This condition has been exacted from the people of all the new territories, and to put its obligation beyond dispute each new State carved out of the public domain has been required explicitly to recognize it as one of the conditions of admission into the Union. Some of them have declared through their conventions in separate acts that their people "forever disclaim all right and title to the waste and unappropriated lands lying within this State, and that the same shall be and remain at the sole and entire disposition of the United States." With such care have the United States reserved to themselves, in all their acts down to this day, in legislating for the Territories and admitting States into the Union, the unshackled power to execute in good faith the compacts of cession made with the original States. From these facts and proceedings it plainly and certainly results-- 1. That one of the fundamental principles on which the Confederation of the United States was originally based was that the waste lands of the West within their limits should be the common property of the United States. 2. That those lands were ceded to the United States by the States which claimed them, and the cessions were accepted on the express condition that they should be disposed of for the common benefit of the States, according to their respective proportions in the general charge and expenditure, and for no other purpose whatsoever. 3. That in execution of these solemn compacts the Congress of the United States did, under the Confederation, proceed to sell these lands and put the avails into the common Treasury, and under the new Constitution did repeatedly pledge them for the payment of the public debt of the United States, by which pledge each State was expected to profit in proportion to the general charge to be made upon it for that object. These are the first principles of this whole subject, which I think can not be contested by anyone who examines the proceedings of the Revolutionary Congress, the cessions of the several States, and the acts of Congress under the new Constitution. Keeping them deeply impressed upon the mind, let us proceed to examine how far the objects of the cessions have been completed, and see whether those compacts are not still obligatory upon the United States.