“ We make a long step towards eliminating irrelevant questions, and exposing the real and pivotal question in this case, when we announce as an indisputable proposition, that if the executory proceedings against Surget were regular; if, at the date thereof, the debt subsisted; if the mortgage securing the same were valid, and had been preserved by proper inscription and reinscription, the purchaser at the sale under these proceedings would have acquired a valid title against all the world, regardless of who owned the fee at the date thereof. ”

“ There seems to have been some difference of opinion between the judges on the question whether, after the confiscation proceedings and sale, the fee was in abeyance, or in the United States, or in Surget, divested of the power of disposition; but all agreed that, however it was, the heirs succeeded by inheritance from Surget, and not by donation from the generosity of the government; and hence, being in privity with their ancestor, they were bound, equally with him, by the proceedings on the mortgage, which contained the pact de non alienando. ”

“ The leading opinion states the point to be decided, and the propositions on which the decision should rest, as follows: 'Under our views of the controversy, in the light of the established jurisprudence on the true and correct mean ng of the confiscation act, the pivotal issue in the case hinges upon the validity of the sale effected under the executory process instituted against Surget by the defendant, Shiff, in June, 1880. A proper solution of that issue involves a consideration of the question of the effect of the confiscation on the perpetual ownership or fee of the confiscated property. ”