Opinion of the court. before them and to decide thereon "according to justice and equity;" and to transmit to the Secretary of the Treasury a transcript of their decisions made in favor of the claimants, and a report of the claims rejected, with a substance of the evidence adduced in their support. This transcript of decisions and the report, the secretary was required to lay before Congress at its next ensuing session. Among the claims presented under this act was one on behalf of the heirs of Jean Baptiste Tongas for two hundred and four acres, situated in the neighborhood of Vincennes, a place which is designated in the cession from Virginia as St. Vincents, such claim being founded upon an ancient grant to their ancestor. The commissioners decided in favor of the heirs and confirmed their claim, and transmitted a transcript of their decision to the Secretary of the Treasury, by whom it was laid before Congress. By the act of March 3d, 1807,* this decision, and all other decisions in favor of persons claiming lands in the district of Vincennes, contained in the transcript transmitted to the Secretary of the Treasury, were confirmed. This confirmation was the fulfilment of the condition stipulated in the deed of cession so far as the claimants were concerned. It was an authoritative recognition by record of the ancient possession and title of their ancestor, and gave to them euch assurance of the validity of that possession and title as would be always respected by the courts of the country. The subsequent clause of the act providing for the issue of a patent to the claimants, when their claim was located and surveyed, took nothing from the force of the confirmation. In the legislation of Congress a patent has a double operation. It is a conveyance by the government when the government has any interest to convey, but where it is issued upon the confirmation of a claim of a previously existing title it is documentary evidence, having the dignity of a record, of the existence of that title, or of such equities respecting the claim as justify its recognition and confirmation. * An act confirming claims to land in the district of Vincennes, and for other purposes, 2 Stat. at Large, 446. Opinion of the court. pre The instrument is not the less efficacious as evidence of viously existing rights because it also embodies words of release or transfer from the government. In the present case the patent would have been of great value to the claimants as record evidence of the ancient pos. session and title of their ancestor and of the recognition and confirmation by the United States, and would have obviated in any controversies at law respecting the land the necessity of other proof, and would thus have been to them an instrument of quiet and security. But it would have added nothing to the force of the confirmation. The survey required for the patent was only to secure certainty of description in the instrument, and to inform the government of the quantity reserved to private parties from the domain ceded by Virginia. The whole error of the plaintiff arises from his theory that the fee to the land in controversy passed to the United States by the cession from Virginia, and that a patent was essential to its transfer to the claimants, whereas, with respect to the lands covered by the possessions of the inhabitants and settlers mentioned in the deed of cession, the fee never passed to the United States; and if it had passed, and a mere equitable title had remained in the claimants after the cession, the confirmation by the act of 1807 would have operated as a release to them of the interest of the United States. A legislative confirmation of a claim to land is a recognition of the validity of such claim, and operates as effectually as a grant or quit-claim from the government. "A confirmation," says Sheppard in his Touchstone of Common Assurances, "is the conveyance of an estate, or right, that one hath in or unto lands or tenements, to another that hath the possession thereof, or some estate therein, whereby a voidable estate is made sure and unavoidable, or whereby a particular estate is increased and enlarged."* If the claim be to land with defined boundaries, or capable of identification, the legislative confirmation perfects the title * Page 811. Opinion of the court. to the particular tract, and a subsequent patent is only documentary evidence of that title. If the claim be to quantity, and not to a specific tract capable of identification, a segregation by survey will be required, and the confirmation will then immediately attach the title to the land segregated. We do not understand that the ancient grant to Tongas was only of quantity, but understand that it was of a specific tract of two hundred and four acres, and that the decision. of the commissioners in favor of the claimants had reference to a defined tract. If such were the fact the title of the heirs was perfected, assuming that previously they had only an equitable interest, upon the passage of the confirmatory act of 1807; if, however, the grant was of a certain quantity of land then undefined and incapable of identification, the title became perfect when the quantity was segregated by the survey made in 1820.