BEEKMAN v. Hons0N mvm: wssr SHORE RY. co. 9
By section 2 of the act of September 24, 1789, "to establish the judicial
courts of the United States," (chapter 20, 1 St. at Large, 73,) the United
States were divided "into thirteen districts, to be limited and called as .
follows: * * * One to consist of the state of New York, and to be
called ‘ New York District,’ etc." By this act the lands in question were
undoubtedly included in the district named. What, if anything, has
taken them out of it`? The earliest state statute cited in the briefs of
counsel ceding jurisdiction to lands at West Point is chapter 64 of 1826.
Later acts are found as chapter 359 of 1875, and chapter 410 of 1876.
It may be that there are earlier statutes bearing on the subject, but it is
altogether improbable that any of them antedated the establishment of
the military academy in 1802. These state statutes, however, are of course
powerless to effect an amendment of a federal statute, under which con- (
gress has regulated the exercise of federal jurisdiction by federal courts.
Such an amendment must be found, if at all, in the federal statutes them-
selves. "In 1814 (chapter 49, 3 St. at ‘ Large, 120) the state of New
York was, "for the more convenient transaction of business in the courts
of theUnited States," divided into two districts, "in manner follow-
ing, to-wit: The counties of Rensselaer, Albany, Schenectady, Schoharie,
and Delaware, together with all that part of the said state lying south of
the said above—named counties, shall compose one district, to be called .
the ‘Southern District of New York;’ all the remaining part of said state
shall compose another district, to be called the ‘Northern District of
New York."’ In 1818 (chapter 32, 3 St. at Large, 414) the counties of
Albany, Rensselaer, Schenectady, Schoharie, and Delaware were trans-
ferred from the Southern to the Northern district. These statutes were
passed before the first state act of cession above cited, and when, for all
that appears in this case, the lands in question were politically, as well
as geographically, a part of the state of New York. Even had the cession
been made before their passage, however, it could not fairly be claimed
that, by an act plainly providing solely for the division of a district al-
ready provided by law with the machinery by which federal jurisdiction
was exercised in every part of it, some portion of the district so divided-
was deprived of the exercise of that machinery altogether. The inten-
tion of the legislature, when plainly deducible from the language used,
will prevail over a mere verbal construction. Wilkinson v. Leland, 2 Pet.
627; Brown v. Barry, 3 Dall. 365 ; U. S. v. Freeman, 3 How. 562. It
is manifest from an examination of these acts that congress, finding that
the judicial machine they had provided in 1789 for the New York dis-
trict was insufiicient to dispose of all the cases cognizable in existing
federal courts, undertook to provide additional courts to dispose of them.
That in so doing they intended to bar any part of the old district out of
the jurisdiction of both the original and the supplemental courts is a
conclusion unwarranted by anything in the statute. The same remarks
apply to the act creating the Eastern district, (Act Feb. 25, 1865; chap-
ter 54, -13 St. at Large, 438,) and to the Revised Statutes, § 54] , which,
after defining the Northern and Eastern districts, describes the Southern
district as including "the residue of said state, with the waters thereon.?