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Not only, then, has the United States the power to acquire and hold "appurtenant" territory, but, the opinion continues, this is the only status which may be given to annexed territory by the treaty-making power. For incorporation the consent of Congress is required. "It seems," the opinion continues, "impossible to conceive that the treaty-making power by a mere cession can incorporate an alien people into the United States without the express or implied approval of Congress. And from this it must follow that there can be no foundation for the assertion that, where the treaty-making power has inserted conditions which preclude incorporation until Congress has acted in respect thereto, such conditions are void and incorporation results in spite thereof. If the treaty-making power can absolutely, without the consent of Congress, incorporate territory, and if that power may not insert conditions against incorporation, it must follow that the treaty-making power is endowed by the Constitution with the most unlimited right, susceptible of destroying every other provision of the Constitution; that is, it may wreck our institutions. If the proposition be true, then millions of inhabitants of alien territory, if acquired by treaty, can, without the desire or consent of the people of the United States, speaking through Congress, be immediately and irrevocably incorporated into the United States, and the whole structure of the government be overthrown. While thus aggrandizing the treaty-making power on the one hand, the construction at the same time minimizes it on the other, in that it strips that authority of any right to acquire territory upon any condition which would guard the people of the United States from the evil of immediate incorporation. The treatymaking power, then, under this contention, instead of having the symmetrical functions which belong to it from its very nature, becomes distorted, vested with the right to destroy upon the one hand, and deprived of all power to protect the government on the other.

Though declared to be a political question, the necessity of such a power is argued at length by these justices.

And, looked at from another point of view, the effect of the principle asserted is equally antagonistic, not only to the express provisions, but to the spirit of the Constitution in other respects. Thus, if it be true that the treaty-making power has the authority which is asserted, what becomes of that branch of Congress which is peculiarly the representative of the people of the United States, and what is left of the functions of that body under the Constitution? For, although the House of Representatives might be unwilling to agree to the incorporation of alien races, it would be impotent to prevent its accomplishment, and the express provisions conferring upon Congress the power to regulate commerce, the right to raise revenue,- bills for which, by the Constitution, must originate in the House of Representatives, and the authority to prescribe uniform naturalization laws, would be in effect set at naught by the treaty-making power. And the consequent result- incorporation would be beyond all future control of or remedy by the American people, since, at once and without hope of redress or power of change, incorporation by the treaty would have been brought about. The inconsistency of the position is at once manifest. The basis of the argument is that the treaty must be considered to have incorporated, because acquisition presupposes the exercise of judgment as to fitness for immediate incorporation. But the deduction drawn is, although the judgment exercised is against immediate incorporation and this result is plainly expressed, the conditions are void because no judgment against incorporation can be called into play."

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As is later indicated, however, where the treaty of annexation provides for incorporation, the consent of Congress to such incorporation may be implied from legislation that recognizes this status as having been obtained. But where a treaty of cession does not expressly provide for incorporation, and still more, where it expressly provides against it, a more formal congressional action would seem to be necessary.

The opinion then proceeds to maintain that at the time the Constitution was adopted, the term "United States" designated a definite territory, namely, the thirteen original States and the

areas which they had ceded, or had agreed to cede, to the General Government, and that the new government with prescribed powers was established for the benefit of the citizens of this national aggregate of State and Territories. "Thus it was, at the adoption of the Constitution, the United States, as a geographical unit, and as a governmental conception both in the international and domestic sense, consisted not only of States, but also of Territories, all the native white inhabitants being endowed with citizenship, protected by pledges of a common union, and, except as to political advantages, all enjoying equal rights and freedom, and safeguarded by substantial guarantees, all being under the obligation to contribute their proportional share for the liquidation of the debts and future expenses of the General Government."

In short, then, according to this doctrine, the Constitution, from the beginning, extended ex proprio vigore, over the States and the extra-State regions then subject to the sovereignty of the United States. In all that concerned the form of government to be established over them, the inhabitants of these territorial, extra-State districts, were subject to the discretionary control of Congress, but in all else, in the private rights of person and property, and the protection of all the limitations upon the federal power, express or implied, they were on a plane of perfect equality with the citizens of the States.

With reference, however, to territories acquired since 1789 the doctrine of the opinion is, as has been said, that they do not by annexation become ipso facto integral parts of the United States in this constitutional sense until Congress has incorporated them into the Union as such.

