amount? And a controversy was involved in the sense of the statute whenever any property or claim of the parties, capable of pecuniary estimation, was the subject of the litigation, and was presented by the pleadings for judicial determination.

With these provisions in force, we are clearly of opinion that the State court of Louisiana erred in refusing to transfer the case to the Circuit Court of the United States upon the application of the plaintiff in error. If the Federal court had, by no previous act, jurisdiction to pass upon and determine the controversy existing between the parties in the parish court of Orleans, it was invested with the necessary jurisdiction by this act itself so soon as the case was transferred. In authorizing and requiring the transfer of cases involving particular controversies from a State court to a Federal court, the statute thereby clothed the latter court with all the authority essential for the complete adjudication of the controversies, even though it should be admitted that that court could not have taken original cognizance of the cases. The language used in Smith v. Rines, cited from the 2d of Sumner's Reports, in support of the position that such cases are only liable to removal from the State to the Circuit Court as might have been brought before the Circuit Court by original process, applied only to the law as it then stood. No case could then be transferred from a State court to a Federal court, on account of the citizenship of the parties, which could not originally have been brought in the Circuit Court.

But the admission supposed is not required in this case. The suit in the parish court is not a proceeding to establish a will, but to annul it as a muniment of title, and to limit the operation of the decree admitting it to probate. It is, in all essential particulars, a suit for equitable relief, - to cancel an instrument alleged to be void, and to restrain the enforcement of a decree alleged to have been obtained upon false and insufficient testimony. There are no separate equity courts in Louisiana, and suits for special relief of the nature here sought are not there designated suits in equity. But they are none the less essentially such suits; and if by the law obtaining in the State, customary or statutory, they can be maintained in a State court, whatever designation that court may bear, we think they may

be maintained by original process in a Federal court, where the parties are, on the one side, citizens of Louisiana, and, on the other, citizens of other States.

Nor is there any thing in the decisions of this court in the case of Gaines v. New Orleans, reported in the 6th of Wallace, or in the case of Broderick's Will, reported in the 21st of Wallace, which militates against these views. In Gaines v. New Orleans, this court only held that the probate could not be collaterally attacked; and that, until revoked, it was conclusive of the existence of the will and its contents. There is no intimation given that a direct action to annul the will and restrain a decree admitting it to probate might not be maintained in a Federal as well as in a State court, if jurisdiction of the parties was once rightfully obtained.

In the case of Broderick's Will, the doctrine is approved, which is established both in England and in this country, that by the general jurisdiction of courts of equity, independent of statutes, a bill will not lie to set aside a will or its probate ; and, whatever the cause of the establishment of this doctrine originally, there is ample reason for its maintenance in this country, from the full jurisdiction over the subject of wills vested in the probate courts, and the revisory power over their adjudications in the appellate courts. But that such jurisdiction may be vested in the State courts of equity by statute is there recognized, and that, when so vested, the Federal courts, sitting in the States where such statutes exist, will also entertain concurrent jurisdiction in a case between proper parties.

There are, it is true, in several decisions of this court, expressions of opinion that the Federal courts have no probate jurisdiction, referring particularly to the establishment of wills; and such is undoubtedly the case under the existing legislation of Congress. The reason lies in the nature of the proceeding to probate a will as one in rem, which does not necessarily involve any controversy between parties: indeed, in the majority of instances, no such controversy exists. In its initiation all persons are cited to appear, whether of the State where the will is offered, or of other States. From its nature, and from the want of parties, or the fact that all the world are parties,

the proceeding is not within the designation of cases at law or in equity between parties of different States, of which the Federal courts have concurrent jurisdiction with the State courts under the Judiciary Act; but whenever a controversy in a suit between such parties arises respecting the validity or construction of a will, or the enforcement of a decree admitting it to probate, there is no more reason why the Federal courts should not take jurisdiction of the case than there is that they should not take jurisdiction of any other controversy between the parties.

But, as already observed, it is sufficient for the disposition of this case that the statute of 1867, in authorizing a transfer of the cause to the Federal court, does, in our judgment, by that fact, invest that court with all needed jurisdiction to adjudicate finally and settle the controversy involved.

It follows from the views thus expressed that the judgment of the Supreme Court of Louisiana must be reversed, with directions to reverse the judgment of the parish court of Orleans, and to direct a transfer of the cause from that court to the Circuit Court of the United States, pursuant to the application of the plaintiff in error. Judgment reversed.

