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the ratio, not of extent of soil, but of lands actually sur-
veyed or settled and improved. If the subject were here
ended, your committee would still think that the territory
thus acquired would enure to the benefit of all aiding in its
acquisition; and that the rights of States to vacant lands,
by virtue of a charter, resting upon the claim of discovery,
and not based upon actual occupancy and settlement, were
superceded by that more potent right — conquest. That
the claims to vacant lands under grants, could only be ex-
clusively asserted by a recognition of the authority whence
the grants issued, and that with the fall and prostration of
that authority, the virtue of the grants expired. And tra-
cing the history of the public lands to the period at which
the independence of the colonies was proclaimed, we
should contend that the rights created by the pen, were
dissolved by the sword. That the States, in throwing off
their allegiance to Great Britain, cast the rights she had
conferred into the scale of war, and contending in common —
in common won them. Suppose the contest had ended unfavo-
rably — that the Lion of England had crushed, in his strength,
the Eagle of America, would it be for one moment contended
that she, Great Britain, would have been bound to observe the
rights guaranteed by her charters? We were regarded by
her as rebels; we deemed ourselves foes; in either aspect,
defeat would have placed oar persons, our liberties, our
property, at her uncontrolled disposition.
The principle is not altered by reversing the case. By
the treaty of September 1783, the King of Groat Britain,
not only acknowledges the independence, sovereignty and
freedom of the States, "but for himself, his heirs and suc-
cessors, relinquishes all claims to the government, proprie-
tary and territorial rights of the same and every part there-
of. " This treaty confers no original right upon the United
States to the territory, cither collectively or individually —
it is a relinquishment, a surrender of claim, not a grant, a
form necessary to complete the title of conquest. "Lands, "
&c. says Vattel, (886, ) "become the property of the enemy
who makes himself master of them, but it is only by the
treaty of peace, or the entire submission and extinction of
the State, to which they 'belonged, ' that the acquisition is
complete, and the property therein, stable and perfect. "
We contend then at this time, all the unsettled, vacant
lands, within the boundaries prescribed in the treaty cited,
became the common property of the States that had won
them by the sword, unrestrained by grants and charters
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