Opinion of the court. legal proceedings.* The passage of the act now in question was absolutely necessary to remove an impediment in the way of any legal proceeding in the case. The omission to provide for this accidental impediment to the action of this court, did not necessarily amount to the affirmance of the judgment, and it is hard to perceive what vested right the defendant in error had in having this case suspended between two tribunals, neither of which could take jurisdiction of it; or the value of such a right, if he was vested with it. If either party could be said to have a vested right, it was plaintiff in error, who had legally brought his case to this court for review, and whose remedy had been suspended by an accident, or circumstance, over which he had no control. If the judgment below was erro neous, the plaintiff in error had a moral right at least to have it set aside, and the defendant is only claiming a vested right in a wrong judgment. "The truth is," says Chief Justice Parker, in Foster v. Essex Rank,† "there is no such thing as a vested right to do wrong, and the legislature which, in its acts, not expressly authorized by the Constitution, limits itself to correcting mistakes and to providing remedies for the furtherance of justice, cannot be charged with violating its duty, or exceeding its authority." Such acts are of a remedial character, and are the peculiar subjects of legislation. They are not liable to the imputation of being assumptions of judicial power. The constitutional difficulty attempted to be raised on the argument, that Congress cannot authorize this court to issue a mandate to a State court, in a mere matter of State jurisdiction, is factitious and imaginary. It is founded on the assumption, that all the questions which we have heretofore decided are contrary to law, and is but a repetition of the former objections which have been overruled by the court under another form of expression. For if it be true, as we * See Hepburn v. Curts, 7 Watts, 300, and Shenly v. Commonwealth, 36 Pennsylvania State, 57. †16 Massachusetts, 245; and see Rich v. Flanders, 39 New Hampshire, 325. [Sup. Ct Opinion of the court. have shown, that Congress alone had the power of disposing of the Territorial records, and providing for the further remedy in the newly organized courts-if it requires the concurrent legislation of both Congress and the State to dispose of the cases in the peculiar predicament in which this case was heard-if Congress had, as we have shown, the power to reinove the impediments to its decision, and remit it to a State court authorized by the constitution of the State to take cognizance of they must necessarily regulate the conditions of its rer al, so that the parties may have their just remedy respectively. If a State tribunal could not take possession of the record of a court removed legally to this court, nor exercise jurisdiction in the case without authority of Congress (as we have decided), without the legislation of Congress, they must necessarily accept and exercise it subject to the conditions imposed by the act which authorizes them to receive the record. This court would have the same right to issue its mandate as in cases where we have jurisdiction over the decisions of the State courts, under the 25th section of the Judiciary Act, and for the same reasons,-because we have jurisdiction to hear and decide the case. II. Having disposed of the question of jurisdiction, the case presents no difficulty. As to the case made on the motion for a new trial: our decision has always been, that the granting or refusing a new trial is a matter of discretion with the court below, which we cannot review on writ of error. The single bill of exceptions in the case is to the refusal of the court to receive certain letters in evidence. The defendants were charged to have been partners of one George N. Shaw, or to have held themselves out to the public as such. This was the only issue in the case. To rebut the plaintiffs' proof, the defendants offered a correspondence between themselves, and some letters to them by one Eaton, their agent. It is hard to perceive on what grounds the parties should give their private conversations or correspondence with one another or their agent to establish their own case, or show that they had not held themselves out to the Syllabus. public as partners of the deceased. Let judgment of affirmance be entered in the case, and a statement of this decision be certified to the Supreme Court of Nevada.* AFFIRMANCE AND CERTIFICATE ACCORDINGLY. SHEETS V. SELDEN'S LESSEE. 1. When a deed is executed on behalf of a State by a public officer duly authorized, and this fact appears upon the face of the instrument, it is the deed of the State, notwithstanding the officer may be described as one of the parties, and may have affixed his individual name and seal. In such case the State alone is bound by the deed, and can alone claim its benefits. Accordingly, where the legislature of Indiana passed two acts, one authorizing the Governor, and the other the Governor and Auditor of the State to sell certain property of the State, and to execute a deed of the same to the purchaser on behalf of and in the name of the State, and such property being sold, the Governor and Auditor executed to the purchaser a deed, naming themselves as parties of the first part, but referring therein to the acts of the legislature authorizing the sale, and to a joint resolution approving the same, and declaring that, by virtue of the power vested in them by the acts and joint resolution, they conveyed the property sold, "being all the right, title, interest, claim and demand which the State. held or possessed," such deed was sufficient to pass the title of the State. 