James Moore Wayne

“ A treaty is the supreme law of the land, and it limits the legislation of Congress to the fulfilment of all of its provisions, to the fullest extent of them, and not for less or a part of what individuals have a right to claim under it as property, but for the whole. And what that whole may be, where there is a dispute about it between the United States and those claiming, can only, under our system, be judicially ascertained and determined, unless, by the treaty or by the consent of the claimants, some other mode of determining the right has been agreed upon. ”

“ When we speak of an act to be done by a bank or banks, we mean an act to be done by those who have the authority to do it. If it be an act within the franchise for banking, or the ordinary power of the bank to contract, and it is done by the president and directors, or by their agent, we say the bank did it, and every one understands what is meant. If, however, an act is to be done relative to the institution, by which its charter is to be in any way changed, the stockholders must do it, unless another mode to effect it has been provided by the charter. ”

“ New, no one can withhold from the judgment of a state Court unlimited credence, without violating the Constitution; no one can resist its operation, without becoming instantaneously impotent. All must give the judgment a helping hand, to the accomplishment of its ends; and those who will not, immediately lose all power over it, and hither it comes, to more impartial guardians. There can be no impairing its force by embarrassing restrictions and limitations ”

“ Even in English the word 'granted,' has not of itself any intrinsic efficiency the word 'granted,' has not of itself any intrinsic efficiency to make a complete title, an ownership in fee. It may include a mere privilege to work the mines; or a tenancy at will, or an estate for a term of years, or for life, or an estate in fee, just as the words with which it is connected will authorize, according to the requirements of law. 'Granted' or 'grant,' has no such technical or all sufficient meaning and effect as to convey an absolute, complete title in fee. ”

“ There is no pretence that Clark was incapable to contract marriage; and it matters not whether, as to the mother of the complainant, any impediment existed under the Spanish law; the complainant stands as the declared issue of her father by a woman to whom he supposed himself lawfully married. Not only the bill itself, but the evidence upon which it is established, shows that Daniel Clark had no other legitimate issue. No one exists who has any right to contest his acknowledgment of the legitimacy of his child, or to set up the adulterous source of her origin. ”

“ We think it better that the case should be decided on the questions of fact involved, reserving for future consideration any matters of law not yet stated to you, which your verdict may leave for our decision, should it be for the defendants. But though every question of fact is for your consideration solely, we are not desirous of throwing on you the whole responsibility, without expressing our opinion on the result of the evidence, not as a direction to bind, but as opinion merely, which will have such weight, and such only, as you may think proper to give it. ”

“ The case being now cleared of other objections, except such as relate to the unconstitutionality of the tax, we will consider the real and only question in it; that is, 'whether the plaintiff is liable to be rated and assessed for his office under the United States, for county rates and levies?' It is not necessary for the decision of this question, that the power of taxation in the states, and in the United States, under the constitution of the latter, should be minutely discussed. Taxation is a sacred right, essential to the existence of government-an incident of sovereignty. ”

“ It does not matter that the creditor may not know, when he takes the property, that the factor's principal owns it; that he believed it to be the factor's in good faith. His dealing with his debtor is an attempt between them to have the latter's debt paid by the accord and satisfaction of the common law. That is, when, instead of a sale for a price, a thing is given by the debtor to the creditor in payment, in which we all know that, if the thing given is the property of another, there will be no satisfaction. ”

“ These dying declarations were the delirious ravings of a man in extremis, oblivious of the fact that he had himself destroyed a will made to practise a pious but posthumous frand, for the purpose of gratifying an inordinate love for Myra, but a fraud which it is fair to presume, upon this evidence, his sober after-reflections induced him to shrink from, and with his own hands to destroy that will which, if he died without cancelling, would, to his conscience and his God, present him as dying with a falsehood on his lips. ”

“ A defendant in two answers to a bill in equity, swears unequivocally to a fact, and as positively against it. A document is produced executed by himself, decisive of the truth of the fact. In such a case can a living witness be wanted; or could any number of living witnesses prove, more certainly, the false swearing than it would be proved by the document and the defendant's contradictory oaths? Or, take the case of defendant being sued in equity, to recover from him the contents of a lost bond. ”

