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Show -33- as long as the same were held by Spain,76 and thereafter remained in force, in the Spanish territories ceded to Mexico and the United States unless repudiated by the succeeding sovereigns-the republics of the United States and Mexico. There has been no such repudiation. In a sense, the Congress of Vienna trailed after the States of the American Union by incorporating into international law some of that freedom of navigation which had been established within the United States by the commerce clause of the federal constitution. And, quite consistently, the United States very promptly adopted and invoked the law of international rivers so proclaimed by the Congress of Vienna0 Between the date of the Congress of Vienna and the acquisition by the United States of the Spanish possessions east of the Mississippi, the federal Congress found time to provide for the admission of six more States into the Union. Indiana, as a condition of its admission to statehood, expressly accepted the provisions of the "... compact between the original States and the people and States in the territory northwest of the river Ohio";'' and also acquired a small section of Lake Michigan. The enabling act for Indiana further called upon the new State to accept concurrent jurisdiction on the Wabash River as a boundary water between it and the next State to be formed to the west»78 76 • • . - "Wo principle of international law can be. more clearly established than this: That the rights and obligations of a nation, in regard to other States are independent of its internal revolutions or government. It extends even "to the case of concuest. The conqueror who reduces a nation'to his subjection received it subject to all its engagements and duties toward others, the ful- fillment of which becomes his own duty. However frequent the instanoes of de- parture from this principle may be in point of fact, it cannot with any color of reason be contested on the ground of right." John Quincy Adams in 5 American State Papers, Foreign Relations, 603; 1 Moore's Digest of Int. Law, 33U* qucrted in Hershey, The Succession of States, (1911) 5 Am. J. of Int. Law, 285. (Italics added.) The rule stated by Mr. Adams is not to be confused with the municipal law of the ceded territory which changes at the pleasure of the succeeding sovereign. "Every nation acquiring territory, by treaty or otherwise, must hold it subject to the constitution and laws of its own government, and not according to those of the government, ceding it." Pollard's Lessee v. Hagan, 3 How. (U»S.) 212, 225, 11 L. Ed.'565, 572 (181+5), citing Vattel. Act of Apr. 19, 1816, Si+, 3 Stat. at L. 289, 2 Thorpers Constitutions 1055; Act of Dec. 11, 1816, 3 Stat. at L. 399, 2 Thorpe's Constitutions, 1O57« The ordinance of 1787 has been many times since so designated. 78 There is no reference to free navigation or water rights in the Indians. Constitution of 1816. 2 Thorpe's Constitutions, 1057 et seq,; but in the Consti- tution of I85I, Art. XIV, S2, 2 Thorpe's Constitution, 1090, it is provided that: "The State of Indiana . . » shall have concurrent jurisdiction, in civil and criminal cases, with the State of Kentucky on the Ohio River, and with the State of Illinois 011 the Yfabash River, so far as said rivers form the common, boundary between this State and said States respectively." Indiana was admitted into the Union in the year 1816. Act of Dec. 11, L8l6, 3 Stat. at L. 399, 2 Thorpe's Constitutions, IO57, |