2. Land will often pass without any specific designation of it in the conveyance as land. Everything essential to the beneficial use and enjoyment of the property designated is, in the absence of language indicating a different intention on the part of the grantor, to be considered as passing by the conveyance. Accordingly, where the conveyance was of a division or branch of a canal, "including its banks, margins, tow-paths, side-cuts, feeders, basins, right of way, dams, water-power, structures, and all the appurtenances thereunto belonging," certain adjoining parcels of land belonging to the grantor which were necessary to the use of the canal and water-power, and were used with it at the time, but which could not be included in any of the terms above, in Italics, passed by the conveyance. 3. At the common law the grantee of a reversion could not enter or bring ejectment for breach of the covenants of a lease; and the statute of 32 Henry VIII, giving the right of entry and of action to such grantee, is confined to leases under seal. VOL. II. * See Webster v. Reid, 11 Howard, 461. Statement of the case. 4. The term "month," when used in contracts or deeds, must be construed, where the parties have not themselves given to it a definition, and there is no legislative provision on the subject, to mean calendar, and not lunar months. The term thus held in a lease of the State of Indiana. 6. In the interpretation of contracts, where time is to be computed from a particular day or a particular event, as when an act is to be performed within a specified period from or after a day named, the general rule is to exclude the day thus designated, and to include the last day of the specified period. Accordingly, where leases provided that the rents should be paid semiannually on the first days of May and November; and that if any instalment should remain unpaid for one month from the time it should become due, all the rights and privileges secured to the lessees should cease and determine, &c., the one month from the first day of May, within which the payment of the rent due on that day was to be made to prevent a forfeiture, expired on the first day of June following. In the computation of the time, the day upon which the rent became due was to be excluded. 6. Verbal authority is sufficient for a person to act as agent or a lessor in the collection of rent, or in demanding its payment. THE State of Indiana, being owner of the Northern Division of the Central Canal, and of certain adjacent lands, authorized its Board of Internal Improvement, to cause any surplus water, of which there was some, along "with such portions of ground belonging to the State as might be necessary to its use, to be leased." Under this act leases were made in 1839-40,-one to Yandes & Sheets, another to Sheets; each for the term of thirty years. The leases reserved certain rents, payable semi-annually on the first of May and November, and they provided that if any rent should "remain unpaid for one month from the time it shall become due," "all the rights and privileges" of the lessees "shall cease and determine, and any authorized agent of the State, or lessee under the State, shall have power to enter upon and take possession of the premises," &c. The first lease, that to Yandes & Sheets, in addition to the use of the water-power, in consideration of the rents reserved, leased, also, as necessary, "for the use of the waterpower hereby leased," and for the same term and on the same conditions "the particular portion of ground belonging to the State at said point, included within the following boun Statement of the case. daries, to wit, [here a particular piece of ground was described] containing a little more than half an acre." The second lease, that to Sheets, in consideration of the rent reserved, leased also for the same term, and on the same conditions as the water-power was leased, "such part of the ground belonging to the State as in the opinion of the engi neer having charge may be necessary to the use of the waterpower hereby leased," to wit [here, also, a particular piece of ground, as thus necessary, was described]. The lease to Yandes & Sheets was executed on the part of the State by the President of the Board of Internal Improvement, and by the lessees in this form: D. H. MAXWELL, [SEAL.] President of e Board of Internal Improvement. WILLIAM SHEETS. [SEAL.] The lease to Sheets was executed by N. Noble, Acting Canal Commissioner, and Sheets, in this form : N. NOBLE, Acting Commissioner for the Northern Division of the Central Canal. WILLIAM SHEETS. The "seals" which appear to the lease to Yandes & Sheets were ink scrawls. No seals of any kind appeared on the second lease,-that to Sheets. Some time subsequently to the making of these leases the State passed two statutes. By the first, entitled "An act to authorize the Governor of Indiana to compromise with, and to cause suit to be brought against lessees of the waterpower of the Northern Division of the Canal," the Governor was authorized to sell "all the right, title, and interest of the State of Indiana, in and to the Northern Division of the Central Canal, and all the rents that shall become due after the sale of the said property, and the water-power and appurtenances thereunto belonging." By the second, entitled "An act to authorize the sale of the Northern Divisior of the Central Canal," the Governor |