Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 8.djvu/670

 656 FEDERAL REPORTER. �and dispatch in proceedings, and by a diaregard of which the rights of parties interested cannot be injuriously afEected. Provisions of this character are not usually regarded as mandatory, unless accompanied by negative words im- porting that the acts required shall not be done in any other manner or time than that designated. But wlien the requisitions prescribed ai-e intended for the protection of the citizen, andto prevent a sacrifice of hisproperty, and by a disregard of which his rights might be and generally would. be injuriously affected, they are not directory but mandatory. They must be followed or the acts will be invalid. The power of the officer in all such cases is limlted by the manner and conditions prescribed for its exercise." �In that case the statute in controversy was held to be mandatory; and 80 in the great case of Galpin v. Page, 18 Wall. 350, the same principle was applied in its relation to the jurisdiction, of courts oi special and limited authority; and, as is there and elsewhere abun- dantly shown, it is often applied in superior courts of general jurisr diction, where they are exercising special powers, not according to the course of the common law, by regular process and personal serv' ice in the usual form of common law or equity proceedings, but by seizure of property — as in attachment cases, for example — or some substitated process, or else where these special powers are exercised over a class of cases not within their ordinary jurisdiotion, upon the performance of prescribed couditions made essential to the acquisi- tion of the jurisdiction itself. �The case at bar does not, in my judgment, fall within any of these categories, and the mistake that is made in holding to a rigid and literal compliance with this requirement of the statute, that the copy of the record is to be entered "on the first day" of the next session of the court, is in supposing that it does, and that it is, therefore, a jurisdictional feature of the statute. We are not, in the exercise of our jurisdiction of removable causes, any more than in cases originally brought here, proceeding as a court of limited and special authority, nor as a superior court of general jurisdiction, exercising powers which are not according to the course of the common law and its regular course of process and personal service, nor yet sucii a court taking jurisdiction over a class of cases not within our ordinary jurisdiction. But we are a court of general jurisdiction, with this subject-matter embraced within the ordinary scope of our powers, and we are not proceeding by extraordinary processes, as attachment or publication or the like, but strictly upon personal service in the ordinary way. If it be an attachment suit, the same thing may be said of it, except that we are in the same predicament as the state court, and are only exercising concurrently its jurisdiction, whether ��� �