Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 8.djvu/416

4Q2 FBDBBAL BEPOSTER. �therefore, to the complainant but a naked possession, wbicli, as against the true owner, confera no right or title whatever, because time does not run against the sovereign ; and to the defendant, a void patent of no legal significance or weight whatever. The claims of the complainant under his tax deed, and based on the presump- tion of a grant from the defendant of his equitable interest under the ■ entry and survey, of course, cannot survive the extinguishment of the defendant's interest, both in equity and law. Those claims of the complainant are derived from and through the previous title of the defendant, and, being dependent upon it, must fall with it. The prop- osition, therefore, which sweeps away all title from the defendant, precisely as if none ever existed, as this proposition which avoids the patent does, necessarily leaves nothing in the complainant but a naked possession, which, however good it may be as a defence against any stranger without title, does not confer even the color of right as against the true owner. �It is true that the bill claims that an equitable title vested in Eobert Marphall by virtue of the entry and survey, that that equita- ble estate passed to and vested in the complainant by virtue of the tax deed and the presumed grant thereof, and that only the patent is void. But a statement of the grounds on which it is claimed,, and on which alone it can be claimed, that the patent is void, will show the, im,poBsibility of main taining the existence of any such equitable estate to vest in the complainant. �By the act of March 23, 1804, eiititled "An act to ascertain the boundary of the lands reserved by the state of Virginia, north-west of the river Ohio, for the satisfaction of her oESceirs and soldiers on con- tinental establishment, and to limit the period for locating the said lands," (2 St. at Large — -,) in the second section thereof, it is enacted that all the officers and sold[iers, or their legal representatives, who are entitled to bounty lands within the above-mentioned reserved terri- tory, shall complete their locations within three years after the pas- sage of this act, and every such officcr and soldier, or his legal repre- sentatives, whose bounty land has or shall have been located within that part of the said territory to which the Indian title has been ex- tinguished, shall make return of his or their surveys to the secretary of the department of war within five years after the passing of this act, and shall also exhibit and file with the said secretary, and within the same time, the original warrant or warrants under which he claims, or a certified copy thereof, under the seal.of the office where the said warrants are legally kept ; which warrant or certified copy thereof, ��� �