extent, and nature of the work done, the United States have exercised no act of jurisdiction or sovereignty within either of the States by taking the land from the proprietors by force, by passing acts for the protection of the road, or to raise a revenue from it by the establishment of turnpikes and tolls, or any other act founded on the principle of jurisdiction or right.  Whatever they have done has, on the contrary, been founded on the opposite principle, on the voluntary and unqualified admission that the sovereignty belonged to the State and not to the United States, and that they could perform no act which should tend to weaken the power of the State or to assume any to themselves.  All that they have done has been to appropriate the public money to the construction of this road and to cause it to be constructed, for I presume that no distinction can be taken between the appropriation of money raised by the sale of the public lands and of that which arises from taxes, duties, imposts, and excises; nor can I believe that the power to appropriate derives any sanction from a provision to that effect having been made by an article of compact between the United States and the people of the then Territory of Ohio.  This point may, however, be placed in a clearer light by a more particular notice of the article itself.

By an act of April 30, 1802, entitled “An act to enable the people of the eastern division of the territory northwest of the river Ohio to form a constitution and State government, and for the admission of such State into the Union on an equal footing with the original States, and for other purposes,” after describing the limits of the proposed new State and authorizing the people thereof to elect a convention to form a constitution, the three following propositions were made to the convention, to be obligatory on the United States if accepted by it:  First, that section No. 16 of every township, or, where such section had been sold, other lands equivalent thereto, should be granted to the inhabitants of such township for the use of free schools.  Second, that the 6 miles’ reservation, including the salt springs commonly called the Sciota Salt Springs, the salt springs near the Muskingum River and in the military tract, with the sections which include the same, should be granted to the said State for the use of the people thereof, under such regulations as the legislature of the State should prescribe:  Provided, That it should never sell or lease the same for more than ten years.  Third, that one twentieth part of the proceeds of the public lands lying within the said State which might be sold by Congress from and after the 30th June ensuing should be applied to the laying out and making public roads from the navigable waters emptying into the Atlantic, to the Ohio, and through the State of Ohio, such roads to be laid out under the authority of Congress, with the consent of the several States through which they should pass.