conflicting claims of Georgia, the public lands which South Carolina had to cede were reduced to a strip twelve miles wide skirting the south line of North Carolina and Tennessee, or the parallel of 35°, westward to the Mississippi.

On the 25th of February, 1790, North Carolina transferred all her chartered rights of "sovereignty and territory" over the zone included between the parallels of 35° and 36° 30' as far west as the Mississippi, then the international boundary line; this territory now constitutes the State of Tennessee.

On the 16th of June, 1802, Georgia ratified an agreement previously drawn up by her commissioners and the General Government, whereby her public lands west of her present boundaries became a part of the public domain. She received in turn that portion of the South Carolina cession lying within her present boundaries, thus adding a strip twelve miles wide to her northern frontier and making her coterminous with North Carolina and Tennessee.

These cessions were accompanied, however, in some cases by important reservations. The last district ceded by Connecticut, having been excluded from the first cession of that State, was called the Western Reserve, a title by which it is still known in Ohio. It covers a tract of land one hundred and twenty miles long, extending from Lake Erie to the forty-first parallel, and containing 3,800,000 acres. About 500,000 acres of the western portion of this tract were donated by the State of Connectient to certain of her citizens who had suffered by fire and depredation in the revolutionary raids of British partisans. These lands were, from this circumstance, called the "Fire Lands." The remaining portion of the Western Reserve was sold by Connecticut, and the proceeds applied to constitute that common school fund which has enabled this State to stand in the front rank of educational enterprise.

Virginia stipulated that a quantity of lands, not exceeding 150,000 acres, should be laid off in one tract, the length of which should not exceed twice the breadth, to satisfy the claims of General George R. Clarke and the officers and soldiers composing his celebrated expedition to the Illinois region. This tract, according to the terms of the reservation, was selected and located near the Falls of the Ohio, and distributed among the claimants according to the laws of Virginia. It was further stipulated in this cession that in case the lands in Kentucky, between the Green and Tennessee Rivers, which had been reserved to meet the land bounty claims of the Virginia revolutionary officers and soldiers under her laws should prove inadequate, the deficiency should be supplied in good lands to be selected and surveyed by the claimants themselves in a district allotted them on the north side of the Ohio River and between the Sciota and Little Miami Rivers. This loose method, and the entire absence of public monuments of survey in the "Virginia military district," was necessarily productive of many conflicts of title, requiring a long course of litigation to settle and seriously retarding the growth of civilization. After a quarter of a century, however, titles became measurably quieted and the march of improvement was accelerated. This district embraces a fine body of 6,570 square miles, or 4,204,800 acres, now one of the "garden spots" of the continent.

The reservations of North Carolina present a singular chapter in this history of the public domain. Among the conditions of transfer it was stipulated that three classes of claims should be satisfied from the publie lands ceded by that State before any other disposition should be made of them. These reservations were as follows: 1st. Appropriations of land by the State of North Carolina to her continental and

polémiste lançait, sans se recommencer ou pâlir jamais, et avec l'excusable véhémence de la lutte quotidienne, aux gallicans, aux philosophes, aux athées, aux gentilshommes, aux rois, et même à tous les catholiques timides, il avait toujours devant les yeux la croix de ce Dieu qui devait être la liberté et le frein de la liberté. Aucun excès de la force n'eut lieu sans qu'il le flétrît. Il voulait rendre à la religion sa popularité antique; mais il s'indignait noblement contre les vils briseurs de croix, contre les misérables destructeurs de l'archevêché; il prenait généreusement la défense des évêques qui l'avaient aimé et qui souffraient. Disons enfin que jamais l'Avenir ne fut doctrinalement et directement hostile au côté monarchique de nos libertés nouvelles. Il prétendait bien détruire les préjugés vulgaires qui traitaient la religion catholique en alliée nécessaire de la monarchie absolue; il prétendait bien réhabiliter dans l'opinion le Christianisme par la liberté ; mais il le préférait visiblement à toutes les formes mobiles de l'organisation sociale, et le plaçait surtout au-dessus des opinions.

L'article aux évêques de France fut déféré au jury, au mois de février 1831, en même temps qu'un autre article de M. de Lamennais. L'abbé Lacordaire se défendit lui-même avec une franchise originale. Les accusés furent absous. Le bruit et l'honneur de la défense accrurent encore le crédit et le mérite des articles incriminés.

Prévoyant que les temps allaient devenir mauvais pour la religion, et voulant pouvoir s'offrir à elle comme défenseur devant les tribunaux, l'abbé Lacordaire avait demandé, au mois de décembre précédent, que son nom fût inscrit sur le tableau des avocats de la Cour royale de Paris. S'il y avait eu quelque chose d'étrange dans la demande, c'était à l'autorité ecclésiastique seule qu'il eût appartenu d'apprécier ce que cette démarche contenait d'insolite ou d'irrégulier. Le conseil de discipline, juge souverain, s'érigea en Sorbonne, en conseil de canonistes, et se refusa l'honneur d'inscrire le nom de l'abbé Lacordaire parmi les noms du barreau. M. Mauguin eut l'esprit de voter pour l'abbé Lacordaire.

