Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 3.djvu/329

 summarized in the syllabus: “1. No affidavit, as required by the statute, was found filed with the clerk; and the law provides that if this is not done the writ shall be quashed on motion. 2. Three months’ notice of the attachment is to be given in a newspaper, and fifteen days’ notice is to be given by the auditors, which did not appear to have been done. 3. The defendant is to be called three times preceding judgment, and the defaults recorded. No record of this appeared to have been made. 4. Auditors are not to sell until twelve months, and it did not appear when the sale was made. 5. The return of the sale shows a sale to Foster & Woodard, and a deed was made to Stanley, and no connection between them was shown in the record.”

The court acquired jurisdiction by the seizure of the land and the return of the writ. All beyond that was merely error. The sale was sustained, when thus collaterally drawn in question, and the plaintiff recovered.

In the course of the opinion the court said: “If the principle once prevails that any proceeding of a court of competent jurisdiction can be declared to be a nullity by any court after a writ of error or appeal is barred by limitation, every county court or justice of the peace in the Union may exercise the same right, from which our own judgments or process would not be exempted. The only difference in this respect between this and any other court is that no court can revise our proceedings, but that difference disappears after the time prescribed for a writ of error or appeal to revise those of an inferior court of the United States or of any state; they stand on the same footing. The errors of the court do not impair their validity: binding till reversed, any objection to their full effect must go to the authority under which they have been conducted.” Id. 474. The opinion in Thompson v. Tolmie, 2 Pet. 157, which involved a sale of land under an order of the orphans’ court of the District of Columbia, is quoted from with approbation, to this effect: “The general and well-settled rule of law is that when the proceedings are collaterally drawn in question, and it appears on the face of them that the subject-matter was within the jurisdiction of the