Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 6.djvu/38

 2 G FEDERAL SBPOBTEB. �are now too late to do it. They suffered the statute to purge the tax. proceedings of ail defects, to raise the tax deed above impeachment. Their objections may be ail well founded, but they came out of tirae. What the respondents might have said they cannot now say. The statute bas left them like one estopped to spea^ the truth, because they did nbt speak it when they might.' That bas been the construction uni- formly given by this court to the statute of limitations in relation to tax deeds. It bas been uniformly held in a mul- titude of cases that, as against the grantee of a tax deed, the statute puts at rest ail objections against the validity of a tax proceeding, whether resting on mere irregularity or going to the groundwork of the tax. The statute makes a deed valid on its face prima facie evidence, as soon as executed, of the regularity of ail proceedings from the assessment of the land inclusive to the execution of the deed, and the effeot of aU the decisions is that, when the statute bas run in favor of the grantee, the deed becomes conclusive to the same extent. The terms of the statute bar any action to recover possession of land sold and conveyed by deed for non-payment of taxes, and the leamed counsel for the respondent contends that to bring a tax deed within the statute the validity of the tax and of the sale must be established. Such a construction would go far to make the statute a dead letter. The statute was designed to protect things de facto, not things de jure. When there bas been an actual attempt, however defective in detail, to carry out a proper exercise of the taxing power, the statute applies; and the trouble with the argument is that in such a case, saving the instances excepted by the statute itself after the statute bas run, the tax deed itself oonclu- Bively establisbes the validity of the tax and of the sale." Demurrer is sustained and judgment for the defendant. ��� �