Le rédacteur de l'Avenir avait été déjà obligé d'invoquer à son aide le secours des tribunaux. Les violateurs de l'archevêché avaient trouvé dans le pillage une feuille de papier contenant les dernières lignes et les signatures d'un mémoire adressé par tous les aumôniers des colléges royaux de Paris au ministre de l'instruction publique sur l'état moral et religieux des colléges royaux. Ce mémoire, solli

have been treated as a nullity. Virginia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, North and South Carolina, and Georgia claimed the full quota of territory under their original charters, with the exception, however, of such areas as they, by negotiation, had acknowledged to have been alienated to other colonies. Thus Connecticut and Massachusetts had yielded those portions of their original charters which were covered by the actual settlements of New York and Pennsylvania. But where a right is yielded by diplomacy this concession does not involve the negation of the original right itself. Connecticut, after vainly contending with Pennsylvania in regard to the zone between the forty-first and forty-second parallels, yielded the point under the decision of the court constituted under the articles of confederation, but pressed her claim to the same zone west of Pennsylvania to the Mississippi River.

To many of that day the area acknowledged as ours by the treaty of peace of 1783 with Great Britain, appeared sufficiently broad for the greatest possible expansion of our American nationality, but even then there were minds sufficiently enlightened and progressive to forecast something of that splendid career which we have since partially realized. To such the idea of "an ocean-bound republic" was already unfolding itself. The circumstance which then began to form this idea was the last accession to the public domain consummated ere our foreign acquisitions began.

On the 30th of April, 1803, the year following the cession of Georgia, Napoleon, as First Consul, meditating a rupture with England, ceded to the United States the large, imperfectly-defined province of Louisiana, lest it should fall into the hands of his enemy. The consideration for this cession was that the United States should pay 60,000,000 francs, besides discharging sundry claims of her own citizens against France. This action of the treaty-making power, put forth by an administration committed to the doctrine of strict construction, shows the recognition of power in the General Government in accordance rather with the spirit than the letter of the Constitution.

Louisiana had been claimed by France by right of discovery, La Salle having visited it and discovered the mouth of the Mississippi in 1691. After an abortive attempt at settlement by Iberville, in 1699, it was granted, in 1712, by Louis XIV to M. Crozat, and named Louisiana. Five years later it passed into the hands of John Law and his Mississippi Company, on the financial explosion of which it reverted to the Crown. Transferred to Spain in 1762, it was retroceded by the treaty of San Ildefonso, October 1, 1800.

The boundaries of Louisiana, as ceded by Napoleon to the United States, were indefinite, the treaty itself, according to Chief Justice Marshall, having been couched in terms of studied ambiguity." Questions of boundary between Louisiana and Florida were involved which require some explanation. By the proclamation of George III,, of October 7, 1763, before cited, the province of West Florida was constituted as extending from the Mississippi River on the west to the Appalachicola on the east. During the revolutionary war, in 1778, the British troops in Florida marched into Georgia, capturing Savannah. The Spanish authorities of Louisiana, taking advantage of this disposition of the British forces, organized an expedition to Florida, and had so far succeeded in conquering both East and West Florida, that, upon the general pacification at the close of the revolutionary war, both provinces were retroceded to Spain.

When Louisiana was transferred to us by Napoleon in 1803, it was with the same limits as when France formerly possessed it, and as Spain

possessed it at the time of the treaty of San Ildefonso. Spanish diplomacy, however, found it convenient to consider British occupancy as permanently dissevering West Florida from Louisiana, which it claimed as a new conquest from Great Britain; but the United States, in 1811, took military possession of the country west of Perdido River, thus insisting upon the original limits of Louisiana as claimed by France.

This imbroglio was still further complicated by events on the Florida border during our last war with England, and the reprisals made by General Jackson for the repeated infractions of neutrality by the Spanish authorities. But all grounds of difficulty and all questions of jurisdiction were finally superseded by "the treaty of amity, settlement, and limits," concluded with Spain February 22, 1819. By this treaty the provinces of East and West Florida were ceded to the United States, and the undefined boundary between Louisiana and Mexico was settled as running up the line of the Sabine River to the Red River, thence by the course of that river to the one hundredth meridian, thence north to the Arkansas River, thence following the course of that river to the forty-second parallel, and thence westward to the Pacific Ocean. The northern boundary of the Louisiana purchase, from the Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains, was established along the forty-ninth parallel by the second article of the convention of October 20, 1818, with✈ Great Britain. West of the Rocky Mountains, by treaty of June 15, 1846, with the same power, the international frontier was continued along the forty-ninth parallel to the middle of the channel separating Vancouver's Island from the mainland, and thence through the Straits of Fuca to the Pacific. The United States held an independent claim to that portion of Louisiana called Oregon, based upon the discovery of the mouth of the Columbia River by Captain Gray in 1792. The Louisiana purchase, the limits of which were thus ascertained by tedious and protracted diplomatic litigation, embraced those portions of Alabama and Mississippi south of the thirty-first parallel, the entire surface of the States of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, and Oregon, all of Minnesota west of the Mississippi River, all of Kansas except a small corner west of the one hundredth meridian and south of the Arkansas River, all of Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Indian Territories, with parts of Wyoming and Colorado.

