This case is brought before us by a writ of error to the Supreme Court of the State of Illinois.
In its inception, it was a bill in the Circuit Court for De Witt County, to foreclose a mortgage given by Thomas I. Bunn to his brother Lewis Bunn, on the south half of the south-east quarter and the south half of the south-west quarter of section 27, township 19, range 3 east, in said county. In the progress of the case, the bill was amended so as to allege that C. H. Moore and David Davis set up some claim to the land; and they were made defendants, and answered.
Moore said that he was the rightful owner of forty acres of the land mentioned in the bill and mortgage, to wit, the south-west quarter of the south-west quarter of said section, and had the patent of the United States giving him the title to it.
Davis answered that he was the rightful owner of the south-east quarter of said south-west quarter of section 27. He alleges that John P. Mitchell bought the land at the public sale of lands ordered by the President for that district, and paid for it, and had the receipt of the register and receiver, and that it was afterwards sold under a valid judgment and execution against Mitchell, and the title of said Mitchell came by due course of conveyance to him, said Davis.
It will thus be seen, that, while Moore and Davis each assert title to a different forty acres of the land covered by Bunn's mortgage to his brother, neither of them claim under or in privity with Bunn's title, but adversely to it.
But as both parties assert a right to the land under purchases from the United States, and since their rights depend upon the laws of the United States concerning the sale of its public lands, there is a question of which this court must take cognizance.
As regards Moore's branch of the case, it seems to us free from difficulty.
The evidence shows that the forty acres which he claims was struck off to him at a cent or two over $2.50 per acre, at a public land sale, by the officers of the land district at Danville, Ill., Nov. 15, 1855; that his right to it was contested before the register and receiver by Bunn, who set up a prior pre-emption right. Those officers decided in favor of Bunn; whereupon Moore appealed to the Commissioner of the General Land-Office, who reversed the decision of the register and receiver, and on this decision a patent for the land was issued to Moore, who has it now in his possession.
Some time after this patent was delivered to Moore, Bunn appealed from the decision of the commissioner to the Secretary of the Interior, who reversed the commissioner's decision and confirmed that of the register and receiver, and directed the patent to Moore to be recalled, and one to issue to Bunn. But Moore refused to return his patent, and the Land Department did not venture to issue another for the same land; and so there is no question but that Moore is vested now with the legal title to the land, and was long before this suit was commenced. Nor is there, in looking at the testimony taken before the register and receiver and that taken in the present suit, any just foundation for Bunn's pre-emption claim. We will consider this point more fully when we come to the Davis branch of the case.
Taking this for granted, it follows that Moore, who has the legal title, is in a suit in chancery decreed to give it up in favor of one who has neither a legal nor an equitable title to the land.
The Supreme Court of Illinois, before whom it was not pretended that Bunn had proved his right to a pre-emption, in their opinion in this case place the decree by which they held Bunn's title paramount to that of Moore on the ground that to the officers of the Land Department, including the Secretary of the Interior, the acts of Congress had confided the determination of this class of cases; and the decision of the secretary in favor of Bunn, being the latest and the final authoritative decision of the tribunal having jurisdiction of the contest, the courts are bound by it, and must give effect to it. Robbins v. Bunn, 54 Ill. 48.