ceive for a fee in the beginning, that there may be no misunderstanding afterward, and if the money is not paid take a note for it.

"I might suggest many other hints to you, but I confide much in your discretion and in the general correctness of your ideas. Perseverance and industry will, I have no doubt, enable you to support yourself with honor, give you reputation, without which you can not succeed in the manner I have just reason to anticipate, and acquire for yourself wealth, fame and happiness."

By act of Congress, approved October 31, 1803, the President was authorized to take possession of and occupy the territory ceded by France to the United States April 30, 1803. The next act relating to Louisiana passed by Congress was to authorize the creation of a stock to pay the purchase money of sixty millions of francs, or $11,250,000. By act of March 26, 1804, Louisiana was erected into two Territories. The portion which lay south of the Mississippi Territory, extending westward to the western boundary of the territory ceded by France, was to constitute a Territory of the United States under the name of "Orleans." The residue of the Province of Louisiana, which included the present State of Missouri, was organized under the name of the District of Louisiana, and the executive power of the district was vested in the Governor and judges of Indian Territory, who were authorized to establish, in the said District of Louisiana, inferior courts and prescribe the jurisdiction and the duties thereof, and to make all laws which they might deem conducive to the good government of the inhabitants thereof, with certain limitations therein set down. The Secretary of the Indiana Territory was made the Secretary of the District of Louisiana. In fact, what is now the State of Missouri was then practically a part of Indiana Territory,

The act of March 26,1804, providing for erecting Louisiana into two Territories, did not provide for any legislature, but provided that the legislative power of the Territory of Orleans should be vested in the Governor and in thirteen of the most fit and discreet persons of the Territory, to be called the Legislative Council, to be appointed annually by the president of the United States from among those holding real estate, etc. The act providing for the government of the Territory of Orleans, passed March 2, 1805, changed this by providing that the Governor of said Territory should cause to be elected twenty-five representatives of the people, who, with the members of the Legislative Council, appointed and commissioned by the President, as above stated, were to constitute a "General Assembly."

The act of Congress, Jnne 4, 1812, provided that the Territory hitherto called Louisiana, should thereafter be called Missouri, and declares

how the government of the Territory of Missouri shall be organized and administered.

The legislative power of the Territory was vested in the General Assembly, consisting of the Governor, a Legislative Council to consist of nine members, and a House of Representatives of thirteen members. The members of the council were appointed by the President of the United States, from a list of eighteen persons, submitted to him by the House of Representatives. The House of Representatives was to be composed of members elected every second year by the people. No man could be a member of the Legislative Council unless he owned in his own right two hundred acres of land in the Territory, and no man was eligible to the House of Representatives unless a freeholder in the county in which he might be elected.

For the first time in the territory acquired from France, provision was made in this act for the election by the citizens of the said territory of one delegate to the Congress of the United States. Missouri having been erected into a Territory June 4, 1812, Benjamin A. Howard, who was then Governor of the Territory of Louisiana, on the 1st day of October, 1812, issued at St. Louis, the then capital, a proclamation, declaring that the new territorial government would commence its operation on the 1st day of December of that year, and districting the Territory for thirteen members of the House of Representatives, as follows:

St. Charles, two; St. Louis, 'four; Ste. Genevieve, three; Cape Girardeau, two; New Medrid, two. It was declared therein that New Madrid should be the seat of justice for the future county of New Madrid, which future county would comprise the then district of New Madrid and Arkansas, the then Territory of Missouri, embracing what is now the State of Arkansas.

This proclamation fixed the election of the said House of Representatives and a territorial delegate to the Congress of the United States on the second Monday of the following month of November, 1812. This was at the time of the war with Great Britain.

At this election Edward Hempstead was elected delegate to Congress. This election took place just one week (November 2, 1812), from the opening of the second session of the twelfth Congress, to which he had been elected. On the 4th of January, 1813, he took his seat, as shown by the following entry in the journal: Monday, January 4, 1813, Edward Hempstead returned to serve as the delegate in this House from the Territory of Missouri, appeared, produced his credentials, was qualified, and took his seat." A question arose whether the delegate, thus elected, could remain a delegate after the expiration of the Twelfth Congress on the 4th of March, 1813.

The first official act of Mr. Hempstead was a motion to raise a committee of the House to inquire into the matter. Of that committee Mr. Hempstead was chairman. The practice of the House of Representatives of that date was different from that of the present time. Under the present rules and practices of the House of Representatives, the territorial delegates cannot sit on the committees of the House. On the 15th day of January, Mr. Hempstead introduced into the House certain resolutions, instructing the Committee on Public Lands to inquire into the expediency of legislation in regard to the adjudication of land claims, etc., in the Territory of Louisiana (then Missouri), and, also, instructing the same committee to inquire into the expediency of granting the right of pre-emption to actual settlers on public lands in the Territory of Missouri.

On the 29th of January, 1813, Mr. McKee, from the committee appointed on the motion of Mr. Hempstead, to inquire into the question of further legislation in regard to election of delegate from the Territory of Missouri, reported that ne legislation was necessary, for the reason that the delegate having been elected for two years under the provision of the law organizing the Territory, he could hold his seat for that term; that is to say, from the second Monday in November, 1812, till the second Monday in November, 1814; that the delegate elected in pursuance of law and for the term of two years, could not be deprived of his seat by any subsequent law.