MR. JUSTICE BRADLEY, with whom concurred MR. JUSTICE SWAYNE, dissenting.

The question, whether the proceeding in this case, which was instituted in the State Court of Probate, was removable thence into the Circuit Court of the United States, depends upon the true construction of the acts of Congress which give the right of removal. The first act on this subject was the twelfth section of the Judiciary Act of 1789, which declares "that if a suit be commenced in any State court against an alien, or by a citizen of the State in which the suit is brought against a citizen of another State" [and certain conditions and security specified in the act be performed and tendered], "it shall be the duty of the State court to proceed no further in the which shall then proceed in the United States Court in the same manner as if it had been brought there by original process." This twelfth section cannot be entirely understood without reference to the preceding section, by which

cause,

...

the original jurisdiction of the Circuit Court was conferred. That section declares that the circuit courts shall have original cognizance, concurrent with the courts of the several States, of all suits of a civil nature, at common law or in equity, where the matter in dispute exceeds, exclusive of costs, the sum or value of $500, and the United States are plaintiffs or petitioners, or an alien is a party, or the suit is between a citizen of the State where the suit is brought and a citizen of another State; . . . but that "no civil suit shall be brought before either of said courts against an inhabitant of the United States by any original process in any other district than that whereof he is an inhabitant, or in which he shall be found at the time of serving the writ."

Now, the question arises, What proceedings are meant by the phrase "suits of a civil nature at common law or in equity," in the latter section, conferring original jurisdiction, and the phrase "a suit," in the former section, giving the right of removal? A "suit of a civil nature at common law or in equity" may, by virtue of the eleventh section, be brought in a circuit court if the parties are citizens of different States, and one of them is a citizen of the State where the suit is brought. "A suit" commenced in any State court by a citizen of that State against a citizen of another State may be removed into the Circuit Court; and, when removed, it is directed that "the cause shall then proceed in the same manner as if it had been brought there by original process.' By this act, therefore, any "suit" which could have been originally brought in the Circuit Court may be removed there from the State court, if brought by a citizen of the State against a citizen of another State; and it was always supposed, that, if it could not be originally brought there, it could not be removed there, because it is to be proceeded in "as if it had been brought there by original process." Mr. Justice Story, in a case before him decided in 1836, in reference to this section used the following language: "It is apparent, from the language of the closing passage of the section above quoted, that it contemplates such cases, and such cases only, to be liable to removal, as might under the law, or at all events under the Constitution, have been brought before the Circuit Court by original process."

Judge Conkling, in his "Treatise on the United States Courts" (a work long used with approbation by the profession), says, “It is obvious, from the language of the twelfth section of the Judicial Act, that it was not intended by it to extend the jurisdiction of these courts over causes brought before them on removal beyond the limits prescribed to their original jurisdiction; and such, as far as it goes, is the judicial construction which has been given to this section." Congress, undoubtedly, might authorize, and in special cases has authorized, the removal of causes from State courts to the United States Court which could not have been originally brought in the latter. An instance of the kind is found in this very twelfth section, in a special case where a suit respecting the title to land has been commenced in a State court between two citizens of the same State, and one of the parties, before the trial, states to the court by affidavit that he claims title under a grant from another State. In Bushnell v. Kennedy, 9 Wall. 387, however, this court held, that a citizen of one State sued in another State by a citizen thereof on a claim which had belonged to a citizen of the latter State, and had been assigned to the plaintiff, might have the cause removed to the Circuit Court of the United States, although, perhaps, it might not have been originally cognizable therein; but it still remains to determine what kinds of controversies are intended by the act.

Now, the phrase, "suits at common law and in equity," in this section, and the corresponding term "suit," in the twelfth, are undoubtedly of very broad signification, and cannot be construed to embrace only ordinary actions at law and ordinary suits in equity, but must be construed to embrace all litigations between party and party which in the English system of jurisprudence, under the light of which the Judiciary Act, as well as the Constitution, was framed, were embraced in all the various forms of procedure carried on in the ordi nary law and equity courts, as distinguished from the ecclesiastical, admiralty, and military courts of the realm. The matters litigated in these extraordinary courts are not, by a fair construction of the Judiciary Act, embraced in the terms "suit at law or in equity," or "suit," unless they have become