by John Marshall

“ It is indispensable to the argument, to maintain that the mere act of survey does, of itself, in point of law, show an intention inconsistent with the continuance of any conditional estate, within the limits of the manor. This the plaintiffs in error have endeavoured to maintain; and for this purpose have contended, that a new title, which they call the 'manorial title,' and which they say is distinct from the proprietary title, was created by the survey: that the plaintiffs in error hold under the proprietary title; the plaintiffs in ejectment, under the manorial title. ”

“ On this point, I hold it to be an important fact, that, without exception, throughout these two sections, tenths and manors are never used apart; they are constantly considered synonimous and equivalent. Now, although a manor may, by common acceptation, be considered as a geographical section, a tenth is a term of comparison and quantity, and has direct relation to that interest which the proprietaries had acquired, and might acquire, as a distinct individual property in the soil. ”

“ To conclude let the estate of these defendants below be considered as either void or voidable, and I see not how the act of limitations is to be escaped by their antagonist. If voidable, on failure to pay the purchase money, the entry is expressly taken away by that statute; and if void, they cannot be reduced lower than to the grade of tenants by sufferance, with regard to whom entry and suit was just as indispensable, as with regard to any other tenure. ”

“ With the land, if not sold, with the quit-rents and purchase money, if sold, the Legislature, as has been already shown, declares its purpose not to interfere. There is nothing in the language, nor is there any thing in the character of the transaction, which would lead to the opinion that the Legislature intended to discriminate between the different rights of the proprietaries within the manors. The hand of government is not laid upon the manors, and all the rights of the proprietaries within those boundaries, whether to land, purchase money, or quit-rents, remain untouched. ”

“ Where the language of the Legislature is clear, Courts cannot be permitted to assume an intention repugnant to that language, because it imports what they think unreasonable; but words are not to be forced out of their natural meaning, to produce what is unreasonable, if not absurd.
The plaintiffs in error also rely on the 6th section of the act establishing a land office, passed in 1781, as amounting, unequivocally, to a confiscation of the rights of the proprietary in the land in contest. ”

“ Or, to pursue the analogy further; suppose the purchase money unpaid, and a covenant by indenture of the tenant to pay the money to the vendor and his heirs, and even to hold the land charged with the payment, would a devise of the manor carry the money so reserved, or the devise of the debt carry the freehold in the land sold? ”

“ If the lines of the manors, as surveyed and returned in the land office, before the 4th of July, 1776, constitute the dividing lines between the parties, they are plainly and distinctly drawn. If some imaginary distinctions are to be made between the lands comprehended within those lines, or the quit-rents reserved on those which had been sold, the whole certainty of the division is lost, unless some other line, equally plain, equally rational, and equally justified by the words of the act, can be substituted. ”

“ The right to turn them out by the shoulders never existed in the proprietary; he must have resorted to his entry, or suit, to recover possession; they were considered as holding a freehold, and the law did not entitle him to resume possession arbitrarily. It was the doctrine of that State, that his rights were restricted to the payment of the purchase money and quit-rents, at least until he tendered a return of advances and improvements. It cannot be imagined that the reservation of quit-rents converted the purchasers into tenants at will ”

“ And this supposed right of the proprietaries is asserted through the medium of an action of ejectment, under the idea that the legal estate is in the grantee of the manor, and only an equitable interest in the tenant, the prior purchaser.
The received doctrines on the subject of what creates a legal estate in a grantee, it must be observed, are altogether peculiar in the State of Pennsylvania. A warrant, a survey, and payment of the consideration money, is held to give an absolute estate in fee, though not consummated by a patent. ”

“ To allow a different construction, would be to make the statute of limitations a statute for the encouragement of fraud-a statute to enable one man to steal the title of another by professing to hold under it. ”

“ To this argument it is answered, that the language of the act is prospective, that it purports to be an act of limitations, that it is found among the printed statutes of Pennsylvania, and that its operation has never been denied, so far as we are informed, in any of the Courts of that State. During the irregularities which take place in the first settlement of a country, an act of limitations is peculiarly desirable, and it would be strange if Pennsylvania should have remained entirely without one. ”

“ It is unnecessary to comment on the particular words of the legislature, which are regularly and technically applicable to the charter, because it is too obvious for controversy, that the whole design and effect of the clause is to show, that the property described in the preceding confiscating clause, is to vest in the Commonwealth, freed from every trust, limitation, or incumbrance whatsoever. But the property comprehended in the confiscating clause, was land only; and the land of the proprietaries, together with the royalties, &c. ”

“ If resumption of a patent may, under circumstances, be left to a jury in favour of possession, much more so may a fact so much less solemn in its nature, and more difficult of proof, as payment. In this case, and in all cases arising in Pennsylvania, such a fact may well be submitted, since in practice it has superseded the issuing of a patent, and may well tempt the parsimony of purchasers, since the expense of a patent has become an expense of supererogation. ”

“ If the Legislature considered this right merely as a claim to money, secured on the land, then it is not confiscated by the 5th section, but remains to the proprietor, unaffected by it. We can perceive no principle of sound construction, by which, comparing the 5th and 8th sections with each other, the 5th shall, so far as respects land in manors, be made more comprehensive than the 8th; no principle by which the confiscating clause shall be made broader than the saving clause. ”

“ The quit-rents would not, indeed, be confiscated by that part of the section which relates to soil or land; but may very well pass under the words 'royalties, franchises, lordships, and all other the hereditaments and premises comprised, mentioned, and granted in the same charter, or some of them.' The quit-rent is a hereditament, reserved under the very words of the charter, and annexed to the seignory. ”

“ Construe the act so as to confine the grant to the Penns to their private interests in the manors, and it becomes sensible and consistent throughout; and while it secures to them, on the one hand, all the interests which, as individuals, they are entitled to; on the other hand, you extend to all other individual citizens, one uniform rule of legislation and relief. ”

“ The debt and the lien remained, but the right of eviction and regranting for non-payment, was never legalized nor asserted, nor could it, in any case, have been tolerated, without a tender of that part of the consideration money which had been already paid. Again, an entry for condition broken, must be made as such, and with intent to produce the legal effects of an entry; a mere casual friendly passing of the boundaries of the premises will be unconsequential ”

“ Extensive sales were made in a tract of country, supposed by the seller and the purchaser to be a manor. Other sales were made, containing in the contracts no intrinsic evidence that the parties understood the lands to be within a manor. ”

“ This is a writ of error to a judgment rendered by the Circuit Court for the District of Pennsylvania, in favour of Penn's lessee, who was plaintiff in a writ of ejectment. The case depends on a bill of exceptions taken to the opinion of the Court, expressed in a charge to the jury. alienees to hold immediately of the proprietor and his heirs, notwithstanding the statute of quia emptores. ”