the heirs are the persons the resolution was intended to benefit.1 Can the court mean that land, after being confiscated to, and vested in, the United States, must have its title in fee retained by the United States for the heirs, and that there is an implied. grant from the government to them, contained in the resolution? Clearly, if the title is vested in the government, and not sold to the purchaser at the confiscation sale, there is no way to convey the title from the government to the heirs, but by grant. But such is not the exposition. As heirs, they take, say the court. As an inheritance the land descends, they say. It is not from the United States, though vested with the title, that the enemy's heirs receive title. It is from the enemy, though divested of title, that the heirs inherit title. The rulings of the court in this regard are not mis-stated. The purchaser, and what he may have purchased, are now left out of the question. It is not now inquired whether the joint resolution is a limitation of the nation's selling power over what it owns. It is conceded, for argument sake, that only the usufruct of property for an uncertain term is sold. The exposition. of the resolution is now confined to condemnations and the subsequent inheriting of confiscated titles by the heirs of those judicially bereft of their titles. And, the ruling of the court is to this effect: Heirs may inherit property from one who has alienated it by forfeiting it. - may inherit while the title to that identical property is in the United States. Such a proposition cannot be argued any more than one could discuss the assertion that title to property could be wholly in one man, and yet wholly in another; i. e., that a thing can be in two places at the same time. We look in vain to the joint resolution "intended for the benefit of the heirs," to find any method Ouachita Cotton, 6 Wall. 521; The Id. 474; Grotius' De Jure Gentium, Lib. iii, c. vi; Id. c. ii, § 2; Vattel's Droit des Gens, Liv. ii, c. vii, §§ 81, 82; Bynkershoek, Lib. i, c. vii; Puffendorff, Lib. i., 8, c. vi. ; Martens' Laws of Nations, Lib. viii, c. iii, § 9. 1 Wallach v. Van Riswick, 92 U. S. 202. by which the government's property can be inherited from some other owner. 1 S421. Rulings as to the Incapacity of those Divested of Title. In the exposition of the resolution, the court have repeatedly treated the person from whom property has been taken and confiscated, as one incapacitated. Wallach, Pike and Wade were declared by the court to have been incapacitated; rendered incapable of exercising powers which their successors could exercise by derivation from them. We find no sanction of such ruling either in the resolution or the clause of the Constitution which it repeats. The spirit of both is, that forfeitures, following convictions of treason, should not work incapacity. Granted that the Supreme Court, in several of the ejectment suits, have confounded civil proceedings in rem with criminal prosecutions for treason-hostile things with guilty thingsthe confiscation sections with the criminal sections of the act of 1862, still, under such constructions, the "Joint Resolution Explanatory," and its antecedent in the Constitution, rather inhibit attainder in the slightest form, than authorize it. If the court understands that incapacity is included in the "punishment" of "the offender," mentioned in the resolution, and that such "punishment" is not to extend "beyond his natural life," we must turn from the resolution to the act itself to help us to their meaning. And we find, in the criminal part of the act, sec. 3, that "every person guilty of either of the offenses described in this act, [treason and inciting rebellion,] shall be forever incapable and disqualified to hold any office under the United States."3 No one has been convicted of either of the offenses under the act; and, had Wallach, Pike, Wade and 1 How inconsistent all this appears when we reflect that proceedings in rem cannot be against any personal defendant. United States v. 84 Boxes of Sugar, 7 Pet. 450; 200 Chests of Tea, 9 Wh. 430; McIlvaine v. Coxe's Lessee, 4 Cr. 209; Barancoat et al. v. Gunpowder, 1 Met. 230; Markle v. Akron, 14 Ohio, 590, 591; The Palmyra, 12 Wh. 12, 13, 15; United States v. Bags of Coffee, 8 Cr. 398; 105. 2 Art. 3. § 3, cl. 3. others been so convicted, the incapacity would have had reference to office-holding only. Yet, this section 3 is the only expression throughout the whole statute which has any allusion. to incapacity, and therefore we are necessitated to conclude that it is to this the court had reference when treating of incapacity as a part of the "punishment" of the "offender" which, with "forfeiture," was not to extend "beyond his natural life," and which, under their theory, might therefore be understood to exist during life. The better view seems to be that those enemies could not have control of their former property for the reason that they had ceased to own it after the lawful condemnation of it, and the divestiture of their title, and the vesting of it in the United States. They seem not to have been incapacitated from holding office under the United States, nor to have been denied any rights as citizens and property owners. The reason they were incapacitated from the administration of the confiscated property, is a general one, applicable to all persons with reference to property which they do not own.1 § 422. The New Title is Vested in the United States. The two positions cannot stand together: (1.) That the title of confiscated property is vested in the United States; and (2.) That the title of the same property is transmissible from divested and incapacitated fathers to their children. With the highest deference for the doctrine, stare decisis, the inquirer is driven to put aside one of these propositions. He 1 It cannot be possible that any person can be incapacitated with regard to the transmission of his property to his heirs, by any proceeding in rem, since such proceeding is not against any person, § 420, note. Besides, the condemnation of the thing proceeded against is conclusive with regard to his heirs as well as to himself. Woodruff v. Taylor, 20 Vt. 65; Lord v. Chadbourne, 42 Me. 429; Cammell v. Sewell, 3 Hurl. & N. 617; The Railroad v. Hemphill, 35 Miss. 17; Rose v. Himely, 4 Cr. 291; Crondson v. Leonard, Id. 434; Bradstreet v. The Neptune Ins. Co., 3 Sum. 600; Penhallow v. Doane, 3 Dallas, 54; Hudson v. Guestier, 4 Cr. 295; Certain Logs of Mahogany, 2 Sum. 600; Magee v. Beirne, 3 Wright, 50; Imrie v. Castrique, 8 C. B. N. S. 1, 405; The Globe, 2 Blatchford, (C. C. Rep.) 427; Thompson v. St. Bt. Morton, 2 Ohio State, 36; The Robert Fulton, 1 Paine, 620; Scott v. Sherman, 2 Wm. Black 982. finds the latter untenable, and follows the Supreme Court in the former. It is settled by the Supreme Court that condemnation is not confined to life estates; that the joint resolution does not restrict the condemnation of enemy property; that all title previously vested in the enemy owner is divested by the condemnation, and is vested in the United States. 1 1 Miller v. United States, 11 Wall. 292; Tyler v. Defrees, Id. 331; Brown v. Kennedy, 15 Wall. 591; "The Confiscation Cases," 20 Wall. 116; Semmes v. United States, 91 U. S. 21; Wallach v. Van Riswick, 92 U. S. 202, (overruling Bigelow v. Forrest, 9 Wall. 339. and Day v. Micou, 18 Id. 160, on life estate condemnation ;) Pike v. Wassel, 94 U. S. 711; French v. Wade, 102 U. S. 132. See authorities on conclusiveness of condemnation decree, ante, §§ 111, 112; on what is the res in absolute condemnations, 36, 41; on the final rejec tion of all interests not presented, § 97 § 423. The Conflict of Decisions Confined to Sale. It is settled that land is confiscable under the act and joint resolution. The decisions agree in this. Both classes of cases-the confiscation proceedings and the ejectment suits; the proceedings in rem and the collateral actions, now agree as to condemnation. The early cases, of the latter class, have been overruled so far as they were not in accord with this conclusion. Now the doctrine is that nothing is left in the enemy, of confiscated property previously owned by him; nothing left in him that he can use or in anywise convey; nothing whatever" left in him;" the fee not left in him, but condemned to the United States. The conflict between the two classes of decisions is now narrowed to the sale. The doctrine of the ejectment suits is that |