inchoate title is property

The right of property then is protected and secured by the treaty; and no principle is better settled in this country, than that an inchoate title to lands is property. Independent of treaty stipulation, this right would be held sacred. The sovereign who acquires an inhabited territory, acquires full dominion over it; but this dominion is never supposed to divest the vested rights of individuals to property. The language of the treaty ceding Louisiana excludes every idea of interfering with private property; of transferring lands which had been severed from the royal domain. The people change their sovereign. Their right to property remains unaffected by this change.