Mr. JOHNSON. There may be; o am unable to see it. I had thought that the hon: orable member considered that the State of Nebraska would be bound, if she came in, because of an implied assent on her part. That was the ground taken by some of the friends of I have no doubt it is to the proposition; and that is the ground, let me say to the honorable member, upon which all the conditions heretofore imposed upon the States which have been admitted have been placed in the past. Now, what are they? In some of them the condition has been that the navigable waters within their limits shall be free. Under what authority was that imposed upon the State? Under the authority which the Constitution gives to the Congress of the U.S. to regulate commerce. That authority, in the case of Gibbons vs. Ogden, as the honorable member knows very well, was, by the unanimous decision of that high tribunal, the SCOTUS, decided to i.the navigable waters, the vehicle upon which as well as in which commerce was to be carried on; and therefore that condition which, in some of the instances has been applied to the admission of some of the States, was to reserve, in order to avoid any possible conflict, that which was the right, and was intended to be the right, of Congress exclusively to regulate the commerce between the States and the commerce between foreign nations and the U.S. What are the other classes? There is another class which says that the public lands which may be within the limits of the State admitted shall not be liable to taxation. Upon what ground was that placed or might it have been placed? In almost the beginning of the Government, in the case of NewJersey vs. Wilson, reported in 7 Cranch, I think the court decided that it was competent for a State to enter into a contract to except from State taxation, for a valuable consideration, any of her lands. The State of NewJersey, being anxious to get possession of a considerable quantity of land that, belonged to the Indians, made a treaty in the form of a law, which provided that if the Indians would agree to sell the lands which NewJersey desired they might buy other lands in that State, and that those lands should forever thereafter be exempt from taxation. They were not authorized to sell the lands, however, under the orig inal act, which I have called a treaty. In 1804 NewJersey passed an act authorizing them to sell the land, but omitted to say anything in relation to taxation; and the question arose when the State of NewJersey attempted to exert her taxing power upon the lands in the hands of purchasers under the Indians. The Supreme Court decided that it could not be done; that the contract was one which followed the lands, no matter who might thereafter become the holder. The Supreme Court at the present term has decided a case upon the same ground; a case which I argued in behalf of the holders of the land involved in that case. The U.S. granted to Arkansas all the swamp lands which were owned by the U.S. within the limits of Arkansas. As swamp lands they were valueless; they could only ". valu able by being converted into tillable lands; and the State of Arkansas, with a view to bring about that conversion, passed an act authorizing any persons who would undertake the work to do it to be paid out of the treasury the value of the o if they thought proper to be paid; to be paid in the bonds of the State if they preferred that mode of being paid; or to take certificates which would entitle the holder, the certificates being upon their face transferable, to locate the amount called for in his certificate upon these lands, and that they thereafter should be exempt from taxation. The work was undertaken. A great many of the parties who performed the work chose to take certificates, and they located their certificates upon these recovered lands, and as soon as they became valuable Arkansas thought : to tax them. The Supreme Court have ecided here at this term, against the unan imous decision of the court of the State of Arkansas, that she could do no such thing; that the exemption from taxation was a consideration moving from the man who performed the work and accompanied the land in the hands of whoever might become the proprietor of the land during the period for which the exemption was provided. That is upon this ground, and upon this ground only, that a State is competent to divest herself, for a valuable consideration of her taxing power in particular cases; and that is all that she does when she comes in upon a condition that she is not to tax the land of the U.S. As a State, when she came in she would have a perfect right to say to the U.S. in the form of a contract, “We will not tax your land;” and as she would have a right after coming in to enter into a contract of that description, there was nothing inconsistent with any sovereignty of her own in providing in advance, in the form of a con: dition to which she assents in coming in, that she will not exercise that particular right; but this is a slightly different question.