seem to be a casus omissus, or a power overlooked.  Accordingly, Mr. Webster went so far as to assert that the framers of it never contemplated its extension beyond the original limits of the country;[A] but this we can scarcely believe of men so far-seeing and sagacious.  It were a better opinion, which Mr. Benton has recently urged, that the acquisition and control of territories are necessary incidents of the sovereign and proprietary character of the government created by the Constitution.[B] But be this as it may, whatever the theoretic origin of the right to acquire territory,—­whatever the origin of the right to govern it,—­whether the former be derived from the war-making power, which implies conquest, or from the treaty-making power, which implies purchase,—­and whether the latter be derived from an express grant or is involved as necessary to the execution of other grants, both questions were definitively settled by long and universally accepted practice.  Under the actual legislation of Congress, running over a period of sixty years,—­a legislation sanctioned by all administrations, by all departments of the government, by all the authorities of the individual States, by all statesmen of all parties, and by frequent popular recognitions,—­prescription has taken the force of law, and that which might once be theoretically doubtful became forever practically valid and legitimate.

[Footnote A:  Works, Vol.  V. p. 306.]

[Footnote B:  See his late pamphlet on the Dred Scott decision, which we may say, without adopting its conclusions, every statesman ought to read.]

It was not till within the last few years that the right of Congress over the Territories was questioned.  Certain classes of politicians then discovered that the whole of our past statesmanship had been a mistake, and that the time had come to propound a new doctrine.  No! they said, it is not Congress, not the Federal Government, which is entitled to govern the Territories, but the Territories themselves,—­which means the handful of their original occupants.  The real sovereignty resides in the squatters, and Squatter Sovereignty is the charm which dispels all difficulties.  Alas! it was rather like the ingredients mingled by Macbeth’s hags, only “a charm of powerful trouble.”  Overlooking the fact that the Territories were Territories precisely because they were not States, this absurd theory proposed to confer the highest character of an organized political existence upon a society wholly inchoate.  As land, the Territories were the property of the United States, to be disposed of and regulated by the will of Congress; as collections of men, they were yet immature communities, having in reality no social being, and in that light also wisely and benevolently subjected to the will of Congress; but Squatter Sovereignty elevated them, willy nilly, to an independent self-subsistence.  They were declared full-formed and fledged before they were out of the shell.