* The plaintiff can, therefore, derive no aid from the patent issued in 1872. The doctrine which his counsel invokes, that the legislation of a State cannot defeat or impair the rights conferred by a patent of the United States in advance of its issue, is sound when properly applied, but it has no application here. There is no analogy between this case and the case of Gibson v. Chouteau,† and other cases cited by him. Here, in any view that may be taken, the title was perfected in the heirs of Tongas more than half a century before the patent issued, and for more than thirty years of that period the landlord of the defendant has been in the actual possession of the premises under claim and color of title made in good faith, and has during that time paid all the taxes legally assessed thereon. His possession has, therefore, ripened into a title, which, under the statute of Illinois, is a bar to any adverse claim. JUDGMENT Affirmed. * Rutherford v. Greene's Heirs, 2 Wheaton, 196. Syllabus. EDWARDS v. ELLIOTT ET Al. 1. Where the record before the court, on a case from a State court, shows a declaration, pleas to it, issue on them, verdict on those issues and judgment on the verdict, without allusion to any demurrer, the court will not refer to opinions in books of printed reports of the State court to contradict the record and to show that there was a demurrer to the declaration, and that judgment overruling the demurrer was given. [It was stated in this case by counsel that the demurrer after judgment against it had been withdrawn.] 2. Where a record brought regularly to this court, on a writ of error and appeal bond which operate as a supersedeas, shows a judgment quite intelligible and possible, and where a return to a certiorari issued, without prejudice, long after the transcript was filed here and not long before the case was heard, showed that that judgment had been set aside as improvidently entered, and that one with alterations of a very material character had been substituted for it, this court held, "under the circumstances," that the first judgment was the one which it was called on to re-examine. 8. An assignment of error in the highest court of a State to the decision of an inferior State court, that the latter had decided a particular State statute "valid and constitutional,” and a judgment entry by the latter court that the statute was not "in any respect repugnant to the Constitution of the United States," is not specific enough to give jurisdiction to the Supreme Court of the United States under section 709 of the Revised Statutes; there being nothing else anywhere in the record to show to which provision of the Constitution of the United States the statute was alleged to be repugnant. 4. However, where the record showed that the case was one of the assertion of a lien under a State statute for building a vessel at a town on what the court might perhaps judicially notice was an estuary of the sea. and where the entry of judgment showed also that the court had adjudged "that the contract for building the vessel in question was not a maritime contract, and that the remedy given by the lien law of the State did not conflict with the Constitution or laws of the United States," the court held that the latter statement, in view of the whole record, was sufficient to give this court jurisdiction. 5. A maritime lien does not arise on a contract to furnish materials for the purpose of building a ship; and in respect to such contracts it is competent for the States to create such liens as their legislatures may deem just and expedient, not amounting to a regulation of commerce, and to enact reasonable rules and regulations prescribing the mode of their enforcement, if not inconsistent with the exclusive jurisdiction of the admiralty courts. 6. The provision of the seventh amendment to the Constitution which se Statement of the case. cures to every party the right to trial by jury where the amount in controversy exceeds $20, does not apply to trials in State courts. 7. Matters not presented to nor decided by the court below, are not assignable for error here. ERROR to the Court of Errors and Appeals of the State of New Jersey; the case being thus: The Constitution ordains that "The judicial power [of the United States] shall extend to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction." And the Judiciary Act enacts: "SECTION 9. That the District Courts [of the United States] shall have exclusive original cognizance of all civil causes of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction . . . saving to suitors in all cases the right of a common-law remedy, where the common law is competent to give it." These provisions of organic and Federal statutory law being in force, an act of the legislature of New Jersey, "for the collection of demands against ships, steamboats, and other vessels,"* approved March 20th, 1857, enacted that whenever a debt shall be contracted by the master, owner, agent, or consignee of any ship or vessel within the State, on account of any work done or materials furnished in this State for or towards the building, repairing, furnishing, or equipping such ship or vessel, such debt shall be and continue a lien on the vessel for nine months; and that any person having such claim over $20 may apply to the proper officer for a warrant to enforce his lien; that the officer receiving the warrant may seize the vessel and give the prescribed notice; that any other person having such lien may make proper demand and proof and be admitted as an attaching creditor; that the owner or any party may at any time before sale apply for her discharge upon giving bond to pay such claims as shall be established to have been subsisting liens under the act; that upon such bond being given the vessel shall be discharged, and the creditors may sue *Nixon's Digest, 576. |