Roberts v. Cooper. The earlier decisions of the courts of Michigan seem to have adopted this antiquated doctrine as a part of the common law in that State. But so far as concerns its application to sales by one out of possession, the legislature have annulled it. The revised code of 1846 (page 262) enacts that "no grant or conveyance of lands, or interest therein, shall be void for the reason that at the time of the execution thereof such lands shall be in the actual possession of another claiming adversely." From this enactment it is plain that the possession of the Minnesota Mining Company, under claim of title, and Cooper's knowledge of it when he purchased, cannot affect the validity of the deed of Williams to him. Although the testimony, which is the subject of this exception, was evidently offered with a view only to raise the question as above stated, the counsel for the plaintiff in error have endeavored to maintain in this court that the court below erred in rejecting it, because *if received it would have [* 484 ] shown the contract between Cooper and Bacon, and the deed from Wilson, to be void for champerty. This offense seems to have been originated by the statutes passed in the time of Edw. I and Edw. III. (See 15 Viner's Abr. 149, tit. Maintenance.) It is defined (Hawkins's Pl. 84) as the "unlawful maintenance of a sait, in consideration of an agreement to have a part of the thing in dispute, or some profit out of it;" and by Chitty as "a bargain to divide the land (campum partire) or thing in dispute, on condition of his carrying it on at his own expense." In some States these statutes are held to be obsolete. But it seems that the case of Backus v. Byron (4 Mich. Rep. 535) has declared that they still retain their force in Michigan. That was an action by an attorney against his client on a contract, by which the attorney agreed to carry on a suit for a share of the land in case of success, and in case of failure to have nothing. But in this case there was no offer to prove that Cooper had agreed to carry on the suit in consideration of receiving a share of the land in case of success; on the contrary, the offer was to show that he "purchased stock" in a mining corporation; that the legal title to the land was conveyed to him in trust for himself and the other stockholders; and as a consequence of the legal title being vested in him, the suit was necessarily brought in his name. It needs no argument to show that such a transaction has none of the characteristics of champerty, and that the court below was right in rejecting testimony which would not, if admitted, tend to show a valid defense, and was therefore wholly irrelevant. The judgment of the circuit court is therefore affirmed, with costs. Roberts v. Cooper. Mr. Justice DANIEL: Whilst I concur entirely in the conclusion just declared by the court, that the case now decided is in its features essentially the same with that of Cooper v. Roberts, formerly before us, and reported in the 18th of Howard, p. 173, I am unwilling to place my own opinion upon the fact of the identity of the two cases, irrespective of the reasons or principles on which the former of those cases was determined. That case was elaborately discussed by counsel; was, as the opinion of the court evinces, deliberately considered; the theory and objects of the system adopted by the government for the distribution of public lands carefully examined, correctly expounded, and properly sustained by the decision. In the reasoning of the court, the cherished objects aimed to be secured by that theory, viz, the advancement of [*485] "religion, morality, and knowledge," *as indispensable for the existence of good government, and for the happiness of mankind; the obligation for the maintenance of schools and the means of education as necessary for the ends proposed, as declared in the third article of the ordinance of 1787, are prominently and correctly set forth as guides in the interpretation and application of the policy and system of the government in disposing of the public domain. It seems scarcely to admit of rational doubt, that it was in pursuance of this policy, and as deemed best calculated for its successful accomplishment, that in the surveys made or to be made of the public lands, the sixteenth section of every township, being central, (and therefore more than any other section could be,) connected with the several interests of the township, was appropriated for the use of schools. Admitting these to be the policy and theory of the government, designed as it has been declared to lay the foundation of social and political good, it would seem to follow that nothing short of the highest and most overpowering public considerations, or an absolute inability or want of power, should be permitted to defeat or in any degree to control them. Surely speculations for private emolument, and still less such as might be attempted through the exercise of irregular or doubtful authority, should not be permitted to affect them. The power vested in the President to reserve from sale such portions of land as he should deem necessary for public uses, may be classed as one of those paramount considerations, constituting a public or national necessity, reaching even to the defense of the country by fortifications or arsenals. In the same category may be placed the sanctimony of the rights of property and possession existing and vested in territories anterior to their acquisition by the United States; rights guarantied by treaty stipulations. In Roberts v. Cooper. the same light may be viewed the withholding temporarily from sale lands in which were minerals and salt springs. All these restrictions or reservations are exceptions merely, and should be carried no farther than their terms expressly or necessarily require. They can with no propriety be regarded as forming in themselves a system; much less as overturning a system designed to be as far as practicable general and uniform, and proclaimed from its origin to be founded in wisdom and in a solemn sense of public good, and as such to be fostered and sustained. Every new State has come and will come into the Union relying on the faith of this pledge; and even upon the concession of a power in the government to violate that pledge, such a violation could be referred to no principle