This is an appeal from the Circuit Court of the United States for the district of South Carolina.
Upon the hearing of this cause in this court, it was suggested that the court had not jurisdiction of the case, on the ground that the District Court, which had original jurisdiction of it, had not given a final decree in favor of the libellants, before the cause was taken by appeal to the Circuit Court; from the decision of which, reversing the decision of the district judge and dismissing the libel, the appellants appealed to the Supreme Court. No such decree of the District Court is set out in the record; but the court, supposing it might be a clerical omission, gave to the counsel concerned in the cause time to ascertain the fact, in order that it might be made, either by consent of parties or by certiorari, a part of the record, that there might be no delay in the final disposition of the case by this court. The counsel having made the necessary inquiries from the clerk of the District and Circuit Courts, and having reported to this court that no final decree had been extended or passed in favor of the libellants by the district judge, and that the case had been taken by appeal to the Circuit Court upon such imperfect record, and decided in that court, without any notice of the omission having been brought to its view either from the record or in the argument of the case, the counsel have applied to this court to permit them to amend the record by consent, by inserting in it what might be agreed upon by them to be a final decree, urging, as the merits of the case between the parties had been fully discussed here, that the court could proceed upon such amendment to decide the case.
We have examined the proposal of counsel in connection with the laws of Congress regulating appeals from the District Court to the Circuit Court, and from the latter to this court, and also the decisions of this court upon those laws, and we do not find, upon any interpretation which has been or could in our view be given to them, that it is in our power to grant the application of counsel for the amendment of the record as they propose it should be done.