The Ordinance of 1787 was the product of the highest statesmanship. It ranks among the grandest bill of rights ever drafted for the government of any people. It secured for the inhabitants of the great States formed from the Northwest Territory religious freedom, the inviolability of private contracts; the benefit of the writ of _habeas corpus_ and trial by jury; the operation of the common law in judicial proceedings; urged the maintenance of schools and the means of education; declared that religion, morality and knowledge were essential to good government; exacted a pledge of good faith toward the Indians; and proscribed slavery within the limits of the Territory. It provided for the opening, development and government of the Territory, and formed the basis of subsequent State legislation. Chief Justice Chase says of it: “When they (the people) came into the wilderness, they found the law already there. It was impressed on the soil while as yet it bore up nothing but the forest. * * * Never probably in the history of the world did a measure of legislation so accurately fulfill, and yet so mightily exceed, the anticipation of the legislators. * * * The Ordinance has well been described as having been a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night in the settlement of the Northwest States.” Judge Timothy Walker, in 1837 in an address delivered at Cincinnati, says: “Upon the surpassing excellence of this Ordinance no language of panegyric would be extravagant. The Romans would have imagined some divine Egeria for its author. It approaches as nearly absolute perfection as anything to be found in the legislation of mankind. * * * It is one of those matchless specimens of sagacious foresight which even the reckless spirit of innovation would not venture to assail.” Daniel Webster, in his famous reply to Hayne, bore this testimony to the excellence of this measure: “We are accustomed to praise the lawgivers of antiquity; we help to perpetuate the fame of Solon and Lycurgus; but I doubt whether one single law of any lawgiver, ancient or modern, has produced effects of more distinct, marked and lasting character than the Ordinance of 1787. We see its consequences at this moment, and we shall never cease to see them, perhaps, while the Ohio shall flow.” The people of Ohio, of the farther west, and of the whole country cannot become too familiar with a measure which has received so great praise from such high sources. We publish the Ordinance in full. _An ordinance for the government of the territory of the United States northwest of the river Ohio_: _Be it ordained by the United States in Congress assembled_, That the said Territory for the purpose of temporary government be one district, subject, however, to be divided into two districts, as future circumstances may, in the opinion of Congress, make it expedient.