Whence, then, does government derive its territorial
jurisdiction, and its right of eminent domain claimed by all
national governments? Whence its title to vacant or unoccupied
lands? How does any particular government fix its territorial
boundaries, and obtain the right to prescribe who may occupy, and
on what conditions the vacant lands within those boundaries?
Whence does it get its jurisdiction of navigable rivers, lakes,
bays, and the seaboard within its territorial limits, as
appertaining to its domain? Here are rights that it could not
have derived from individuals, for individuals never possessed
them in the so-called state of nature. The concocters of the
theory evidently overlooked these rights, or considered them of
no importance. They seem never to have contemplated the
existence of territorial states, or the division of mankind into
nations fixed to the soil. They seem not to have supposed the
earth could be appropriated; and, indeed, many of their followers
pretend that it cannot be, and that the public lands of a nation
are open lands, and whoso chooses may occupy them, without leave
asked of the national authority or granted. The American people
retain more than one reminiscence of the nomadic and predatory
habits of their Teutonic or Scythian ancestors before they
settled on the banks of the Don or the Danube, on the Northern
Ocean, in Scania, or came in contact with the Graeco-Roman
civilization.
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