Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 3.djvu/855

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84S FEDZBAL BEPOBTEIt. �tween such a case and a second sale by an individual who is vested with the legal title to real estate, and who can vest that title in a bonajide purchaser for value as against a prior purchaser by paroi or by deed unrecorded. For sound reasons of public poliey this is permitted. But the question here is of the poiver of a court of justice, vested through its officer ■with a legal title. That power must belimited by the obvious purpose for which the title is vested in it, and must be exer- cised in conformity to justice and right. The court, there- fore, must be held to be without power to make a second sale — First, because the purpose for which it was vested with the title bas been entirely accomplished; and, aecondly, because a second sale, in disregard of the rights of the first purchaser, would be so obviously unjust, impeaehing and setting at naught its own prior action, that no grant of power author- izing it to sell can be construed as giving it the power to do BO great an injustice. �Any second sale, therefore, of the interest of the bankrupt Eing, not in confirmation of the first sale, must be treated as inadvertently made, and an exercise of power not eonferred upon the court, and upon the application of any party in in- terest will be set aside, revoked, and declared nuU and void on that ground. �The suggestion that the want of a deed gave the court authority to make a second sale is especially without force in this case, as the very form of the advertisement invited the purchaser to dispense with a deed, if he did not wish to incur the expense. �6. Af ter the sale to Burnham, and Burnham's sale to Butler, nothing further was done, so far as appears, in reference ta the Henry King interest, till October, 1858, when Gordon L. Ford applied for and obtained the first two deeds in question, which are dated back to July 15, 1845, the date of sale to Burnham. No order of the court appears to have been ob- tained for the making of these deeds. The only explanation of them given by Chapman is that contained in the affidavit of Waddell, made a part of Chapman's answer, that they were given to Ford at the request, in writing, of Burnham, which ����