402 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. to rule his possessions, in later decisions has also been relied on, and has perhaps been most emphatically expressed in dealing with the various Acts of Congress passed to suppress polygamy in Utah. The fullest statement of the present view of the court was given by Mr. Justice Matthews, in one of these Utah cases, in which after saying that the question of the power of Congress to legislate for the Territories as to matters of domestic concern is no longer open for controversy, the opinion proceeded thus : — "It has passed beyond the stage of controversy into final judgment. The people of the United States, as sovereign owners of the National Territories, have supreme power over them and their inhabitants. In the exercise of this sovereign dominion, they are represented by the govern- ment of the United States, to whom all the powers of government over that subject have been delegated, subject only to such restrictions as are expressed in the Constitution, or are necessarily implied in its terms, or in the purposes and objects of the power itself; for it may well be ad- mitted in respect to this, as to every power of society over its members, that it is not absolute and unlimited. But in ordaining government for the territories, and the people who inhabit them, all the discretion which belongs to legislative power is vested in Congress; and that extends, beyond all controversy, to determining by law, from time to time, the form of the local government in a particular Territory, and the qualifica- tion of those who shall administer it. It rests with Congress to say whether, in a given case, any of the people resident in the Territory, shall participate in the election of its officers or the making of its laws; and it may, therefore, take from them any right of suffrage it may previously have conferred, or at any time modify or abridge it, as it may deem ex- pedient. The right of local self-government, as known to our system as a constitutional franchise, belongs, under the Constitution, to the States and to the people thereof, by whom that Constitution was ordained, and to whom by its terms all power not conferred by it upon the government of the United States was expressly reserved. The personal and civil rights of the inhabitants of the Territories are secured to them, as to other citizens, by the principles of constitutional liberty which restrain all the agencies of government. State and National; their political rights are franchises which they hold as privileges in the legislative discretion of the Congress of the United States. This doctrine was fully and for- cibly declared by the Chief Justice, delivering the opinion of the court in National Bank v. County of Yankton, loi U. S. 129. See also Amer- ican Ins. Co. V. Canter, i Pet. 511; United States v. Gratiot, 14 Pet. 526; Cross V. Harrison, 16 How. 164; Dred Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. 393. If we concede that this discretion in Congress is limited by the
