Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 4.djvu/142

128 FEDBEAL EEPOETEB, �title, "notwithetanding any irregnlarities in the notices, Oï failures to comply with the provisions of the acts under ■which the sales were made." Three of the deeds were exe- cuted before the passage of this act. Admitting that the state might waive any rights it might have to insist on such irregularities, it cannot be, that, by such action on its part, it can divest the title which the owners had at the date of the passage of the act. If these conveyances were invalid, by reason of these defects, and the owners still retained the title to their lands, the legislature could not, by any act it might pass, deprive them of their property. So far as the interests of the owners were involved, the act was null and void. �The supreme court of Massachusetts, in Slocum v. City qf Boston, October, 1880, Suffolk county, have passed upon an act of the legislature of that state similar to that now under consideration and adjudged it to be unconstitutional. That court had previously decided that certain advertisements of the coUector of Boston, of sales of lands for taxes, were not in conformity with the requirements of the statutes. There- upon, in 1878, the legislature passed an act "that no sale of land for taxes heretof ore made should be beld invalid by rea- son of such defectin the advertisements," and the validity of this latter act was the question before the court in Slocum's Case. Buch legislation did not receive the sanction of that court ; by it an owner was not deprived of his estate ; the sale was still invalid, notwith standing the legislature's attempt to remedy the defect ; and this decision is an express authority against the validity of chapter 172, so far as the title of the owners of the lots is involved. The last deed was executed subsequent to the passage of the act, but most of the objec- tions which are sustained by the court are alike applicable to ail the deeds, and are not dependent on irregularities in the notice, or failures to comply with the provisions of the acts under which the sales were made. �In Raymond v. Longworth, 14 How. 76, 78, the supreme court lay down the rule "that it is the duty of the federal courts to follow the decisions of the state courts on state laws regulating proceedings in cases of tax sales." ����