In support of this position the court cite legislative action to this effect with reference to territory annexed since 1787 up to the time of the treaty of 1898 with Spain. In each case, with the exception of this last treaty, the treaty of cession had provided that the territories ceded should be incorporated into the United States, or, as in the treaty of 1867 for the purchase of Alaska, that the civilized inhabitants should be "admitted to the enjoy

ment of all the rights, advantages and immunities of citizens of the United States." "

If, the opinion asks, the effect of annexation were immediately to incorporate the territory annexed into the United States, what was the need of these express treaty provisions ?

The opinion next goes on to show that the constitutional doubts expressed by Jefferson at the time of the acquisition of Louisiana were not as to its annexation, but as to its incorporation, as provided by the treaty, into the Union. By reference to various legislative and administrative acts, the opinion shows the territories subsequently annexed to have been either formally incor

The treaty for the cession of Louisiana to the United States provided that: "The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated into the Union of the United States and admitted as soon as possible according to the principles of the federal Constitution to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages, and immunities of the citizens of the United States." (8 U. S. Stat. at L. 202.)

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In the treaty with Spain whereby was confirmed the title of the United States to the Floridas the United States agreed that: "The inhabitants of the territories shall be incorporated in the Union of the United States as soon as it may be consistent with the principles of the federal Constitution, and admitted to the enjoyment of all the privileges, rights, and immunities of the citizens of the United States." (8 Stat. at L. 256.)

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In the treaty with Mexico by which Mexico relinquished its rights to Upper California and New Mexico the United States promised that: 'The Mexicans who, in the territories aforesaid, shall not preserve the character of citizens of the Mexican Republic conformably with what is stipulated in the preceding article, shall be incorporated in the Union of the United States and to be admitted at the proper time (to be judged of by the Congress of the United States) to the enjoyment of all the rights of citizens of the United States according to the principles of the Constitution." (9 Stat. at L. 930.)

In the treaty with Russia for the annexation of Alaska the United States agreed that: "The inhabitants of the ceded territory . . . shall be admitted to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages and immunities of citizens of the United States." (15 Stat. at L. 542.)

To the author's mind this is by no means conclusive argument; and for two reasons. In the first place, provisions really unnecessary are often inserted in legal documents from abundance of caution; and, in the second place, foreign countries are not presumed to know the constitutional law of foreign countries, and, therefore, the peculiar constitutional rights of the inhabitants of an annexed territory. It is, therefore, a general practice for countries, when handing over certain of their subjects to the political control of a foreign power, to provide as far as possible for the future welfare of these persons the control over whom is thus abandoned.

porated or by necessary implication recognized by Congress as incorporated into the United States. This being so, it is argued that the various earlier dicta of the Supreme Court relative to the constitutional limitations resting upon Congress when legislating for the Territories are to be interpreted in that light and do not cover the case of a Territory which has not been incorporated into the United States.

Summing up its doctrine upon this point, the justice reading the opinion declares: "It is, then, as I think, indubitably settled by the principle of the law of nations, by the nature of the government created under the Constitution, by the express and implied powers conferred upon that government by the Constitution, by the mode in which those powers have been executed from the beginning, and by an unbroken line of decisions of this court, first announced by Marshall and followed and lucidly expounded by Taney, that the treaty-making power cannot incorporate territory into the United States without the express or implied assent of Congress, that it may insert in a treaty conditions against immediate incorporation, and that on the other hand, when it has expressed in the treaty the conditions favorable to incorporation they will, if the treaty be not repudiated by Congress, have the force of the law of the land, and therefore by the fulfilment of such conditions cause incorporation to result. It must follow, therefore, that where a treaty contains no conditions for incorporation, and, above all, where it not only has no such conditions, but expressly provides to the contrary, that incorporation does not arise until in the wisdom of Congress it is deemed that the acquired Territory has reached that state where it is proper that it should enter into and form a part of the American family."

Having established this doctrine, its application to Porto Rico becomes a comparatively simple matter. The treaty with Spain in no clause provided for incorporation, but, upon the contrary, expressly provided that the civil rights and political status of the native inhabitants of the territories should be determined by Congress; and since annexation, Congress had carefully refrained from any expression of legislative will from which incorporation might be implied.

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