Shields

after stating the case as above, delivered the opinion of the court.

We are met at the threshold of this case by the motion of the defendants in error to dismiss the writ of error on the ground that the appellate jurisdiction of this court can be invoked in the present case only by an appeal. The motion is based upon the act of Congress governing the practice in territorial courts and appeals therefrom, approved April 7, 1874 (18 Stat. pt. 3, p. 27, c. 80), which provides that the judgments and decrees of territorial courts in actions at law wherein there is not a trial by jury, and wherein the issues of law and fact are submitted to and tried by the court without the intervention of a jury, can be reviewed only by appeal, and not on writ of error. The Supreme Court, in Stringfellow v. Cain, 99 U.S. 610 , 25 L.Ed. 421 , Hecht v. Boughton, 105 U.S. 235 , 26 L.Ed. 1018 , Bonnifield v. Price, 154 U.S. 672 , 14 S.Ct. 1194 , 26 L.Ed. 1022 , and in several other decisions, has held that by virtue of this statute the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court over the judgment or the decree rendered by a territorial court in a case not tried by a jury can only be exercised by appeal,…