ndent 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.

* * * * *

Mr. Justice WAYNE.

Concurring as I do entirely in the opinion of the court, as it has
been written and read by the Chief Justice--without any qualification
of its reasoning or its conclusions--I shall neither read nor file an
opinion of my own in this case, which I prepared when I supposed it
might be necessary and proper for me to do so.

The opinion of the court me