of the Government, has already formed its constitution, elected its
legislature and other officers, and is now prepared to enter the Union.

The rule ought to be adopted, whether we consider its bearing on the
people of the Territories or upon the people of the existing States.
Many of the serious dissensions which have prevailed in Congress and
throughout the country would have been avoided had this rule been
established at an earlier period of the Government.

Immediately upon the formation of a new Territory people from different
States and from foreign countries rush into it for the laudable purpose
of improving their condition. Their first duty to themselves is to open
and cultivate farms, to construct roads, to establish schools, to erect
places of religious worship, and to devote their energies generally
to reclaim the wilderness and to lay the foundations of a flourishing
and prosperous commonwealth. If in this incipient condition, with a
population of a few thousand, they should prematurely enter the Union,
they are oppressed by the burden of State taxation, and the means
necessary for the improvement of the Territory and the advancement of
their own interests are thus diverted to very different purposes.

The Federal Government has ever been a liberal parent to the Territories
and a generous contributor to the useful enterprises of the early
settlers. It has paid the expenses of their governments and legislative
assemblies out of the common Treasury, and thus relieved them from a
heavy charge. Under these circumstances nothing can be better calculated
to retard their material progress than to divert them from their useful
employments by prematurely exciting angry political contests among
themselves for the benefit of aspiring leaders. It is surely no hardship
for embryo governors, Senators, and Members of Congress to wait until