The advocates of this bill attempt to sustain their position upon the language of the second clause of the third section of the fourth article of the Constitution, which declares that “the Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States.”  They contend that by a fair interpretation of the words “dispose of” in this clause Congress possesses the power to make this gift of public lands to the States for purposes of education.

It would require clear and strong evidence to induce the belief that the framers of the Constitution, after having limited the powers of Congress to certain precise and specific objects, intended by employing the words “dispose of” to give that body unlimited power over the vast public domain.  It would be a strange anomaly, indeed, to have created two funds—­the one by taxation, confined to the execution of the enumerated powers delegated to Congress, and the other from the public lands, applicable to all subjects, foreign and domestic, which Congress might designate; that this fund should be “disposed of,” not to pay the debts of the United States, nor “to raise and support armies,” nor “to provide and maintain a navy,” nor to accomplish any one of the other great objects enumerated in the Constitution, but be diverted from them to pay the debts of the States, to educate their people, and to carry into effect any other measure of their domestic policy.  This would be to confer upon Congress a vast and irresponsible authority, utterly at war with the well-known jealousy of Federal power which prevailed at the formation of the Constitution.  The natural intendment would be that as the Constitution confined Congress to well-defined specific powers, the funds placed at their command, whether in land or money, should be appropriated to the performance of the duties corresponding with these powers.  If not, a Government has been created with all its other powers carefully limited, but without any limitation in respect to the public lands.

But I can not so read the words “dispose of” as to make them embrace the idea of “giving away.”  The true meaning of words is always to be ascertained by the subject to which they are applied and the known general intent of the lawgiver.  Congress is a trustee under the Constitution for the people of the United States to “dispose of” their public lands, and I think I may venture to assert with confidence that no case can be found in which a trustee in the position of Congress has been authorized to “dispose of” property by its owner where it has been held that these words authorized such trustee to give away the fund intrusted to his care.  No trustee, when called upon to account for the disposition of the property placed under his management before any judicial tribunal, would venture to present such a plea in his defense.  The true meaning of these words is clearly stated by Chief Justice Taney in delivering the opinion of the court (19 Howard, p. 436).  He says in reference to this clause of the Constitution: