOLEY ET AL., PLAINTIFFS IN ERROR, v. THE UNITED STATES. No. 502. CARLOS ARMSTRONG, APPELLANT, v. THE UNITED STATES. No. 509. ARGUMENT OF THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL. THURSDAY, January 10, 1901. May it please your honors: It is not my purpose to go over again the extensive line of argument that I addressed to the court on a former occasion. What I shall say now is intended to be supplementary to the remarks and suggestions I then addressed to the court. I shall pay more specific attention to some considerations that have been more especially brought to the notice of the court by the peculiarities of these particular cases, and by the suggestions that have been thrown out with reference to the general question by the additional counsel who have been heard in opposition to the Government. As supplemental to the historical citations given to the court in the argument of the Goetze case, and the case of the Fourteen Diamond Rings, I desire to refer to a passage from a letter of John Quincy Adams, when Secretary of State in 1821, to Baron de Neuville, the French minister, where, discussing the seventh clause of the Louisiana treaty, Mr. Adams said: "That stipulation both in letter and spirit is in all its parts special and not general." This seventh section was the one which gave a special preference to vessels and goods of Spain, and vessels and goods of France, at the ports of Louisiana for the period of ten years. "The whole transaction," says Mr. Adams, "refers to Louisiana, as distinct from and not as a part of this Union. The seventh article stipulates for special favors in its ports for a term of years, to the exclusion of other nations." 66 The objection was strongly urged that this stipulation was incompatible with the provision of the Constitution which forbids any preference to be given by regulation of commerce or revenue to the ports of one State over those of another. To this objection the speeches from which I have cited passages were the answers, and they all constantly assumed the principle that the prohibitive injunction of the Constitution was not incompatible with the stipulation of the treaty, because Louisiana was not acquired as a State, but as a Territory; so that while she continued in the territorial or colonial condition regulations of commerce different from those prescribed for the States of the Union might be established in her ports without contravening the Constitution." The Secretary of State of the United States expressly in this correspondence with a foreign Government put our Government upon that basis. Another matter which I desire to add to the historical elucidation of this question relates to our Western territory. It will be remembered that the Northwest Territory, so called, had been ceded to the Confederation prior to the adoption of the present Constitution, and the ordinance of 1787 had been prepared and agreed to by the Congress of the Confederation prior to the adoption of the Constitution, its preparation having been contemporaneous with the preparation of the draft of the Constitution. It will be remembered that the Congress of the United States, under the Constitution, ratified substantially the ordinance of 1787 by an act which seemed to accept it in all parts, providing only for this difference that the reports which, by the ordinance, were to be made by the territorial officers to the Congress of the Confederation were afterwards to be made to the President of the United States, and that the appointments to be made and the commissions to be issued under the Constitution should be issued by the President, instead of by the Congress of the Confederation, as provided in the ordinance. That was the only modification made by the act. Now, it is a fact that at the time the Constitution was adopted, at the time the ordinance was adopted, at the time the act of Congress which adapted the ordinance to the Government under the Constitution was passed, all of the States had not transferred to the United States their territory, and it was not until 1790 that North Carolina ceded her western territory to the United States. Here is a circumstance in the history of the relation of territory to the States and to the United States of very great importance. The territory which North Carolina ceded in 1790 had been territory forming, not a part of the State of North Carolina, but territory belonging to the State of North Carolina. It was not organized territory. There was no division of it into counties or townships, no provision for representation in a State legislature. It was regarded as property, outside of the State, but belonging to the State. Now, North Carolina ceded this by a deed, and Congress accepted the cession by an act in which the deed is recited. The deed contained stipulations expressing the terms upon which the United |