BUCKINGHAM VS. DORSEY. 33

land is held and owned by the patentee, to whom the irregu-
larity and the imputed fraud founded upon that irregularity are
attributed, but it is a proceeding against an innocent purchaser,
without notice, instituted forty-seven years after the date of the
patent, and forty-five years after the patentee had sold and con-
veyed the land to such innocent third person for a valuable con-
sideration and without notice, and this too by a party who had
but recently acquired an interest in the subject of this contro-
versy.

The state of Maryland, in the year 1795, sold and granted
this land, first receiving the purchase money from the pur-
chaser, who, in two years afterwards, sold and conveyed it to
an innocent and third person, who paid him value; and then,
forty-five years afterwards, a party claiming under the state,
seeks to avoid the title acquired by this innocent third person.

It seems to the Chancellor, that such an attempt cannot re-
ceive the countenance of a court of equity. If parties who
purchase lands, are required not only to trace the title back to
the patent, but to go behind the patent, and see that the pro-
ceedings which led to it are all regular, difficulties of a serious,
if not insuperable nature, would exist in the investigation of
titles. If in purchasing land taken up under a warrant of re-
survey, the purchaser must see at his peril, that no vacancy is
included which is not contiguous to the original tract, he would
also be bound to see that the party by whom the warrant was
taken out, had a sufficient title to the original, to authorize him
to sue out such a warrant. It seems to the Chancellor, that
the argument ab inconvenienti is powerful against such a prin-
ciple, and nothing but high authority could induce him to
adopt it.

For these reasons, he deems it proper to dismiss this pro-
ceeding.

[No appeal from the decree in this case.]