A "Territory," viewed in connection with the political system of the United States, must be confessed to be a somewhat erratic and embarrassing member. Few or no specific provisions are made for it in the Organic Law, which applies primarily, and quite exclusively, to "States." The word is mentioned there but once,--in the clause empowering Congress to "make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States,"--and here it occurs in a somewhat doubtful sense. Judging by the mere letter or obvious import of the Constitution, the right of acquiring and governing territory would seem to be a _casus omissus_, or a power overlooked. Accordingly, Mr. Webster went so far as to assert that the framers of it never contemplated its extension beyond the original limits of the country;[A] but this we can scarcely believe of men so far-seeing and sagacious. It were a better opinion, which Mr. Benton has recently urged, that the acquisition and control of territories are necessary incidents of the sovereign and proprietary character of the government created by the Constitution.[B] But be this as it may, whatever the theoretic origin of the right to acquire territory,--whatever the origin of the right to govern it,--whether the former be derived from the war-making power, which implies conquest, or from the treaty-making power, which implies purchase,--and whether the latter be derived from an express grant or is involved as necessary to the execution of other grants, both questions were definitively settled by long and universally accepted practice. Under the actual legislation of Congress, running over a period of sixty years,--a legislation sanctioned by all administrations, by all departments of the government, by all the authorities of the individual States, by all statesmen of all parties, and by frequent popular recognitions,--prescription has taken the force of law, and that which might once be theoretically doubtful became forever practically valid and legitimate. [Footnote A: Works, Vol. V. p. 306.] [Footnote B: See his late pamphlet on the Dred Scott decision, which we may say, without adopting its conclusions, every statesman ought to read.]