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; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to prejudice any claims of the United States or of any particular State.

The sixth article is as follows, to wit, that—­

  All debts contracted and engagements entered into before the adoption of
  this Constitution shall be as valid against the United States under this
  Constitution as under the Confederation.

For a correct understanding of the terms used in the third section of the fourth article, above quoted, reference should be had to the history of the times in which the Constitution was formed and adopted.  It was decided upon in convention on the 17th September, 1787, and by it Congress was empowered “to dispose of,” etc., “the territory or other property belonging to the United States.”  The only territory then belonging to the United States was that then recently ceded by the several States, to wit:  By New York in 1781, by Virginia in 1784, by Massachusetts in 1785, and by South Carolina in August, 1787, only the month before the formation of the Constitution.  The cession from Virginia contained the following provision: 

That all the lands within the territory so ceded to the United States, and not reserved for or appropriated to any of the before-mentioned purposes or disposed of in bounties to the officers and soldiers of the American Army, shall be considered a common fund for the use and benefit of such of the United States as have become or shall become members of the Confederation or Federal Alliance of the said States, Virginia included, according to their usual respective proportions in the general charge and expenditure, and shall be faithfully and bona fide disposed of for that purpose and for no other use or purpose whatsoever.

Here the object for which these lands are to be disposed of is clearly set forth, and the power to dispose of them granted by the third section of the fourth article of the Constitution clearly contemplates such disposition only.  If such be the fact, and in my mind there can be no doubt of it, then you have again not only no implication in favor of the contemplated grant, but the strongest authority against it.  Furthermore, this bill is in violation of the faith of the Government pledged in the act of January 28, 1847.  The nineteenth section of that act declares: 

That for the payment of the stock which may be created under the provisions of this act the sales of the public lands are hereby pledged; and it is hereby made the duty of the Secretary of the Treasury to use and apply all moneys which may be received into the Treasury for the sales of the public lands after the 1st day of January, 1848, first, to pay the interest on all stocks issued by virtue