Robert Cooper Grier

“ They are of opinion that the entire contract, upon which the claim of the appellees is founded, is so fraught with illegality and turpitude, as to be utterly null and void, and conferring no rights or obligations upon any of the contracting parties which can be sustained or countenanced by any court of law or equity in this State, or of the United States; that it has no legal or moral obligation to support it, and that therefore, under the insolvent laws of Maryland, such a claim does not pass to or vest in the trustee of an insolvent petitioner. ”

“ And the defendants in error will maintain, that even if there be any such right, title, or privilege specially set up or claimed under the treaty as to give jurisdiction, which they deny, yet the treaty could not have, and was not intended to have, any such operation or retrospect. They will insist that the treaty and award under it had, and could have, no other effect, than to establish the liability of Mexico to pay that claim under the treaty, and settled nothing but the validity of that claim against Mexico ”

“ Whether this money paid into court, under the award and first acknowledged by Mexico as a debt in 1825, existed as a debt transferable by the Maryland insolvent laws in 1817, or whether it, for the first time, assumed the nature of a chose in action transferable by assignment after 1825, when acknowledged of record by Mexico, and passed by the assignment of Lyde Goodwin to Robert Oliver, was a question wholly dehors the treaty and award, and involving the construction of the laws of Maryland only, and not of any treaty or statute or commission under the United States. ”

“ In the case referred to, the claims, as concerned those asserting them, were, on their part, tainted by no principle of illegality or immorality; on the contrary, were sustained by every principle of national law and natural justice, and nothing was wanting to render them recuperable, but a judicial tribunal competent to take cognizance thereof. ”