Note 8 — EIGHTH CONGRESS.—FIRST SESSION. PROCEEDINGS AND DEBATES IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. (continued 7)

There are three grades of Territorial government, all based upon the idea of pupillage in the Territory, and of sovereignty and guardianship in the Federal Government. The first grade, as in the case of mere children, allowed the inhabitants no voice in their own government: a Governor and Judges, appointed by the Federal Government, adopted laws from the codes of the States, and executed them. The second grade, as in the case of children advancing towards the years of discretion, (to whom a father allows some latitude of will,) admitted the inhabitants to some share in their government, by giving them a Council composed of their own citizens, (but appointed by the President,) to act with the Judges in adopting the laws. The third grade, as in the case of children arrived at the years of discretion, but not yet of full age, allowed them a Territorial Legislature, consisting of a House of Representatives, elected by themselves, a Council appointed by the President, and liberty to originate and enact laws; but all their acts as in those of the two other grades, subject to the approbation of Congress. From this grade the Territory, on attaining the population which would give a right to one Representative in Congress, would pass into the class of States, on an equal footing in all respects with the other States, and entitled of right to all the benefits of the federal constitution. Before this transition, the Territories had no rights under the constitution. They were governed independently of the constitution, and contrary to it. They had no benefits from it, except such as Congress, in its discretion, chose to extend to them. They were governed as property: the soil, as a sovereign owner would govern his property; the inhabitants, as a father would take care of his children, looking to their ultimate equality with himself, and preparing them to enjoy that equality as soon as prepared for it. It was this graduated form of Territorial government, in its three regular degrees, to which Mr. Macon was so much attached. It was devised by the “Old Congress,” as he called it—the Congress of the confederation—and received its features from the organizing mind of Mr. Jefferson when he was a member of that Congress in 1784. Neither under the Articles of the Confederation, nor under the Federal Constitution, had the Territories had any rights: they were governed as property according to the will of Congress, uncontrolled by any authority, except the limitations and conditions expressed in the deeds of cession from the States, or in the treaties with foreign powers by which they were ceded. All this is abundantly evident in all the legislation of Congress upon the subject, and in none more so than in the government of Lower Louisiana.