[Garcia v. Lee.] confirms all grants made by the Spanish government, prior to the 24th of January, 1818, situated in all the territories to the eastward of the Mississippi, known by the name of East and West Florida. Mr. Jones, for the defendant, contended that, The only exception to the decision of the district court is on a point of evidence; namely, the admissibility, as evidence to the jury, of certain papers, seventeen in number. The only possible tendency of those papers; indeed, the sole and professed object of their introduction, was to expound the meaning, operations, and effect of the treaty concluded at Paris, April 30, 1803, by which France ceded to this country the province of Louisiana. The particular question which those papers were intended to affect, was one purely of the true construction of the treaty; and that was whether the eastern limit of the ceded territory was bounded by the Mississippi, or extended to the Perdido: a questica, in time past, of extensive, animated, and protracted discussion between the governments of Spain and the United States; but practically solved by the latter, who took actual possession of the territory within the disputed limits, as part and parcel of the territory ceded by the treaty; definitively incorporated the whole of it with the territory of the United States, and annexed a part of it to the state of Louisiana: all under the sole authority of that treaty, and with no other title or pretence of title whatever. We maintain the decision of the district court, ruling out these papers as evidence, upon the following grounds: 1. If this were a question of fact proper to be left to a jury, on extrinsic evidence, the papers in question were not competent evidence of the fact. 2. It is not now, nor was it ever such a question; but was always, so long as it remained open to any sort of controversy, one of construction, completely determinable by the words of the treaty, either taken by itself, or in connection with circumstances of equal notoriety; and equally within the proper sphere of judicial cognizance. 3. Maintaining, as we do, the sufficiency of the reasons upon which the claim to this territory was originally asserted on behalf of the United States, we nevertheless deny that it is, or ever was, a question of judicature; and affirm, that as a question of sovereign right [Garcia v. Lee.] between the two nations, it came originally, and has ever remained within the peculiar province of such departments of the government as are charged with the management of our foreign relations, and with the highest functions of sovereignty in asserting and maintaining national rights against foreign powers: and as such a question, that it has been long ago conclusively terminated and settled by a series of public acts, in which the executive and legislative powers of the government have concurred to assert and establish the territorial sovereignty and rights of the nation, by the supreme authority of the nation: an authority which no private rights of property, founded in any conflicting rules of municipal law, can oppose; which is supreme over all the people and all the tribunals of the country; and which this Court has judicially recognised and deferred to, as supreme and incontrovertible. Mr. Chief Justice TANEY delivered the opinion of the Court: In this case, the appellant claims ten thousand arpents of land, being part of a grant for fifteen thousand arpents; which he alleges, in his petition, were granted to him by the Spanish authorities in 1806. The land is situated in the state of Louisiana, and in the territory lying north of the Iberville, and between the Perdido and the Mississippi; which was so long a subject of controversy between the United States and Spain; and which was finally settled by the cession of the Floridas to the United States, by the treaty of February 22, 1819. It is well known as a matter of history, that the executive and legislative departments of our government have continually insisted that the true boundary of Louisiana as we acquired it by the treaty with France of the 30th of April, 1803, extended to the Perdido; that the claim of the United States was disputed by Spain; and that she refused to deliver the territory, and claimed a right to exercise the powers of government over it: which claim the United States denied. On the 29th of March, 1804, congress passed a law dividing Louisiana into two territorial governments; and in order to protect the interest of the United States in the disputed territory, the 14th section of this law enacts, That all grants for lands within the territories ceded by "the French republic to the United States, by the treaty of the 30th April, 1803, the title whereof was at the date of the treaty of St. Ildefonso in the crown, government or nation of Spain, and every act and proceeding subsequent thereto, of whatso [Garcia v. Lee.] ever nature, towards the obtaining of any grant, title or claim to such lands, and under whatsoever authority transacted or pretended, be, and the same are hereby declared to be, and to have been from the beginning, null and void, and of no effect in law or in equity." The titles of actual settlers, acquired before the 20th of December, 1803, are excepted by a proviso from the operation of this section. The grant under which the appellant, Garcia, claims, falls within the provisions of this section; and as this law of congress has never been repealed or modified in relation to grants made by the Spanish authorities, the appellant has no title at law or in equity; unless it can be shown that the act of congress in question, upon some ground or other, is void and inoperative; and that the courts of the United States are bound to recognise a title acquired in opposition to its provisions. The questions presented by the record before us, are not new in this Court. They were examined and considered in the case of Foster and Elam v. Neilson, decided here in 1829; and reported, in 2 Peters, 254. In that case, the land in dispute was granted by the Spanish governor on the 2d of January, 1804, and ratified by the king of Spain on the 29th of May, 1804. The controversy in relation to the country lying between the Mississippi and the Perdido; and the validity of the grants made by Spain in the disputed territory after the cession of Louisiana to the