should be considered as common property, to be disposed of for the
benefit of the United States, that some of the States agreed to come
into a "perpetual union." The States claiming those lands acceded to
those views and transferred their claims to the United States upon
certain specific conditions, and on those conditions the grants were
accepted. These solemn compacts, invited by Congress in a resolution
declaring the purposes to which the proceeds of these lands should be
applied, originating before the Constitution and forming the basis on
which it was made, bound the United States to a particular course of
policy in relation to them by ties as strong as can be invented to
secure the faith of nations.

As early as May, 1785, Congress, in execution of these compacts, passed
an ordinance providing for the sales of lands in the Western territory
and directing the proceeds to be paid into the Treasury of the United
States. With the same object other ordinances were adopted prior to the
organization of the present Government.

In further execution of these compacts the Congress of the United States
under the present Constitution, as early as the 4th of August, 1790, in
"An act making provision for the debt of the United States," enacted as
follows, viz:


That the proceeds of sales which shall be made of lands in the
Western territory now belonging or that may hereafter belong to the
United States shall be and are hereby appropriated toward sinking or
discharging the debts for the payment whereof the United States now
are or by virtue of this act may be holden, and shall be applied solely
to that use until the said debt shall be fully satisfied.