Both these titles are founded on what are called removed warrants, and priority of entry is altogether immaterial to the issue. But the existence of an entry, it is contended on behalf of the plaintiff, is indispensable to the issuing of a warrant of survey, and to the validity of grants, which ought by law to have their origin in such entries. With a view, therefore, to impeach the prior grant to Sevier, under which these defendants claim, the plaintiff proposes to prove, that there never were in fact any entries made to justify the issuing of the warrants under which their title had its inception. It has been also suggested, that his intention further was to prove the warrants themselves forgeries. But this does not appear from the bill of exceptions, as will be more particularly shown when we come to analyze it, with a view of determining what evidence appears to have been rejected in the Circuit Court.
The evidence offered in the Court below, with a view to invalidating Sevier's grant, was rejected, and on the writ of error to this Court, one general question arises, whether any, and if any, what evidence of facts, prior to the issuing of a grant, shall be received to invalidate it?
When the case was before this Court, in the year 1815, the same question was brought to its notice, and received its most earnest and anxious attention. Long experience had satisfied the mind of every member of the Court, of the glaring impolicy of ever admitting an inquiry beyond the dates of the grants under which lands are claimed. But the peculiar situation of Kentucky and Tennessee, with relation to the parent States of Virginia and North Carolina, and the statutory provisions and course of decisions that have grown out of that relation, has imposed upon this Court the necessity of pursuing a course which nothing but necessity could have reconciled to its ideas of law or policy. The sole object for which jurisdiction of cases, between citizens of different states, is vested in the Courts of the United States, is to secure to all the administration of justice, upon the same principles on which it is administered between citizens of the same State. Hence, this Court has never hesitated to conform to the settled doctrines of the States on landed property, where they are fixed, and can be satisfactorily ascertained; nor would it ever be led to deviate from them, in any case that bore the semblance of impartial justice.
It has been supposed, that in the former decision alluded to in this case, this Court has gone beyond the decisions of the Courts of Tennessee, in opening the door to inquiries into circumstances occurring prior to the issuing of a grant.
An attentive perusal of that decision will detect the error; or prove, if it has done so, it has done it on principles that cannot be controverted.
It is obvious from the report of the decision, that it was at that time presented under an aspect somewhat different from that in which it now appears. The forgery of the warrants constituted a part of the case which the plaintiff was precluded from making out in evidence. And to collect the purport of the decision, at that time rendered, the best resort will be to the words in which it is delivered.
Two sentences will give the substance of that decision. They are expressed in the following words. 'But there are cases in which a grant is absolutely void; as where the State has no title to the thing granted, or where the officer had no authority to issue the grant. In such cases, the validity of the grant is necessarily examinable at law.' And 'If, as the plaintiff offered to prove, the entries were never made, and the warrants were forgeries, then no right accrued under the act of 1777; no purchase of the land was made from the State; and independent of the act of cession to the United States, the grant is void by the express words of the law.'