United States; were carefully examined and decided in that case: and all of the faets and arguments necessary to a correct decision were then before the Court. They are substantially the same with those now offered to support the claim of the appellant; and are so fully set forth in the report of that case, that it is unnecessary here to repeat them. This Court then decided, that the question of boundary between the United States and Spain, was a question for the political departments of the government; that the legislative and executive branches having decided the question, the courts of the United States were bound to regard the boundary determined on by them as the true one. That grants made by the-Spanish authorities of lands, which, according to this boundary line belonged to the United States, gave no title to the grantees, in opposition to those claiming under the United States; unless the Spanish grants were protected by the subsequent arrangements made between the two governments: and that no such arrangements were to be found in the treaty of 1819, by which Spain ceded the Floridas to the United States, according to the fair [Garcia v. Lee.] import of its words and its true construction. These positions have all been controverted in the argument at the bar, in the case now before us. But we do not think it necessary in deciding the case, to enter upon a discussion of the various topics pressed upon the attention of the Court; and shall content ourselves with extracting several portions of the opinion delivered by Chief Justice Marshall, in the case of Foster and Elam v. Neilson, in order to show that all of the points now raised were carefully considered and decided in the case referred to. In page 309 of 2 vol. of Peters' Reports, the Chief Justice states the opinion of the Court, in the following words: "After these acts of sovereign power (by the United States) over the territory in dispute, asserting the American construction of the treaty, by which the government claims it; to maintain the opposite construction in its own courts, would certainly be an anomaly in the history and practice of nations. If those departments which are intrusted with the foreign intercourse of the nation, which assert and maintain its interests against foreign powers, have unequivocally asserted its rights of dominion over a country of which it is in possession, and which it claims under a treaty; if the legislature has acted on the construction thus asserted; it is not in its own courts that this construction is to be denied. A question like this, respecting boundaries of nations, is, as has been truly said, more a political than a legal question; and in its discussion, the courts of every country must respect the pronounced will of the legislature. Had this suit been instituted in mediatély after the passage of the act for extending the bounds of Louisiana, could the Spanish construction of the treaty of St. Ildefonso have been maintained? Could the plaintiff have insisted that the land did not lie in Louisiana, but in West Florida; that the occupation of the country by the United States was wrongful; and that his title under a Spanish grant must prevail: because the acts of congress on the subject were founded on a misconstruction of the treaty? If it be said that this statement does not present the question fairly, because a plaintiff admits the authority of this Court, let the parties be changed. If the Spanish grantee had obtained possession, so as to be the defendant, would a court of the United States maintain his title under a Spanish grant, made subsequent to the acquisition of Louisiana, singly on the principle that the Spanish construction of the treaty of St. Ildefonso was right, and the American construction wrong? Such a decision would, we think, [Garcia v. Lee.] have subverted those principles which govern the relations between the legislature and judicial departments, and mark the limits of each. "If the rights of the parties are in any degree changed, that change must be produced by the subsequent arrangements made between the two governments." After having thus fully expressed the opinion that the Court were bound to recognise the boundary of Louisiana, as. insisted on by the legislature of the United States; and that the American grants of land must prevail over those made by the Spanish authorities, after the date of the treaty of St. Ildefonso, unless "the rights of the parties had been changed by subsequent arrangements made between the two governments;" the Court, in the same case, proceed to examine whether the validity of these grants were recognised by the United States, or provided for in the treaty of 1819. And after examining the articles of the treaty, which had been relied on in the argument as providing for the grants made by the Spanish authorities, the opinion of the Court, on that part of the case, is stated by the Chief Justice in the following words: "It is not improbable, that terms. were selected which might not compromise the dignity of either government; and which each might understand, consistently with its former pretensions. But if a court of the United States would have been bound under the state of things existing on the signature of the treaty, to consider the territory, then composing a part of the state of Louisiana as rightfully belonging to the United States, it would be difficult to construe this article into an admission that it belonged, rightfully, to his catholic majesty." It had also been contended in argument in that case, that the exception of certain large grants of land by name, (which had been made by the Spanish government,) in the ratification of the treaty by Spain, implied that other fair grants were to be obligatory on the United States. But the Court held otherwise, and say: "The form of this ratification ought not, in their opinion, to change the natural construction of the words of the eighth article, or extend them to embrace grants not otherwise intended to be confirmed by it." "An extreme solicitude to provide against injury or inconvenience from the known existence of such large grants, by insisting upon a declaration of their absolute nullity, can, in their opinion, furnish no satisfactory proof that the government meant to recognise the small grants as valid; which in every previous act and struggle, |