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top right margin on vertical line marking 7 lines of text to horizontal line between "to wit" and "1." in that 7th line, with vertical note: crossed out in the original MSS of Mr. Wirt and McIntosh, (8 Wheaton) and the principles laid down by the court in that case had never, so far as we are informed, been controverted in any quarter. In that case, the court shew that the right of discovery was a right established by common consent among the European powers for the peaceable settlement of their respective claims on this continent, and that the principles growing out of it, extended thus far and no farther, to wit. 1. that the discovering power acquired the ultimate domain, as against all the European claimants, and the immediate exclusive right to extinguish the Indian title of occupancy: 2. that the Indian title of occupancy remained until extinguished by treaty or conquest, and, consequently, that the mere discovery was not, of itself, any such conquest. 3. that though the Indian sovereignty, was, to some extent, impaired by the discovery and possession taken by the Europeans, yet, that until their right of occupancy was actually extinguished by treaty or conquest, they retained the general right of governing themselves by their own laws & customs, on the territory which they occupied; and finally that the Indian title could not be extinguished by private individuals, but by the sovereign alone, when subjects had made the first discovery and taken possession in his name. The case of Johnson & McIntosh did not call upon the Supreme Court to pursue the investigation any farther, because in that case the simple justice was whether private individuals could extinguish the Indian title by purchase from the Indians for their own benefit. The court, therefore, were not required by the question in that case to consider, how far the rights growing out of discovery, might be modified with regard to the Indians by voluntary treaties with them. Nor did they consider themselves required or even at liberty in that case, which was a question of right between the sovereign, and his subjects the purchasers from the Indians, to examine the justice of this right of discovery in its bearing on the aborigines of this country: on the contrary, the right, whether moral or not, having been long since established by the sovereign, they considered the courts of the nation had to admit and to act upon it, so far as it had been asserted by Great Britain, to whose rights we had succeeded; but they