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It is perfectly apparent from the opinions cited, that it
was not the intention of the framers of the constitution, to
adjudicate by this provision, the claims of the several States
to the public lands, or to give them any other position than
they occupied under the confederation. The only opera-
tive part of the constitution, bearing upon these claims, is
that which vests in the Supreme Court, the right of deter-
mination upon "controversies to which the United States
should be a party, and to controversies between two or
more States. " Under the confederation, the States recog-
nised no mutual controlling arbiter of the territorial claims,
except as to boundary, limits and disputed jurisdiction. By
the express proviso of the second section of the ninth article
of the confederation, "no state could be deprived of territory
for the benefit of the United States. " This article was
adopted, as before observed, prior to the cession by
the States. The rights growing out of these ces-
sions were, in the nature of things, incapable of
arbitrament by the confederated Congress. It was un-
questionably to supply this defect. — to have an arbiter
whose decisions, uninfluenced by sectional feeling, should
be binding upon all the claimants, and to avoid the danger
of an attempted adjustment of the rights between States
equally confident of their claims, and equally determined to
persist in their maintenance, that the power of ultimate
judgment was conferred upon the Supreme Court. It has
never been contended that any power of Congress could be
engrafted upon, or enlarged by the authority of the judiciary.
And the extracts quoted already establishing the position,
that no surrender of State claims to the public territory
was made to the general government, by the adoption of the
constitution, wo are authorised to conclude that the terms
of the section, giving to Congress the power of disposing
of that territory, were merely to designate it, as we have
before remarked, as the mutual agent of the several States,
vested with power to dispose of it for the objects to
which, at the lime of the confederation, its proceeds were
admitedly liable — payment of the war debt; and after its
extinction, for the "common use and benefit of the States,
as such, " in such proportions, as with reference to their
relative conditions, would be most equitable.
Your committee then respectfully state, that from the
most careful investigation of the subject submitted to them,
they are hound to conclude that the position Maryland as-
sumed in 1780, in relation to her claims to participation in
the public territory, was rightfully and just. That her claims
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