Opinion of the Court.

assignee, nor any other person can ever assert a right to the fund derived from his cotton. All other claimants can; but this claim must be considered in law as actually paid and extinguished. It is conceded that the claim was not so extinguished when the private act was passed; it is conceded that none other of the thousands of claims which are still outstanding upon the captured property fund is presumptively or legally extinguished by the statute of limitations. Why, then, is this? How is it possible that Congress by passing an act, without the solicitation of the legal owner of the claim, the present claimant, authorizing a court to take jurisdiction of a case and nothing more, can have attached to the claim itself another statute not previously applicable to it, which should in time work out a legal presumption of payment and an absolute extinguishment of the claimant's rights?

"If it be asked whether this thing can go on forever, the answer seems a very plain one. Congress did not here pass a general act, nor an act affecting a class of claims, but made a grant of special jurisdiction for the benefit of a single, isolated case; the act of grace and favor did not confer a right, but provided a remedy; Congress can take away the remedy at any time without trenching upon the claimant's rights.

"The counsel for the claimant has supposed that in the administration of the abandoned or captured property act the fund in the Treasury was treated by this court as a fund in equity, and the counsel is right in his supposition. Considering that it dealt with millions and must involve some of the most perplexing questions that could possibly be brought before a court, that act was in one particular probably the most extraordinary statute that was ever enacted. All that relates to the jurisdiction and duties of the court, and to the rights and disabilities of the parties, is to be found in nine lines which are thrust into a section primarily relating to the bonds and books of account of agents of the Treasury. The judges who had to bear the heat and burden of that day in determining principles, in devising remedies, in framing a system which should be commensurate with the necessities of the situation - that is to say, the judges who administered the statute from the

Decision.

case of Tibbitts, in 1 C. Cl. 169, to the case of Boyd, in the ninth volume (p. 419), had an absolutely novel subject of jurisprudence assigned to them without one word of statutory guidance to direct them and without a precedent to be gathered from all the courts in the world.

"Whatever may be thought of the wisdom of their conclusion, one thing is incontrovertible, and that is, that they, eventually, believed the fund in the Treasury to be a fund in equity, and that they exercised in regard to it whatever power of a court of equity might be necessary to protect the fund. The interlocutory proceedings, 4 C. Cl. 486; 5 id. 645, and the final decree, 7 id. 605, in the Elgee Cotton Case, and the decree in the case of Rothschild, 6 C. Cl. 244, will illustrate to any lawyer with any knowledge of equity jurisdiction that the court was dealing with rights and remedies which belong to the discretionary powers of a court of equity, and which are not the rights and remedies that come within the inflexible jurisdiction of a court of law. Some attempts have been made to show that courts of law have dealt with implied trusts in some such way, but the only authorities that could be found were Bacon's Abridgment, and Reeve's History of the Common Law, and they, unhappily, related to a time when the court of chancery did not exist as a court of equity, and when the system of equity jurisprudence was not yet devised.

"But I do not regard the statute of limitation as necessarily exclusive of equity cases. I place my conclusion here entirely upon the ground that the private act granted a remedy; that the remedy was not limited as to time, and that there is no law which attaches to this claim a presumption of payment."

Mr. Albert Small, Mr. Samuel Shellabarger, Mr. J. M. Wilson, Mr. Charles N. West, and Mr. Charles Marshall for appellant.

Mr. Attorney General and Mr. Heber J. May for appellee.

MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WAITE announced that the judgment of the Court of Claims was

Affirmed by a divided court.

APPENDIX.

i.

JUDGMENTS AND DECREES,

INTERLOCUTORY AND FINAL, AT OCTOBER TERM, 1886, NOT OTHERWISE REPORTED.

CHESAPEAKE AND OHIO RAILWAY v. WHITE.

(Docket No. 16.) Error to the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia. October 12, 1886 Dismissed on motion of Mr. W. J. Robertson for plaintiff in error. No one opposing.

LOUISIANA SUGAR REFINING COMPANY V. TODD ET AL. (Docket No. 685.) Error to the Circuit Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Louisiana. October 12, 1886: Dismissed on motion of Mr. S. T. Wallis for plaintiff in error. No one opposing.

Appeal from the October 18, 1886:

CAUSTEN V. YOUNG. (Docket No. 1209.) Supreme Court of the District of Columbia. Docketed and dismissed on motion of Mr. H. H. Wells for appellees. No one opposing.

TRAYER V. FRANK. (Docket No. 1210.) Error to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Concordia Parish, Louisiana. October 18, 1886: Docketed and dismissed on motion of Mr. James Lowndes for defendant in error. No one opposing.

DENVER, SOUTH PARK & PACIFIC RAILWAY V. FITZGerald. (Docket No. 180.) Error to the Circuit Court of the United States

VOL. CXXII-40

for the District of Colorado. October 18, 1886: Dismissed on motion of Mr. John F. Dillon for plaintiff in error. Mr. T. M. Marquette for defendant in error.

MILLER v. UNION PACIFIC RAILWAY. (Docket No. 215.) Appeal from the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Nebraska. October 18, 1886: On motion of appellee dismissed per stipulation. Mr. C. J. Phelps for appellant. Mr. John F. Dillon for appellee.

CONTINENTAL LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY V. PUMPHREY.

(Docket No. 1228.) Error to the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Maryland. October 20, 1886: Docketed and dismissed on motion of Mr. Michael Bannon for the defendant in error.

NEW YORK MUTUAL GAS LIGHT COMPANY V. THORP. (Docket No. 239.) Error to the Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. October 21, 1886: Dismissed as per stipulation. Mr. T. M. Wheeler for plaintiff in error. Mr. W. C. Witter for defendant in error.

WASATCH AND JORDAN VALLEY RAILROAD V. SNELL. (Docket No. 1.) Error to the Supreme Court of the Territory of Utah. October 22, 1886: Dismissed, with costs, pursuant to Rule 19. Mr. J. R. McBride and Mr. J. G. Sutherland for plaintiff in error. appearance for defendant in error.

No

HAYES v. SETON. (Docket No. 3.) Appeal from the Circuit Court of the United States for the Eastern District of New York. October 22, 1886: Dismissed, with costs, pursuant to Rule 19. Mr. J. H. Whitelegge and Mr. Livingston Gifford for appellant. Mr. G. G. Frelinghuysen and Mr. John Davis for appellee.

MUTUAL LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY OF NEW YORK v. Wackerle. (Docket No. 116.) Error to the Circuit Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Missouri. October 25, 1886: Dismissed on motion of Mr. Benjamin H. Bristow, in behalf of counsel for the