l86 EMPLOYMENT OF THE PLEBISCITE [484 



it would be an error to hold its legal force necessarily de- 

 pendent upon a consent obtained from some other source. 

 . . ." There is, according to the same authority, no reason 

 why Congress could not make an annexation dependent 

 upon the consent of the population of the territor\^ to be 

 annexed, " but this is not a matter of legal necessity."*** 

 " Nor is there any principle of public law, or general prece- 

 dent from our own practice that requires the consent of 

 the population of an annexed territory to be obtained. In 

 none of the instances, except that of Texas, has the Uhited 

 States deemed this consent necessary."*^ 



Texas was annexed by Joint Resolution, annexation by 

 treaty having been unsuccessful owing to the failure to 

 secure a two-thirds vote in the Senate. The resolution 

 states that " Congress doth consent that the territory prop- 

 erly included within and belonging to the Republic of 

 Texas may be rected into a new State to be called the State 

 of Texas with a republican form of government to be 

 adopted by the people of said republic, by deputies in con- 

 vention assembled, with the consent of the existing govern- 

 ment, in order that the same may be admitted as one of the 

 states of the Union. "*^ The consent here asked seems to 

 have been more like the fulfilment of a condition requisite 

 to admission as a state than a declaration of a willingness 

 to be annexed, for " upon Texas taking the action called 

 for by this clause, Congress later by Joint Resolution de- 

 clared Texas one of the States of the American Union."*' 



While there have been several boundary settlements in 

 which territory formerly held by the United States has been 

 surrendered to foreign powers, the title to these stretches of 

 land as United States territory must be held to have been 

 faulty and it must be assumed that the surrender was made 

 on that ground. " There has been no instance in which ter- 

 ritory, indisputably belonging to the United States, has 



*" Ibid., vol. i, p. 347. 

 *^ Ibid., vol. i, p. 348. 

 <2 Ibid., vol. i. pp. 344-345- 

 *8 Ibid., vol. i, p. 345. 



