Henry Baldwin

“ We cannot seriously discuss the question, whether a grandmother and her grandchildren compose a family, in the meaning of that word in the treaty, it must shock the common sense of all mankind to even doubt it. It is as incompatible with the good faith and honor of the United States, and as repugnant to the Indian character, to suppose that either party to the treaty could contemplate such a construction to their solemn compact, as to exclude such persons from its protection, and authorize any officer to force her from her home into the wilds of the far west. ”

“ I hope never to see the judges of the highest court in a republic afraid, when their judgment tells them that they stand on the written constitution, and law of the nation, and their duty is called into action on a proper occasion, to assert and maintain those great principles of jurisprudence avowed in the highest court in a monarchy, by judges of a subordinate one, under a constitution unwritten, and which could give no control to a legislative power, which was omnipotent. ”

“ We are satisfied that by adopting and acting on this version, so taken literally, we should violate the intention and spirit of the laws which give us jurisdiction, and are the guides to its exercise; we cannot decide according to the principles of justice in any other way than by considering the words according to their legal acceptation too often given by this court not to be respected by it. By grants of land we do not mean the mere grant itself, but the right, title, legal possession and estate, property and ownership; legally resulting upon a grant of land to the owner. ”

“ We think it does not require reason or precedent, to show that we may ascertain facts with or without a jury, at our discretion, as the circuit courts, and all others do, in the ordinary course of equity: our power to examine the evidence in the cause, and thereby ascertain a fact, cannot depend on its effects, however important in their consequences. Whether the sovereignty of the United States, of a state, or the property of an individual, depends on the locality of a tree, a stone, or water-course; whether the right depends on a charter, treaty, cession, compact, or a common deed ”

“ The jurisdiction of courts of equity, separately from those of common law, is a necessary part of the common law; though the forms of proceeding are borrowed from the civil law, yet the principles and rules of decision are those of the law of England, by which the judge is as much bound as in a court of law. By the adoption of its forms, an English court of chancery no more adopts the civil law, as a code of system of jurisprudence, superseding the common law, than it does the decrees of the Emperor, in place of acts of parliament. ”

“ It is an universal principle, that he who claims under a special authority must show its existence and lawful exercise: to throw the burthen of proof on the party whose rights will be destroyed by its abuse, would be the utter reversal of every rule which governs the execution of powers. ”

“ Still less did such a race of men, as the boatmen and hunters of the west, who by mutual agreement gave one thing, and took another, whether land or peltry, on a fair exchange by a shake of the hand, ever imagine that a common field lot would ever be worth, when lying waste, a pack of furs, or that no evidence of its sale would be admissible, on a question of whose it was, unless by deed. ”

“ As if they should award a mandamus to a secretary of state, reverse the judgment of a state court in a case not within the twenty-fifth section of the judiciary act, or take cognizance of an original bill in equity between individuals. Let it once become a settled rule, that the want of an averment like the present is fatal to jurisdiction; the proceedings of no court can stand the test of a scrutiny so severe as has been applied to these. ”

“ Although we find no express decision by the courts of Kentucky, enjoining on a plaintiff the necessity of suing a jailor and his securities for the escape of a prisoner; yet it seems to us, that, in the spirit of them all, he is bound to do so. The general principle of all the cases is, that a plaintiff must pursue, with legal diligence, all his means and remedies, direct, incidental or collateral, to recover the amount of his debt from the defendant, or any one who has put himself, or has by operation of law been put in his place. ”

“ The purchaser suffers no loss; he buys with full knowledge that his title cannot be absolute for two years; if it is defeated by redemption, it reverts to the lawful proprietors. It would, therefore, seem not to be necessary for the purposes of justice, or to effectuate the objects of the law, that the right to redeem should be narrowed down by a strict construction. In this case, we are abundantly satisfied that it comports with the words and spirit of the law, to consider any person who has any interest in lands sold for taxes, as the owner thereof for the purposes of redemption. ”

