John Marshall

“ It is, we think, impossible to believe that congress supposed itself, when directing the survey and sale of lands between the Great and Little Miami, to be abridging or altering the bounds of a district which Virginia had reserved in the deed of cession by which the country north west of the Ohio had been conveyed to the United States. ”

“ Any general phrases which may be found in the law must, according to every rule of construction, be limited in their application to those lands which the original act authorized the surveyor general to lay off for the purpose of being sold. If he surveyed any lands to which that act does not extend, he exceeded his authority, and the survey is not sanctioned by the law. If land thus surveyed by mistake has been sold, the sale was not authorized by the law under colour of which it was made. ”

“ The first instruction asked is, that the lands west of Ludlow's line, east of Roberts's line, and south of the Indian boundary line, had been withdrawn from appropriation under and by virtue of military land warrants prior to the year 1810; and that as the same had, pursuant to the acts of congress in such case made and provided, been directed to be surveyed and sold, and had accordingly been surveyed and sold to the defendant, prior to the year 1810; the plaintiff's patent is void, and their verdict ought to be for the defendant. ”

“ The size of the rivers, and the notoriety of the names by which they were designated, place the unreasonableness of such a pretension in so strong a point of view, that we can scarcely bring ourselves to suppose that there is any resemblance blance between the case put by way of illustration, and that under consideration. ”

“ This is a writ of error to a judgment rendered by the supreme court of Ohio for the country of Champaign, in an ejectment in which the lessee of Duncan M'Arthur was plaintiff, and John Reynolds was defendant. The plaintiff claimed the land in controversy, under a patent issued on the 12th day of October 1812, founded on an entry made in the year 1810, on a military land warrant granted by the state of Virginia for services during the war of the revolution, in the Virginia line, on continental establishment. ”

“ The scrupulous regard which this clause, in the ordinance of May 1785, manifests to this condition made by Virginia in her deed of cession, is the more worthy of remark, because at that time no suspicion was entertained that the military warrants of Virginia would cover the whole territory ”