Mr. Hempstead appears to have been on other committees than the one I have referred to. He was on a committee to whom was referred the petition of Daniel Boone, and the resolutions of the legislature of Kentucky in his behalf, and made a report thereon.

The first session of the Thirteenth Congress met on the 24th of May, 1813, but Mr. Hempstead did not take his seat till the 10th of June; this session of Congress adjourned on the 2d day of August, and Mr. Hempstead's name is not connected with any measure introduced in the House during that session. Mr. Clay was the Speaker of this House.

The second session of this Thirteenth Congress convened on the 6th of December, 1813, and Mr. Hempstead was present as delegate from the Territory of Missouri. He had given his attention to a subject of vast importance to the Territory that he represented. It was the question of the final adjustment of land titles upon the bill which had been presented in the House in accordance with resolutions theretofore introduced by him. It was on this bill that he made what appears to be his only speech during his term of service. As reported in the "History of Congress," it is an able one. He treats of the questions presented with great clearness, evincing a thorough knowledge of his sub

ject and of the questions of international law which were involved. He contended that the title to lands in Louisiana Territory, before Spain ceded it to France in 1803, should be recognized and confirmed by the United States; that the acts of the Spanish government in granting titles to lands in Louisiana Territory from the time of the cession to France in 1800, and up to the time France ceded it to the United States in 1803, should be recognized and confirmed by the United States. France had never taken possession of the country ceded by Spain in 1800, but had left the latter country in the full exercise of its sovereignty up to the time of the cession to the United States in 1803. Former acts of Congress had cut off all of these grants made by the Spanish government, violating, as he contended, not only the treaty with France, but the well known principles of international law. Mr. Hempstead characterized this law as "the violation of every principle either of law or equity; it declared that which had been legally commenced under another government to be null and void; it made void the proceeedings of a power in the just exercise of its sovereignty. Instances have often occurred, where what had been lawfully begun, but not completed, has been sanctioned and acknowledged, especially when it depended on the performance of conditions which subsequent events had made it impossible to perform, but never could a lawful act be made unlawful. A right once vested could not, without any fault of the claimant, be either at law or in equity divested;" such a principle changed the nature of things, and was, therefore, odious. "Would," asked Mr. Hempstead, "the Spanish government have sanctioned the grants made by its officers? If so, they ought now to be sanctioned; without the solemn stipulations of the treaty to support it, policy alone would dictate such a course." He appealed in behalf of his constituents: "Liberality will secure the affections of those you have made a part of your family; it will root old attachments, while a more rigid plan will occasion distrust and dissatisfaction, and the change will be regarded as injurious. No national benefit can result from this rigor; a few acres of land to the United States are nothing, but taken away from individuals may cause distress and ruin. Many of them are strangers to your language and unacquainted with your laws; their affections ought not to be estranged when extending justice to them will secure their confidence.". Mr. Hempstead then showed the injustice of other laws which had been passed on this subject: "They had been so amended and altered by so many different statutes that difficulties had been increased instead of diminished. It could not be denied that the people of his Territory were in a worse situation in that respect than others. It now remains for me, Mr. Speaker, to consider very briefly whether the present bill will do full and complete justice to the claimants.

During the ten years of scrutiny and investigation, few have made improvements. Many families, despairing of obtaining their equitable claims, and tired of the uncertainties attending their titles, have abandoned a country which cannot prosper without the fostering aid of the government, and, if the delay of justice has not, in all cases, been equal in its consequences to an absolute denial of it, still it has caused much distress and injury. The present bill will quiet the apprehensions of most of the claimants, and although it will neither satisfy nor do justice to all, yet it will restore that confidence which has been much impaired, and will do what the national faith is pledged to do." The act of Congress, which Mr. Hempstead had introduced, and so ably and strenuously advocated, became a law on the 12th day of April, 1814. It was a law of transcendent importance to the people of the Territory of Missouri, for it confirmed" the incomplete Spanish grants or conceptions, or any warrant or order of survey for lands lying within the Territory of Missouri prior to March 10, 1804," which was the date when the sovereignty of France over Upper Louisiana passed to the sovereignty of the United States. The act also provided for giving to the settlers of Missouri Territory the right of pre-emption to public lands, a beneficent act which extended the principle which had been applied to other Territories.

Mr. Hempstead's name does not further appear in the proceedings of this session of Congress, which adjourned on the 18th day of April, 1814, to meet on the last Monday of the following October. Mr. Madison, however, called an extra session of Congress to meet on the 19th of September, 1814. Mr. Hempstead seems not to have taken his seat at this extra session of Congress, and probably for the reason that the term of two years for which he was elected would expire in about six weeks after the meeting of said extra session.

Mr. Hempstead, as I have said before, took his seat as delegate in Congress from the Territory of Missouri on the 4th of January, 1813. Let us take a glance at the members who composed this house, and we will find many of the great names of this country. We may well say: "There were giants in those days." Henry Clay was speaker; from New Hapshire there was Samuel Dinsmore, and from Vermont, Martin Chittenden; from Rhode Island, Elisha R. Potter, men afterward so distingushed in their own States; from New York, Url Tracy; from Pennsylvania, Jonathan Roberts; from Maryland, Philip Barton Key; from Virginia, John Randolph, Burwell Bassett and James Pleasants, Jr. That great man Nath. Macon, was a member from North Carolina, and, also, Wm. R. King, afterward Senator from Alabama and VicePresident of the United States; from South Carolina, there was John C. Calhoun, Wm. Loundes and Longton Cheves; from Kentucky, be