“ The streams of justice which have flowed from the one have run in one unbroken current for five hundred and forty-six years, without such a mandamus as this seen floating even on the surface. The responses from the other are the voice of the law, speaking through all ages, in one unvarying tone; delivering the results of human wisdom, developed in principles, matured, digested, explained, enforced and supported during five centuries, amidst all the conflicts of party vengeance, civil war, and regal oppression. ”

“ The relations created by a lease are not more sacred than those of a trust or a mortgage. By setting up or attorning to a title adverse to his landlord, the tenant commits a fraud as much as by the breach of any other trust. Why then should not the statute protect him, as well as any other fraudulent trustee, from the time the fraud is discovered or known to the landlord? If he suffers the tenant to retain possession twenty years after a tenancy is disavowed, and cannot account for his delay in bringing his suit ”

“ Time has consecrated them; the courts of the states have followed, and this court has never departed from them. They are rules of property, on which the repose of the country depends; titles acquired under the proceedings of courts of competent jurisdiction must be deemed inviolable in collateral action, or none can know what is his own; and there are no judicial sales around which greater sanctity ought to be placed, than those made of the estates of decedents, by order of those courts to whom the laws of the states confide full jurisdiction over the subjects. ”

“ Could Quay and wife have recovered any part or portion of this tract of land in ejectment since 1825? The deed then executed and delivered by them would have been a perfect estoppel to the suit. On its production, no court would have suffered a recovery to have been had in their favour. A person who is entitled, either in law or equity, to the possession or enjoyment of land, or has an estate in it, can enforce that right at law; otherwise he would have a right without a remedy. If Quay and wife had no right which could be enforced by action, on what principle can he redeem? ”

“ The right was a legal one; the claim of the United States was a statutory one; but its existence was not founded on any bad faith of the bank, its conscience was unaffected, and by law they held the legal control of the transfer of their stock: their consent was necessary to the transmission of the legal title to the executors; and the only ground on which the aid of a court of equity is asked to compel them to give their consent, is a legal claim to the proceeds, by a right which will deprive the bank of all security for their debt. ”

“ If any subsequent law affect to diminish the duty, or to impair the right, it necessarily bears on the obligation of the contract in favor of one party, to the injury of the other; hence any law, which in its operation amounts to a denial or obstruction of the rights accruing by a contract, though professing to act only on the remedy, is directly obnoxious to the prohibition of the Constitution. ”

“ No government gives any validity to private surveys, of its warrants or orders of survey; and we have no reason to think that Spain was a solitary exception, even as to the general domain, by grants in the ordinary mode, for a specific quantity, to be located in one place. A fortiori, where a grant, sui generis, might by its terms be so split up as to cover every saline, mineral and water power site, in the whole territory. Of all others, the survey of such a grant ought to be made by an authorized officer. ”

“ But it may with safety be said, that where acts of ownership have been done upon land, which, from their nature, indicate a notorious claim of property in it, and are continued for twenty-one years, with the knowledge of an adverse claimant, without interruption, or an adverse entry by him, for twenty-one years; such acts are evidence of an ouster of a former owner, and an actual adverse possession against him; if the jury shall think, that the property was not susceptible of a more strict or definite possession than had been so taken and held. ”

“ In addition to this protection, the law of nations, without any treaty, stipulation, or constitutional provision, makes private property inviolable in the cession, relinquishment, conquest, or military occupation of the territory, by some of which means the United States acquired it, and it matters not by which; the laws, usages, and customs of Spain and the province, remained in force as the only rules of title and property, the only test of the validity of grants. ”

“ None can be settled without war or treaty, which is by political power; but under the old and new confederacy they could and can be settled by a court constituted by themselves, as their own substitutes, authorized to do that for states, which states alone could do before. We are thus pointed to the true boundary line between political and judicial power, and question. A sovereign decides by his own will, which is the supreme law within his own boundary ”

