Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 9.djvu/748

MANNING V, SAN JACINTO TIII CO. T33 �other lands, for the patent is not vacated, and the proceeuings between the patentee and the United States are oonolusive. The grantee has got the Ml amount of land called for in her grant, and she, or her grantee, has been compelled by the court to convey it to a party who has and claims no interest in the grant, legal or equitable. If the complainant can thus obtain a conveyanoe of a large part of the grant, under similar circumstances the whole can be taken, and the grantee under the Mexican grant would be left without any land, although adjudged to be entitled to 11 leagues. The court cannot do equity on a bill filed by the complainant alone, even if it can in any case. The complainant does not even offer to pay eithei the pat- entee or the government for the land. He proposes to take it under a decree of the court, so far as any offer is concerned, without pay- ment of even the small sum required by the statute. �The United States is no party to the bill, and would not be af- fected by the decree, Clearly the United States is the proper party, and the only proper party, to a suit upon the facts set eut in this bill. No decree could be rendered against the defendant in a suit by any other party which could do it justice, or protect and preserve its rights under the Mexican grant, confirmed and patented. The fraud charged, if it exists, certainly deserves the severest punish- ment ; but the law does not punish it in that way. In my judgment, the case does not fall within the principle announced in Johnson v. Towsley, 13 Wall. 72, and followed in subsequent cases of a like character, TJ. S. v. Flint, 4 Sawy. 74. The complainant, in my opinion, is not in a position to maintain this bill. The genuineness of the grant and its "correct location" were the very questions in issue and determined in the proceedings for confirmation and segregation under the acts of congress, and these questions cannot be re-exam- ined in other tribunals even upon a bill filed by the United States, as was held in U. S. v. Flint; U. S. v. Throckmorton ; and U. S. y. Car- pentier, 4 Sawy. 42, affirmed in 98 U. S. 61. In U. S. v. Flint I had occasion to observe that — �"It is a startli'.i^ proposition to those who hold patents to lands issued upon confirmed Spanish or Mexican grants, that after 25 years o£ coinpulsory liti- gation, intended, in the language of the varions acts of congress, to ' settle titles to land in the state of California,' the holders of all such patents are liable to be called upon to relitigate thelr claims with the government in the ordinary eom-ts of justice; and that the patent, instead of being conclu- fiive evidence of a ' settlement' of the -title — the end of litigation — is but the foundation for the beginning of a new contest to unseltle it, in the tribunals ��� �