by John Marshall, Blight's v. Rochester — Opinion of the Court
“ We therefore cannot tell whether, in asserting his title, the vendor acted in opposition to his contract. We cannot say that the condition on which the sale might depend had not been broken. There is, too, a difference between setting up an adverse title in a third person, to controvert an actual existing title, and resisting a claim made by a person having no title whatever. ”
by John Marshall, Blight's v. Rochester — Opinion of the Court
“ If he holds under an adversary title his right to contest that of Dunlap is admitted. If he claims under a sale from Dunlap, and Dunlap himself is compelled to aver that he does, then the plaintiffs themselves assert a title against this contract. Unless they show that it was conditional, and that the condition is broken, they cannot, in the very act of disregarding it themselves, insist that it binds the defendant in good faith to acknowledge a title which has no real existence. ”
by John Marshall, Blight's v. Rochester — Opinion of the Court
“ The treaty of peace has always been considered as providing only for titles existing at the time; and as the title of James Dunlap was afterwards acquired it can derive no aid from that treaty.James Dunlap, therefore, if he continued to be an alien, continued liable to all the disabilities of alienage, one of which is an incapacity to transmit lands to heirs. Consequently, when he died, the next of kin could take nothing by descent. The treaty of 1794, like that of 1783, provides only for existing rights. It does not give title. ”
