United States v. Reynes. 9 H.

authority in the grantor to make a good title, but which bring home. to the grantor and to the individual soliciting the grant, full knowledge that the title to whatever might be properly considered Louisiana, at least, no longer remained in the Spanish government. The grant is dated at New Orleans. It recites the application of Reynes for 40,000 arpens of land, to be paid for in letters of credit formerly issued by the provincial government, and then goes on to state, that, in consequence of the petition, Morales had caused a certified copy of the letter addressed by that intendancy to the commissioners appointed for the transfer of the province of Louisiana, to be submitted, with the petition, to the solicitor of the crown. This document, then, excludes all doubt as to the knowledge of the parties of the cession to the United States of Louisiana, by whatever might have been its real boundaries. It is signed by Morales, not as being an officer of the territory of Louisiana, but as intendant of the province of West Florida, after Louisiana had passed to two sovereign States since its possession by Spain, and after actual possession had been delivered to the United States. It is clear, then, that the documents exhibited and relied on by the appellee could by their own terms convey no title within the territory of Louisiana. Superinduced upon our conclusions drawn from the treaties above mentioned, and from the laws of nations applicable to their construction, is the positive legislative declaration in the act of congress of March 26, 1804, "pronouncing all grants for lands within the territories ceded by the French Republic to the United States by the treaty of the 30th of April, 1803, the title whereof was, at the date of the treaty of St. Ildefonso, in the crown, government, or nation of Spain, and every act and proceeding subsequent thereto, of whatsoever nature, towards the obtaining of any grant, title, or claim to such lands, under whatsoever authority transacted or pretended, be, and the same are hereby declared to be, and to have been, from the beginning, null, void, and of no effect in law or equity." This act of 1804 explicitly avows the opinion of the government of the United States as to any power or right in Spain at any time after the treaty of St. Ildefonso. It covers the whole subject of grants, concessions, titles, &c., derived from Spain at any time subsequent to the treaty, stamping upon all such grants, &c., the most utter reprobation; denying to them any validity or merit, either legal or equitable. This act of

1804 has never been directly repealed. It still operates upon [153] all the grants, concessions, &c., embraced within its provisions, except so far as these provisions may be shown to have been modified by posterior legislation. And it has been invariably held, and indeed must follow as of necessity, that imperfect

United States v. Reynes. 9 H.

titles derived from a foreign government can only be perfected by the legislation of the United States. But it is argued for the appellee, that as the land in dispute did not lie within the territory of which France obtained from Spain actual occupancy, or of which the United States ever obtained a like occupancy until possession thereof was taken under the proclamation of President Madison, of October 10, 1810, and as the Spanish authorities in the mean time, as a government de facto, retained possession, they could in this character invest their grantees with inchoate or equitable rights, which, under the privileges bestowed by the acts of 1824 and 1844, might be matured into perfect titles as against the United States. Without stopping to remark upon the caution which should ever be manifested in the admission of claims which, if not founded in violence or in mere might, yet refer us for their origin certainly not to regular unquestioned legal or political authority, it may be safely said, that claims, founded upon the acts of a government de facto, must be sustained, if at all, by the nature and character of such acts themselves, as proceeding from the exercise of the inherent and rightful powers of an independent government. They can never be supported upon the authority of such a government, if shown to have originated in a violation of its own compacts, and in derogation of rights it had expressly conceded to others. Every claim asserted upon wrong, such as this latter position implies, would be estopped and overthrown by alleging the compact or concession it sought to violate. Thus, if Spain, by the treaty of St. Ildefonso, did in truth cede to France the lands lying between the Mississippi and Perdido, she could not, as a government de jure or de facto, without the assent of the United States, possessing all the rights of the French republic, make subsequent grants of the same lands either to communities or to individuals. Her grants could not be regarded as the inherent, competent, and uncommitted proceedings of an independent government de facto; they would be met and made null by her own previous acknowledgment.

Whether, by the treaties of St. Ildefonso and of Paris, the territory south of the thirty-first degree of north latitude, and lying between the Mississippi and Perdido, was ceded to the United States, is a question into which this court will not now inquire. The legislative and executive departments of the government have determined that the entire territory was so ceded. This court [154] have solemnly and repeatedly declared, that this was a matter peculiarly belonging to the cognizance of those departments, and that the propriety of their determination it was not within the province of the judiciary to contravene or question. See the cases

United States v. Reynes. 9 H.

of Foster and Elam v. Neilson, 2 Pet. 253, and of Garcia v. Lee, 12 Pet. 511. In the former case the court say: "If a Spanish grantee had obtained possession of the land in dispute, so as to be the defendant, would a court of the United States maintain his title under a Spanish grant made subsequent to the acquisition of Louisiana, singly on the principle that the Spanish construction of the treaty of St. Ildefonso was right, and the American construction wrong? Such a decision would subvert those principles which govern the relations between the legislative and judicial departments, and mark the limits. of each." Substituting the United States as a defendant in the place of a private litigant, (a privilege permitted by the law of 1824,) the case supposed and satisfactorily answered in the quotation just made is in all its features precisely that now before the court; and to sustain the pretensions of the appellee, it is indispensable that the American construction of the treaty of St. Ildefonso be rejected, and the Spanish construction held to be the true one. In the case of Garcia v. Lee, this court say: "The controversy in relation to the country between the Mississippi and Perdido Rivers, and the validity of the grants made by Spain in the disputed territory after the cession of Louisiana to the United States, were carefully examined, and decided, in the case of Foster and Elam v. Neilson. The supreme court in that case decided, that the question of boundary between the United States and Spain was a question for the political department of the government; that the legislative and executive branches having decided the question, the courts of the United States are bound to regard the boundary determined by them to be the true one. That grants made by the Spanish authorities of lands which, according to this boundary line, belonged to the United States, gave no title to the grantees in opposition to those claiming under the United States." Has the law, as expounded in the cases of Foster and Elam v. Neilson, and of Garcia v. Lee, been in any respect changed by the act of 1844? Has that act enlarged the rights of claimants under French or Spanish titles, or restricted the rights of the United States as derived from the treaties of St. Ildefonso and of Paris? Beyond an extension of the modes of proceeding allowed by the act of 1824 to claimants in Missouri, to persons claiming under Spanish, French, or British titles, within the [*155] States of *Louisiana and Arkansas, and within those por