of justice, and should therefore never be imputed but upon proofs the most positive and unequivocal. *The sixteenth [* 486] section of each township could not, it is true, be specifically designated and possessed anterior to a survey of the public lands; but the right to that section and its appropriation existed in contract or pledge by virtue of the ordinance and the laws of the United States, and the right of possession and enjoyment was matured by the execution of the surveys. It cannot be supposed that this right, so important, was destroyed or impaired by an agreement for temporary occupancy, made without reference to any survey or division of the lands, made, too, without legitimate authority; nor can such right be affected by any ordinary allowance of pre-emption, because the pledge of the government is pre-existing, is express, and therefore paramount. The State of Michigan was admitted into the Union under the pledge given her by the general land system of the United States; her right to the sixteenth section of each township was under that pledge fully recognized. It could not, therefore, consistently with good faith, be displaced by an arrangement irregular in its origin, and temporary in its character, in its tendencies and operation conflicting with a preceding, general, and beneficial system of policy. No effectual adversary rights could grow out of such an arrangement. Upon the views herein expressed, I am in favor of an affirmance of the judgment in this cause, not merely on the ground that this cause is essentially the same with that already decided between these parties, as reported in the 18th of Howard, p. 173, but also because the opinion of this court upon the law and the facts of the last-mentioned cause commands my entire approbation. Ingraham v. Dawson. ALFRED INGRAHAM and GEORGE READ, Assignees, &c., v. HENRY S. DAWSON, Administrator. 20 H. 486. FORMER JUDGMENT A BAR. Where a party voluntarily intervenes in a suit between other parties, and has his claim of rights in the matter decided against him, he cannot afterwards sustain a suit against those parties, or either of them, founded on the same matters decided in the first suit. That judgment cannot be treated as a mere dismissal of his intervention, unless expressly stated to be without prejudice to these rights. If there were errors in the first judgment, the remedy was by appeal. THIS is an appeal from the circuit court for the eastern district of Louisiana, and the case is well stated in the opinion. Mr. Strawbridge and Mr. Reverdy Johnson, for appellants. [ * 494 ] According to the practice in Louisiana, the circuit court delivered a carefully-prepared opinion on the final hearing there, setting forth the facts and reasons why that court dismissed the bill. The opinion will be found in the preceding report of this cause. We briefly restate the facts on which our judgment proceeds. In May, 1841, the Grand Gulf Bank recovered two judgments against Moses Groves, in the district court of the parish of Madison, in the State of Louisiana, amounting in the aggregate to more than twenty-two thousand dollars. Groves died without having satisfied those judgments, and the assignees by this bill seek to enforce payment of the debt from the estate of Groves, in the hands. of his administrator. The Grand Gulf Banking Company having failed, in February, 1842, assigned its assets in trust to Ingraham and Lindsay, including the two judgments against Groves. Lindsay afterwards died, and Read is his successor. This is the title relied on by the complainants. The defense set up depends on the validity of a sale of said judgments by legal process against Groves. Ingraham v. Dawson. * Marshall was the owner of a large amount of bank notes put in circulation by the Grand Gulf Company. In June, 1843, he instituted a suit against the bank on these notes, by attaching the judgments the bank had recovered against Groves, (and also judgments against other persons.) The suit was prose- [* 495] cuted in the district court of the parish of Madison, in Louisiana. To this proceeding the present complainants, Ingraham and Read, as assignees of the bank, intervened and set up their title by the assignment of the judgments, for the purpose of defeating the attachment of Marshall, and of having their claim as trustees established as the better title. Marshall responded to this allegation of the intervenors, that the deed of assignment was void: first, because it was contrary to the express law of Mississippi, prohibiting such assignments; and secondly, that it was void, because it was made for the purpose of defrauding a portion of the bank's creditors, and in order to favor others. The parties really contesting were Marshall and the intervenors. They went to trial before a jury on the law and facts. The verdict found, first, that the debt was due to Marshall from the bank; and, secondly, (says the record,) "we of the jury find the intervenors in the case have established no evidence of their claim to the property, as set forth in the petition." The judgment recites that the verdict was in favor of the plaintiff, Marshall, and against the defendants and intervenors; declares the amount due to the plaintiff; adjudges a preference and privilege upon the property, rights, and credits attached; orders them to be sold, according to law, to satisfy the plaintiff's judgment. "And it is further ordered and decreed, that the demand of the intervenors be rejected with costs." This judgment was affirmed in the supreme court of Louisiana on appeal, prosecuted on the part of the bank and the intervenors. The judgment as affirmed was duly entered in the district court, which proceeded to execute the same. The bill seems to have been founded on the supposition that the intervention was rejected, and the intervenors nonsuited in the district court; and that therefore they were not concluded, and at liberty to pursue their claim on the deed of assignment made to them by the Grand Gulf bank. The assumption that the intervenors were nonsuited in the State court is founded on a supposed record furnished to the complainants by the clerk of the district court, which probably might bear this construction; but it appears that no such record exists in that court, and that a copy of a memorandum, kept in a book to refresh |