is court. If
this had been done, it is too plain for argument that the writ must have
been dismissed for want of jurisdiction in this court. The case of
Strader and others _v._ Graham is directly in point; and, indeed,
independent of any decision, the language of the 25th section of the act
of 1789 is too clear and precise to admit of controversy.

But the plaintiff did not pursue the mode prescribed by law for bringing
the judgment of a State court before this court for revision, but
suffered the case to be remanded to the inferior State court, where it
is still continued, and is, by agreement of parties, to await the
judgment of this court on the point. All of this appears on the record
before us, and by the printed report of the case.

And while the case is yet open and pending in the inferior State court,
the plaintiff goes into the Circuit Court of the United States, upon the
same case and the same evidence, and against the same party, and
proceeds to judgment, and then brings here the same case from the
Circuit Court, which the law would not have permitted him to bring
directly from the State court. And if this court takes jurisdiction in
this form, the result, so far as the rights of the respective parties
are concerned, is in every respect substantially the same as if it had
in open violation of law entertained jurisdiction over the judgment of
the State court upon a writ of error, and revised and reversed its
judgment upon the ground that its opinion upon the question of law was
erroneous. It would ill become this court to sanction such an attempt to
evade the law, or to exercise an appellate power in this circuitous way,
which it is forbidden to exercise in the direct and regular and
invariable forms of judicial proceedings.

Upon the whole, therefore, it is the judgment of this court, that it
appears by the record before us that the plaintiff in error is not a
citizen of Missouri, in the sense in which that word is used in the
Constitution; and that the Circuit Court of the United States, for that
reason, had no jurisdiction in the case, and could give no judgment in
it. Its judgment for the defendant must, consequently, be reversed, and
a mandate issued, directing the suit to be dismissed for want of
jurisdiction

POINTS DECIDED.

I.

1. Upon a writ of error to a Circuit Court of the United States, the
transcript of the record of all the proceedings in the case is brought
before this court, a