tions of the States of Mississippi and Alabama lying south of the thirty-first degree of north latitude, and between the rivers Mississippi and Perdido, we can perceive no change in the act of 1824 effected by the act of 1844. We are unable to perceive any addition made by the latter act to the intrinsic strength of the claims

La Roche v. Jones. 9 H.

allowed to be prosecuted, or any dispensation from proofs of their bona fides, or of a single condition prescribed in relation to their origin and character by the act of 1824. What are the conditions prescribed by this act, as indispensable to the allowance and establishment of titles derived from France or Spain, has been stated in a previous. part of this opinion; and having shown the title of the appellee to be wanting in all those conditions, it is the opinion of this court that his petition should have been rejected,-and therefore that the judgment of the district court pronounced in this cause should be reversed, and the same is hereby reversed.

Order. This cause came on to be heard on the transcript of the record from the district court of the United States for the district of Louisiana, and was argued by counsel. On consideration whereof it is the opinion of this court that the title of the petitioner is null and void. Whereupon it is now here ordered and adjudged by this court that the judgment of the said district court in this cause be and the same is hereby reversed, and that this cause be and the same is hereby remanded to the said district court, with directions to dismiss the petition of the claimant in this cause.

9 H. 280, 471; 10 H. 609; 11 H. 609; 12 H. 47, 437; 13 H. 9; 15 H. 1, 31.

RENE LA ROCHE and MARY, his Wife, INEZ R. ELLIS, Stephen P. ELLIS, and THOMAS LA ROCHE ELLIS, Minor Heirs of THOMAS G. ELLIS, deceased, by their Guardian ad litem, CHARLES G. DAHLGREN, Plaintiffs in Error, v. THE LESSEE OF RICHARD JONES and Wife.

9 H. 155.

Hickey v. Stewart, 3 How. 760, affirmed and applied to the facts of this case.

THE case is stated in the opinion of the court.

Gilpin and Walker, for the plaintiffs in error.

Lawrence and Morehead, contrà.

[ * 167 ]

* CATRON, J., delivered the opinion of the court. The original suit out of which this writ of error arises, was an action of ejectment brought in the district court of the United States for the district of Mississippi, at October term, a. D. 1823, by John Doe, lessee of Richard Jones and Mary, his wife, citizens of Kentucky, against Thomas Ellis and Mary Ellis, to recover a tract of land in Wilkinson county, in the State of Mississippi, alleged to

La Roche v. Jones. 9 H.

have been originally granted by the Spanish government to William Cocke Ellis, by a patent dated 16th February, 1789. It was admitted that the defendants were in possession of the tract of land in question; and that the land described in the Spanish grant, and in the declaration in this suit, were the same.

The proceedings in the case, and the facts as exhibited in the evidence offered by the plaintiffs,-no evidence being offered by the defendants, are as follows.

In the year 1773 or 1774, Richard Ellis removed from Amelia county, Virginia, to the Mississippi country, then claimed and occupied by Spain as part of Louisiana and West Florida, where he continued to reside till his death, in 1792.

Richard Ellis was accompanied by two sons, -John Ellis, the grandfather of the defendants, and William Cocke Ellis, who afterwards married Mary Jones, the lessor of the plaintiff.

John Ellis continued to reside in Mississippi till his death, in 1808. William Cocke Ellis returned to Virginia about the year [*168] *1784 or 1785, and continued to reside there till his death, in 1790, never having gone back to Mississippi.

On the 11th of February, 1789, Trudeau, the surveyor-general of Louisiana and West Florida, issued a certificate of survey, with a figurative plan, of a tract of land of eight hundred square arpens, on Buffalo Creek, in the district of Natchez, "in favor of Don William Cocke Ellis; the delimitation (measurement) having been made by virtue of the decree of his Excellency Don Stephen Miro, GovernorGeneral, under date of 20th March, 1783."

On the 16th of February, 1789, a grant of the said tract, which was stated to adjoin land of John Ellis, was made to William Cocke Ellis by Governor Miro, "in order that, as his own, he might dispose and make use of it."

The situation of the tract is north of the 31st degree of latitude, in the former county of Adams and present county of Wilkinson, in the State of Mississippi.

On the 2d of April, 1789, William Cocke Ellis, who was then residing in Virginia, married Mary Cocke, afterwards Mary Jones, and lessor of the plaintiff.

In January, 1790, William Cocke Ellis and Mary, his wife, had a child born, who was named Richard Cocke Ellis.

In August, 1790, William Cocke Ellis died in Virginia, intestate, leaving his wife, Mary Ellis, and his child, Richard Cocke Ellis, surviving him, and residing in Virginia.

In April, 1791, the child, Richard Cocke Ellis, died in Virginia, an infant.