The annexation of Texas in 1845 led to a war with Mexico, at the close of which, in 1848, by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, we acquired a large territory from Mexico. Subsequently, by treaty of 1853, another strip, known as the Gadsden Purchase, embracing the Mesilla Valley, was added, in consideration of which, and of the abrogation of sundry stipulations in the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, our Government paid to Mexico $10,000,000.

These Mexican cessions are now covered by the States of Texas, California, and Nevada, the Territories of Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, and parts of Wyoming and Colorado. Texas, on entering the Union, stipulated for the possession and disposal of her own public lands. Subsequently, however, by act of November 25, 1850, she accepted propositions from the General Government ceding her claims to reimbursement for the surrender of her military, naval, and revenue establishments, and her lands north of the parallel 36° 30′, and between that parallel and the thirty-second, lying west of the one hundred and third meridian; the consideration of this cession was the payment of $10,000,000. The ceded lands are now included in Kansas and New Mexico.

The purchase of Alaska from Russia, by the treaty of March 30, 1867, enlarged our public domain to its present dimensions. Russia claimed

this vast territory by right of prior discovery. Captain Behring, who was sent out in 1733 by Empress Ann, discovered the mainland of North America in latitude 58° 28', on the 18th of July, 1741. His colleague, Captain Tschirikow, being separated from him in a storm, sighted the same coast in latitude 56°, on the 15th of July, 1741, while Behring sailed up the coast, discovering many of the islands of the Aleutian Archipelago, some of which, however, he had seen during his previous voyage in 1728. The coast of British Columbia was discovered in 1790 by Vancouver, upon the strength of which England claimed its sovereignty. The discovery of the coast of Oregon by Captain Gray, in the same year, formed the basis of a claim of our Government to the sovereignty of the whole coast, at least as far north as the Russian discoveries. The line separating us from those discoveries was fixed as the parallel of 54° 40′ in the treaty made with Emperor Nicholas in 1824. The territory between that parallel and the forty-ninth was recognized as belonging to the English, by virtue of Vancouver's discoveries. North of 54° 40′ the claim of Russia seems never to have been questioned. This territory was offered to the United States for a pecuniary consideration during the Crimean war in 1854, by Baron Stoekl, then Russian envoy at Washington, but this offer was declined by the Pierce administration. During the administration of Buchanan unofficial negotiations were set on foot by our Cabinet for the purchase of Alaska, the sum of $5,000,000 being named as the price, but significant intimations were received that Russia expected a higher price. After the suppression of the rebellion the subject was again agitated in private and official circles. The legis lature of Washington Territory, in January 1866, memorialized the President in behalf of the immediate acquisition of the Russian territories of North America. A strong pressure was brought to bear upon both the legislative and executive departments of the General Government. When the fact became generally known that the lease of the franchises of the Russo-American Fur Company by the Hudson Bay Company would expire in June 1867, and would probably be renewed unless we acquired the territory in the meanwhile, the anxiety for the measure increased. Formal negotiations were entered into between Baron Stoekl, the Russian minister at Washington, and Hon. W. H. Seward, Secretary of State, resulting in the formation of the treaty of April 30, 1867, the signatures of the plenipotentiaries being affixed at 4 o'clock on the morning of that day. The consideration of the transfer of the territory named in the treaty was $7,200,000.

FOREIGN TITLES-LIBERAL POLICY PURSUED BY THE UNITED STATES IN RECOGNIZING AND CONFIRMING TITLES NOT MERELY COMPLETE

GRANTS, BUT INCHOATE CLAIMS DÉRIVED FROM FOREIGN GOVERN

MENTS TO LAND WITHIN THE LIMITS OF CESSIONS OF TERRITORY.

In all the above-detailed accessions of territory, whether from States in the Union or from foreign powers, considerable tracts were found already appropriated by private owners under the systems of law previously in force. Besides these there were inchoate titles from former Sovereign authority, awaiting confirmation by our Government, and location upon the soil. The action of the United States in all such cases was based upon the highest conception of justice. In some cases these titles were expressly secured by treaty stipulation. But the Supreme Court of the United States, in the celebrated case of United States rs. Percherman, (7 Peters, 86.) held that "the modern usage of nations, which has become a law, would be violated; that sense of justice and