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or publish, or attempt to pass, utter or publish as true, any false, forged, or counterfeited bill, or note, purporting to be a bill, or note, issued by order of the president, directors and company of the Bank of the United States, or any false, forged, or counterfeited order or check, upon the said bank or corporation, or any cashier thereof, knowing the same to be falsely forged or counterfeited, or shall pass, utter, or publish, or attempt to pass, utter or publish, as true, any falsely altered bill or note, issued by order of the president, directors and company of the Bank of the United States, or any falsely altered order or check,Or checks or orders thereon. on the said bank or corporation, or any cashier thereof, knowing the same to be falsely altered with intention to defraud the said corporation, or any other body politic, or person; every such person shall be deemed and adjudged guilty of felony, and being thereof convicted by due course of law, shall be sentenced to be imprisoned, and kept to hard labour, for a period not less than three years, nor more than ten years, or shall be imprisoned not exceeding ten years, and fined not exceeding five thousand dollars: Provided, that nothing herein contained shall be construed to deprive the courtsSaving of the jurisdiction of state courts. of the individual states of a jurisdiction under the laws of the several states, over the offence, declared punishable by this act.

Repeal of act of June 27, 1798, ch. 61.Sec. 2. And be it further enacted, That the act, intituled “An act to punish frauds committed on the Bank of the United States,” passed the twenty-seventh day of June, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-eight, shall be and the same is hereby repealed: Provided nevertheless, that the repeal of the said act shall not be so construed, as to prevent the trial, condemnation or punishment of any person, or persons, charged with or guilty of a violation of any of its provisions, previous to the passing of this act.

Approved, February 24, 1807.

Statute ⅠⅠ.



March 2, 1807.

Chap. XXI.An Act to extend the time for locating Virginia military [land] warrants, for returning surveys thereon to the office of the Secretary of the department of War, and appropriating lands for the use of schools, in the Virginia military reservation, in lieu of those heretofore appropriated.[1]

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the officers and soldiers

  1. Under the reserve contained in the cession act of Virginia, and under the acts of Congress of August 10, 1790, and of June 9, 1794, the whole country lying between the Sciota and Little Miami rivers, was subjected to military warrants, to satisfy which the reserve was made. Doddridge v. Thompson, 9 Wheat. 469; 5 Cond. Rep. 645.
    The territory lying between the two rivers, is the whole country from their sources to their mouths; and if no branch of either of them has acquired the name exclusively of another, the main branch to its source must be considered the true river. Ibid.
    The act of June 26, 1812, to ascertain the western boundary of the tract reserved for military warrants, and which provisionally designates Ludlow’s line, as the western boundary, did not invalidate the title to the land between that line and Robert’s line, acquired under a Virginia military warrant previous to the passage of that act. Ibid.
    The land between Ludlow’s and Robert’s line was not withdrawn from the territory liable to be surveyed for military warrants by an act of Congress passed before the act of June 12, 1812. Ibid.
    The reservation made by the law of Virginia of 1783, ceding to Congress the territory northwest of the river Ohio, is not a reservation of the whole tract of country between the rivers Sciota and Little Miami. It is a reservation of only so much as may be necessary to make up any deficiency of good land in the country set apart for the officers and soldiers of the Virginia line on continental establishment, on the southeast side of the Ohio. The residue of the lands are ceded to the United States as a common fund for those states who come or might become members of the Union; to be disposed of for that purpose. Jackson v. Clarke et al., 1 Peters 635.
    Although the military lands constituted the primary claim upon the trust, that claim was according to the intention of the parties so to be satisfied, as still to keep in view the interests of the Union, which were also vital objects to the trust. This was only to be effected by prescribing the time in which the lands to be appropriated by those claimants should be separated from the general mass, so as to enable the government to apply the residue to the general purposes of the trust. Ibid.
    If the right existed in Congress to prescribe the time in which military warrants should be located, the right to annex conditions to its extension, follows as a necessary consequence. Ibid.
    If it be conceded that the proviso in the act of March 2, 1807, was not intended for the protection of surveys which were in themselves absolutely void, it must be admitted that it was intended to protect