peated with much the same blindness and passion as hitherto. So much has this feeling gained ground in the present volume that it often departs from its appropriate theme, shaping its argument for the ever-returning attack on religion and those who minister in its name. All that man regards most sacred, is to the author deadly and gross superstition. Religion, under whatever name it may appear, Protestant or Catholic, Episcopal or Presbyterian, is ever the same, calling for the contempt of philosophy, and the indignant rejection of intelligent men. The second volume renders at least one service; the battery is completely unmasked, and we see that our new enemy is but one of the old army of infidelity.

The attack is made on the side of natural law, and the claims of a science that recognizes no Providence in nature are everywhere sternly insisted on. If these are granted, if we recognize nothing but "universal, eternal, unchangeable law" in the world of external facts and forces, it will not be easy to withstand similar affirmations in the domain of spirit, and all that is personal in the character and governmeut of God will be lost. This is the conflict between reason and faith, science and religion.

ARTICLE II.-CONGRESS AND THE TERRITORIES.

Benton's Thirty Years' View; or a History of the Working of the American Government, for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850. 2 Vols. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

So much of the difficulty, under which the Nation is now laboring, has arisen out of the different views of the origin and extent of the power of Congress over the territories of the United States, and the manner of its exercise, that it seems proper that the subject should be discussed otherwise than in law reports and Congressional debates. It is well known that the United States has had the ownership and possession of territories, and has regulated and governed them, and their inhabitants, from a period anterior to the formation of the present Constitution to this present time. The first Ordinance for the government and regulation of such territories, said to have been drawn by Mr. Jefferson, was made April 23, 1784, and applied to all the "territory ceded or to be ceded by individual States to the United States," when the Indian title was extinguished, &c. It provided for the division of the territory into States, and their admission, at a proper time, into the Union, with separate Republican Constitutions, and for their temporary government

in the meantime.

This Ordinance remained in force till it was superseded and repealed by the more elaborate and well considered Ordinance of July 13, 1787, drawn by that eminent statesman, Mr. Dane, which has formed the basis of all our territorial governments to this day. These Ordinances were said by Mr. Madison to be unconstitutional, by which he probably meant nothing more than that there was no express grant of power in the old Confederation, which could be considered as an authority for such enactments. Nevertheless it was known that, from the nature of the case, the United States were liable to become, as they had become, the owners and possessors of

territory, as well as other property, which must be ruled and regulated by some common agent of the whole; and as the old Congress was the only such agent then in existence, it necessarily devolved on them, and nobody else, to take care of it till other provision was made.

At the time the Ordinance of 1787 was enacted, the Convention for forming the present Constitution was in session, and many of its leading members were also members of the old Congress, and acting at the same time in both capacities, for the common benefit of the United States. The defect of express power in the Confederation, to do what was absolutely necessary for governing the territories already acquired, and others known or expected to be soon afterwards acquired, was of course brought directly before them, and required to be provided for. The territory north and west of the Ohio river was the only one then actually owned by the United States, but the unsettled territory south of that river was claimed by them, and expected to be soon conceded, by the States within whose chartered limits it lay. This was done soon after the new government went into operation. The Convention undertook to provide for the case, and actually did so, by the third section of the fourth article of the Constitution, made for the express purpose. This section met the case exactly. It made an express grant of all the power the case required, and which the old Congress had been compelled, by the necessity of the case, to exercise without such grant, and, as was contended, without any right at all, viz: the power of admitting new States, and the right of disposing of and governing the territory in the meantime.

It did not grant the right to acquire territory, but it recognized the existence of the right, by recognizing the fact that territory had been acquired, and was then in the actual possession of the United States. It did not negative any future exercise of the right, because a further acquisition of territory was then in actual contemplation, and expected to be soon made, either by the Congress of the Confederation, or by a new Congress under the Constitution.

The first clause allows the admission of new States, a power

already assumed, and promised to be exercised by the Ordinance. The second and third clauses secure the integrity of the exist ing States, against division or amalgamation, without their own consent. The fourth clause gives power to dispose of the territory, and "make all needful rules and regulations respecting" it; both of which had been assumed and exercised in the Ordinance. The fifth clause preserved the counter claims of the United States, and individual States, each of which were then claiming the whole, or particular portions of the unsettled lands embraced within the boundaries established by the treaty with Great Britain. After the residue of the section was formed, the fourth and fifth clauses were added on the motion of Mr. Madison, who said that power ought to be given "to dispose of the unappropriated lands," and "to institute temporary governments in the new States;" and the committee, to whom the matter was referred, reported the provisions as they now stand in the Constitution, expressly answering those purposes. One of the first acts of the new government, under this Constitution, was to carry out this authority, by the adoption and reenactment of the Ordinance of 1787.

Thus we see that there was first a general agreement in Congress and in the Convention as to what should be done respecting the territories, acquired and to be acquired, and the old Congress did it, so far as respected the first. But as Mr. Madison, and probably others, said it was done without authority, the Convention provided the required authority; and lastly the new Congress, still including many of the same men, and Mr. Madison among them, confirmed and adopted it, by reenacting the Ordinance, as it originally passed, by virtue of the authority so given in the Constitution. This Ordinance, besides providing the whole machinery of a territorial government, prohibited and actually abolished slavery in all the existing territories of the United States; and its validity has been admitted, acted upon, and expressly recognized by every department of the government, legislative, executive, and judicial, from that day to this, not excepting the present Court, though Chief Justice Taney says, the power by which it was authorized, was exhausted in the

act, and could not be applied to any other territory subsequently acquired. He might as well have held that the residue of the sentence, regarding "other property," and in fact the whole Constitution, was made to provide for present exigencies only, and was never to be applied to similar purposes in the future. Thus the source and extent of the power for governing the territories under the Constitution, and the manner of its practical application, were fully recognized and established. The same necessity for Government still exists, in reference to territories subsequently acquired, as then existed in regard to the original one, and that whether they are situated within or without the treaty limits of the United States, and no other power than Congress can supply it. Their power to do it is admitted in the broadest possible terms, by the last authoritative exposition of the southern sectional doctrine, as promulgated in the Dred Scott ease.

But from what source do they derive this power? It would not do to take it from the direct grant in the Constitution "to make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory," because if they did, they must not only take it subject to all constitutional restrictions and limitations, but must take along with it all the precedents and decisions which establish its applicability to slavery, as well as all other subjects, as practically carried out under the Ordinance. Accordingly, the Chief Justice says that grant of power has been exhausted and become obsolete, and with it he sets aside, also, all the precedents and decisions founded upon it, and confirming the right to prohibit slavery.

Some other source must be discovered, from which the power of governing the territories can be derived without admitting such unwelcome attendants. The doctrine used in the time of President Jefferson, and afterwards, was that the power was extra-constitutional altogether, arising out of the sovereign right of ownership, and enabled them to do what they pleased, and when they pleased, with the territories, without restriction or limitation,-as they did with their own negroes, in fact, the doctrine of necessity, as claimed and used by the Congress of the Confederation in 1784 and 1787,