It begins its enumeration of powers by that of disposing; in other words, making sale of the lands or raising money from them, which, as we have already said, was the main object of the cession (from the States), and which is the first thing provided for in the article.

It is unnecessary to refer to the history of the times to establish the known fact that this statement of the Chief Justice is perfectly well founded.  That it never was intended by the framers of the Constitution that these lands should be given away by Congress is manifest from the concluding portion of the same clause.  By it Congress has power not only “to dispose of” the territory, but of the “other property of the United States.”  In the language of the Chief Justice (p. 437): 

And the same power of making needful rules respecting the territory is in precisely the same language applied to the other property of the United States, associating the power over the territory in this respect with the power over movable or personal property; that is, the ships, arms, or munitions of war which then belonged in common to the State sovereignties.

The question is still clearer in regard to the public lands in the States and Territories within the Louisiana and Florida purchases.  These lands were paid for out of the public Treasury from money raised by taxation.  Now if Congress had no power to appropriate the money with which these lands were purchased, is it not clear that the power over the lands is equally limited?  The mere conversion of this money into land could not confer upon Congress new power over the disposition of land which they had not possessed over money.  If it could, then a trustee, by changing the character of the fund intrusted to his care for special objects from money into land, might give the land away or devote it to any purpose he thought proper, however foreign from the trust.  The inference is irresistible that this land partakes of the very same character with the money paid for it, and can be devoted to no objects different from those to which the money could have been devoted.  If this were not the case, then by the purchase of a new territory from a foreign government out of the public Treasury Congress could enlarge their own powers and appropriate the proceeds of the sales of the land thus purchased, at their own discretion, to other and far different objects from what they could have applied the purchase money which had been raised by taxation.

It has been asserted truly that Congress in numerous instances have granted lands for the purposes of education.  These grants have been chiefly, if not exclusively, made to the new States as they successively entered the Union, and consisted at the first of one section and afterwards of two sections of the public land in each township for the use of schools, as well as of additional sections for a State university.  Such grants are not, in my opinion, a violation of