The " Open Door " Policy and the Law. power is given to acquire territory to be held and governed permanently in that character." "We do not mean, however," continues the learned Chief Justice, " to question the power of Congress in this respect. The power to expand the territory of the United States by the admission of new States is plainly given; and in the construction of this power by all the departments of the government, it has been held to authorize the acquisition of territory, not fit for admis sion at the time, but to be admitted as soon as its population and situation would entitle it to admission. // is aequired to beeome a State and not to be held as a eolony andgov erned by Congress with absolute authority; and as the propriety of admitting a new State is committed to the sound discretion of Congress, the power to acquire territory for that purpose, to be held by the United States until it is in a suitable condition to become a State upon an equal footing with the other States, must rest upon the same discretion. It is a question for the political department of the government, and not the judicial; and whatever the political depart ment of the government shall recognize as within the United States, the judicial depart ment is also bound to recognize, and to ad minister in it the laws of the United States, so far as they apply, and to maintain in the territory the authority and rights of the government, and also the personal rights and rights of property of individual citizens, as secured by the Constitution. All we mean to say on this point is, that, as there is no express regulation in the Constitution defining the power which the general gov ernment may exercise over the person or property of a citizen in a territory thus ac quired, the court must necessarily look to the provisions and principles of the Consti tution, and its distribution of powers, for the rules and principles by which its decision must be governed. "Taking this rule to guide us, it may be safely assumed that citizens of the United
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States who migrate to a territory belonging to the people of the United States, cannot be ruled as mere colonists, dependent on the will of the general government, and to be governed by the laws which it may think proper to impose. The principle on which our government rests, and upon which alone they continue to exist, is the union of States, sovereign and independent within their own limits in their internal and domestic con cerns, and bound together as one people by a general government, possessing certain enumerated and restricted powers, delegated to it by the people of the respective States, and exercising supreme authority within the scope of the powers granted to it, through out the dominion of the United States. A power, therefore, in the general government to obtain and hold colonies and dependent territories, over which they might legislate without restriction, would be inconsistent with its own existence in its present form. "But the power of Congress over the person or property of a citizen can never be a mere discretionary power under our Con stitution and form of government. The powers of the government and the rights and privileges of the citizen are regulated and plainly defined by the Constitution it self. And when the territory becomes a part of the United States, the Federal gov ernment enters into possession in the char acter impressed upon it by those who cre ated it. // enters upon it with its powers over the eitizen strietly defined and limited by the Constitution, from which it derives its own existence, and by virtue of which alone it continues to exist and act as a government and sovereignty. It has no powers of any kind beyond it; and it cannot, when it enters a territory of the United States, put off its character, and assume discretionary or des potic powers which the Constitution has de nied to it. It cannot create for itself a new character separated from the citizens of the United States, and the duties it owes them