“ But unless he draws under some such circumstances, his drawing without funds, property or authority, puts the transaction out of the pale of commercial usage and law; and as he can in no wise suffer by the want of notice of the dishonour of his drafts, that it is deemed an useless form. 'Notice, therefore, can amount to nothing, for his situation cannot be changed.' In a case where he has no fair pretence for drawing, there is no person on whom he can have a legal or equitable demand, in consequence of the non payment or non acceptance of the bill. ”

“ The Bank of Columbia, with many others founded on the most immutable maxims of the law. They settle the rule, that the conclusion of fact drawn from a circumstantial averment, is sufficient to support a decree in equity; and forbid me from disregarding the evidence which has been admitted without objection and now forms part of the record before me for judicial inspection, merely because the subject matter of that evidence was not averred in the bill or petitions of the claimants. ”

“ They have adjudged that the order of sale was executed agreeably to law: nothing appears on the record to impugn their judgment; it must, therefore, be taken to be true in fact, and valid in law. Their order of sale was a lawful authority to the auditors to sell: it was a full justification to them in obeying it: it was executed in virtue of the authority granted by the law to the court, who have not exceeded their jurisdiction: and the deed of the auditors passed the title to the premises in controversy to the purchaser. ”

“ It would seem to me a justice unknown to the common law, to apply all the effects of an insolvent corporation to the debt of the government, and strip individuals. In such a case, the rule that equality is equity, would seem a very appropriate one. An equal distribution of all the effects among all the creditors, would certainly not operate unjustly. ”

“ If it was not a legal presumption that public and responsible officers claiming and exercising the right of disposing of the public domain, did it by the order and consent of the government, in whose name the acts were done, the confusion and uncertainty of titles and possessions would be infinite, even in this country; especially in the states whose tenures to land depend on every description of inceptive, vague and inchoate equities, rising in the grade of evidence, by various intermediate acts, to a full land legal confirmation, by patent, under the great seal. ”

“ A mortgagee, a direct purchaser from a tenant, or one who buys his right at a sheriff's sale, assumes his relations to the landlord with all their legal consequences, and they are as much estopped from denying the tenancy. If no length of time would protect a possession originally acquired under a lease, it would be productive of evils truly alarming, and we must be convinced beyond a doubt that the law is so settled before we could give our sanction to such a doctrine. ”

“ No principle can be better established by the authority of this Court, than 'that the acts of an officer, to whom a public duty is assigned by his king, within the sphere of that duty, are prima facia taken to be within his power.' 'The principles on which it rests, are believed to be too deeply founded in law and reason, ever to be successfully assailed. ”

“ That where the evidence in a cause conduces to prove a fact in issue before a jury, it is competent in law to establish such fact; a jury may infer any fact from such evidence, which the law authorizes a court to infer on a demurrer to the evidence: after a verdict in favour of either party, on the evidence, he has a right to demand of a court of error that they look to the evidence only, for only one purpose, and with the single eye to ascertain whether it was competent in law to authorize the jury to find the facts which make out the right of the party, on a part, or the whole of his case. ”

“ No one has ever imagined that compacts of boundary were excluded, because not expressly named; on the contrary, they are held by the states, congress, and this Court, to be included by necessary implication; the evident consequence resulting from their known object, subject matter, the context, and historical reference to the state of the times and country. No such exception has been thought of, as it would render the clause a perfect nullity for all practical purposes; especially the one evidently intended by the constitution, in giving to congress the power of dissenting to such compacts. ”

“ The true line of distinction between courts whose decisions are conclusive if not removed to an appellate court, and those whose proceedings are nullities if their jurisdiction does not appear on their face, is this: a court which is competent by its constitution to decide on its own jurisdiction, and to exercise it to a final judgment, without setting forth in their proceedings the facts and evidence on which it is rendered, whose record is absolute verity, not to be impugned by averment or proof to the contrary, is of the first description ”