Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 3.djvu/190

 WETMOBE V. ST, P. & P. E. 00. 183 �get ail the information on the subject possible, as the case stood at that time. It is wrong to suppose that the same court will now set aside the sale which brings a million and a half of dollars beeause of the objection that now, in the light of a year or two after that, in the improved circumstancea and the prosperous times, in the value attaching to that road growing out of the connections newly made, we are now to consider the thing as of the present time, in relation to its value at the time the same was made. This is one of those constant every-day events of people, who have let things slip out of their hands, coming back afterwards to endeavor to secure the value which they failed to recognize or secure at the time. Nothing hindered these bond holders from bidding. It is said there was a million and a half dollars among them. They could have bid as well as the other bond holders. The trustees did not feel disposed to fight them ; they left them to protect themselves. �I must say, also, in regard to the trustees, that I don't see, although by the decree they had the power, and perhaps a conditional instruction, that they should purchase that prop- erty if they thought it was selling for a totally inadequate price, but we cannot say that they did not exercise their best judgment about that when they let it go. We do know that there were large expenses to be paid ; that there was a large sum of money in cash to be paid before it could be bought by the trustees and paid for in the bonds of the corporation, We know that there were a million of dollars of debentures and other interests that had to be provided for before the road could be purchased by the bonds, and we do not know of any adequate means that the trustees had to raise the cash and the amount of these debentures. �I must say, in regard to the argument urged here more than once by Mr. Gilman, that these trustees should have Bold the land for that purpose does not strike me as being an argument of very great weight. They could not have sold land in time to raise that money in any ordinary mode, in any satisfactory mode, in any mode that would not have been liable to greater objections, or as -great, as to let the ����