“ The grant of jurisdiction has not expired; the private act has not been repealed; it still continues to say: 'The court of claims may take jurisdiction under the provisions of the act of March 12, 1863,' 'of the claims of Robert Erwin.' Why, then, should not the court of claims take jurisdiction and adjudge the case? The counsel for the government answers that the general statute of limitations applies to this demand, and bars the suit. ”

“ Whatever may be thought of the wisdom of their conclusion, one thing is incontrovertible, and that is that they eventually believed the fund in the treasury to be a fund in equity, and that they exercised in regard to it whatever power of a court of equity might be necessary to protect the fund. ”

“ It is no more so than is that upon which every person holds the property which is exclusively his own,-to be managed as he sees fit, and to be disposed of as he pleases. In such a trust, if that be not a misnomer, the special principles of equity do not apply, and courts of equity do not interfere.
'In Burke's Case, 13 Ct. Cl. 231, this court, speaking by Judge BANCROFT DAVIS, said: 'It is argued that this court sits as a court of equity in proceedings under the captured and abandoned property act, and that we must resort to equity to determine the status of this claimant. ”

“ On the twentieth August 1868, Robert Erwin was the equitable owner of a fund in the treasury, of which the equitable title had never been divested from himself, being then held by the government as his trustee. On that day he might have instituted a suit for the fund, but on that day the jurisdictional period for instituting such suits expired. A provision of law confining jurisdiction to a certain period no more affects the party or the cause of action than a provision of law confining jurisdiction to a certain territory. ”

“ From these casual expressions it is argued that we are possessed of the equity jurisdiction necessary to administer upon trusts, and that the supreme court was mistaken when it said that 'the government has not thought fit to allow itself to be sued in the court of claims on equitable consideration.' That court, in calling the United States a trustee, may have referred to the large class of trusts cognizable at law. ”

“ Provided, that the claims of married women first accrued during marriage, of persons under the age of twenty-one years first accrued during minority, and of idiots, lunatics, insane persons, and persons beyond the seas at the time the claim accrued, entitled to the claim, shall not be barred if the petition be filed in the court, or transmitted as aforesaid, within three years after the disability has ceased ”

“ The court may well have compared the relations of the government towards the fund in the treasury to this class of trusts. It is less probable that it intended to convert those relations into an equitable trust, since the essential elements of personal confidence and trust reposed in the depositary by the creator of the trust are wholly wanting. ”

“ Cl. 419,-had an absolutely novel subject of jurisprudence assigned to them, without one word of statutory guidance to direct them, and without a precedent to be gathered from all the courts in the world. ”

“ On the thirty-first day of December, 1868, the firm of Erwin & Hardee, of which said Robert Erwin was a member, filed their petition in bankruptcy under the provisions of the acts of congress relating thereto, in pursuance of which, on the fifteenth of January, 1869, they were duly adjudged bankrupts. ”