“ Finally, all of our proceedings respecting Louisiana have been done upon the principle, that the law of nations does not recognize in a nation ceding a territory the continuance of supreme power over it after the treaty has been signed, or any other exercise of sovereignty than that which is necessary for social order and for commercial purposes, and to keep the cession in an unaltered value, until a delivery of it has been made. Such being the extent of sovereignty under such circumstances, is not the grant of a perpetual ferry franchise attached to land as much prohibited as a grant of land? ”

“ The natural advantages of the United States, the value of our productions, and the wars in Europe aiding the consumption of them, were constantly overcoming foreign exclusions, and kept us forbearing, if not always in good temper. In fact, except discriminating duties upon tonnage in favor of our vessels, to countervail such as all the nations of Europe had imposed in favor of their own ships,-several of them intended to bear particularly upon American commerce,-our legislation was, up to that time, and for twenty years afterwards, exempt from every interference with a free navigation. ”

“ Such was the situation of Morris, in respect to the debts named in the deed as the consideration for which an absolute title was to pass. He was an embarrassed man, and hard pressed at that moment for $5000, and though destructive consequences were to assail him if he could not get it, is it likely that Nixon then could have been insensible to the ties which had united them, and could have made his distress the means of coercing from him an absolute conveyance, without a secret trust of all that he had left, upon which he could rest a hope to raise himself a little above his ruined fortune? ”

“ On principle, therefore, and in the absence of all positive authority to the contrary, it must be considered as wholly immaterial, with a view to the validity of any legal act, what one or a few members of a numerous incorporated society have thought, or wished, or done in regard to it. 'A corporation,' as the greatest jurist of our day expresses it, 'consists of the whole, formed of its members. The will of a corporation is not merely the concurring will of all its members, but that even of a bare majority of them. ”

“ In other words, it is a bill to discover facts, which cannot be proved, according to the existing forms of procedure at law. The jurisdiction of a court of equity, in this regard, rests upon the inability of the courts of common law to obtain, or to compel such testimony to be given. It has no other foundation: and whenever a discovery of this kind is sought in equity, if it shall appear that the same facts could be obtained by the process of the courts of common law, it is an abuse of the powers of chancery to interfere. ”

“ Manumission, to take effect at the death of a testator, is of that character. What is manumission? It is the giving of liberty to one who has been in just servitude, with the power of acting, except as restrained by law. And when this liberty is given in absolute terms by will, under the law of Maryland, it can only be defeated by the person conferring it, having done it in prejudice of creditors, or by the slave standing in the other predicament of the law, of being over forty-five years of age, and being unable to work and gain a livelihood at the time the freedom given shall commence. ”

“ Waterman establishes himself in business in the State of New York, contracts debts due to its citizens, until, finding himself insolvent, he returns to the State of Rhode Island, and there executes an assignment, which, if executed in this State, would have been adjudged fraudulent as against his creditors. If the State of New York should allow so unequal a privilege to strangers, would she not be justly chargeable with neglecting the interests of her own citizens? ”

“ To have incorporated no provision in the Constitution which would prevent men, thus circumstanced, from eluding the operation of a judgment, by a simple change of residence, would have argued a blindness in the sages who framed that instrument, that might be better imputed to any other body of men that ever lived. And if they have done no more than authorize suits to be instituted upon the judgments in question, subject to all defences that might have been set up to the original action, the fourth article and first section of the Constitution is but a deathless memorial of their folly ”

“ It was no more than giving to the people of the county a right to tax themselves for an anticipated advantage to arise from an expenditure of their own money in the construction of a railroad. It was the concern of the county; the same as it would have been if the county had been legislatively empowered to tax themselves to clear out a river for a better navigation, or for the cutting of a canal. Whether the allowance for the issue of bonds for either of those purposes will be judicious depends upon the subject and the regulations which the Legislature may impose for their execution. ”

