TAYMON VS. MITCHELL. 503

tober of the same year, when this bill was filed. Thornton vs.
Wynn, 12 Wheat; 183.

At the time this offer was made, all the negroes were living,
and if it had been accepted by the defendant, the parties would
have been placed in status quo. That the infant has since died,
and that they cannot to that extent be placed in the same situa-
tion, is the defendant's own fault, of which, of course, he can-
not complain.

That the complainant repeated the offer in the presence of a
witness in September, 1848, the rights of third parties not hav-
ing intervened, and nothing more having been done by him
than simply keeping possession of the property, cannot, I think,
impair or take away his rights. And, therefore, if he had the
right to come into this court for redress, that right remains now
in full force and effect.

It has been said, and the assertion has received the sanction
of some of the most eminent judges known to any age, that
fraud and damage coupled together will entitle the injured party
to relief in any court of justice. And it was observed by Lord
Eldon, in Evans vs. Bicknell, 6 Ves; 182, 183, "that if a rep-
resentation is made to another, going to deal in a matter of
interest upon the faith of that representation, the former shall
make the representation good, if he knew that representation to
be false; and that if there was a jurisdiction at law upon the
doctrine, there was a concurrent jurisdiction in equity." The
observation here is, if the party making the representation "knew
it to be false," but upon the principle of the decision in Joyce
and wife vs. Taylor, before referred to, the party will be equal-
ly bound by his representation, whether he knew it to be false
or not, provided the other party believed in its truth, and, if it
is false, is deceived by it. For, as Mr. Justice Story says, "the
affirmation of what one does not know or believe to be true, is
equally in morals and law as unjustifiable, as the affirmation of
what one knows to be positively false." 1 Story's Eq., sec., 193.

Now, it may very well be, that the defendant, John Mitchell,
did not know what was the condition of those negroes with
reference to their health. Indeed, one of his own witnesses