“ The courts, therefore, are entirely correct in regarding public, pious, and charitable uses, in States where the statute of Elizabeth is not in force, as falling under one and the same rule, and entitled to the same favor in a court of chancery. And even in England, where the statute of Elizabeth was in force, dedications have from time immemorial been protected and preserved with equal favor as charities. This circumstance does, of itself, furnish a strong argument in favor of the original jurisdiction of the court of chancery over charities. ”

“ The distinguished Sherlock says, without any satirical intention or meaning to say that women are inferior to men, 'Whilst she trusts her instinct she is scarcely ever deceived, and she is generally lost when she begins to reason.' And I need not tell my brethren, as evidence rests upon our faith in human testimony, as sanctioned by experience, that the conclusion of the great divine, is that of the law, and that the testimony of women is weighed with caution and allowances for them differently from that of men, but never with the slightest suspicion that they are not as truthful. ”

“ As laid, it is nothing more than an income tax, and cannot a legislature lay that without regard to the source from which revenue comes? The distinction between a tax upon a bank, as such, and a tax upon its property, is clearly recognized in the case of McCulloch v. State of Maryland, where the court say that one may be taxed but not the other. The identity between a bank and its stockholders is shown not to exist, when we consider that the bank, as a corporation, could not become one of its own stockholders. ”

“ Who ever heard before that the voluntary appearance of a citizen of a state gives jurisdiction to the federal courts, in a case in which that jurisdiction depends, not on the character of the cause, or the state of the pleadings, or the service of process-still less the will of an individual-but simply on the fact of citizenship or no citizenship, or, as it is commonly expressed, on the character of the parties-that is, on a distinct and ascertained civil status in the parties. ”

“ Before a court can instruct a jury to presume a grant or deed for land, time or length of possession must be shown, which, of itself, in certain cases, and in other cases, in connection with circumstances, will induce the presumption of a grant as a matter of law, or as a legal effect from evidence, which the jury is instructed to make, if in its consideration of the evidence the jury believe it to be true. ”

“ A mother who, for the world's false esteem, would discard from her maternal breast two helpless infants, and never again look upon her own offspring, a mother who, upon the case made by her own daughter, stands convicted of adultery before her pretended marriage with Clark, and with bigamy afterwards,-such a mother is above the judgment of human tribunals. And what shall we say of the conduct of Daniel Clark, if Myra be his lawful child, and Madame de Grange was his lawful wife? ”

“ Such a complete conveyance, such a perfect title, the plaintiff has alleged, and must prove; such only can sustain his action: an incipient interest, a mere equity will not do.
To divest the sovereign of his public domain and convey it to a subject, certainty, identity, precise locality is essential. If something yet remains to be done, if a survey be yet necessary to ascertain and fix the identity of the land, the severance is not complete, the conveyance is not perfect, the prince is not denuded of his domain, the subject is not completely invested with a private right ”

“ Not only do we look beyond the parties to the action, the constitutional organs of the first corporation, to see whether none of its members are citizens of the same state with the plaintiffs, we are now asked to carry this process of perversion ad infinitum. If we find out one of the members to be a corporation, we are to look still further, and if it be shown that of this corporation one share has been transferred, it may be in trust, or by way of pledge to another, then the court is not to meddle with an action against the first corporation. ”

“ We do not say that keeping back property from an assignment is alone evidence of fraud-our opinion is founded on all the circumstances of the case which are in evidence, of which one of great weight in our minds is the entire want of any attempt at explanation of matters which throw the burden of proof on the defendants. It is a bold requisition on a jury to make presumptions of facts merely from papers which contain only the declarations and recitals of the party who makes them, where direct proofs of the facts can be made if the parties desired to make it. ”

“ When, in the progress of a suit in equity, a question of pedigree arises, and there is proof enough, in the opinion of the court, to establish the marriage of the ancestor, the presumption of law is, that a child of the marriage is legitimate, and it will be incumbent upon him who denies it to disprove it, though in doing so he may have to prove a negative. ”