further progress of the
case, it acted upon the erroneous principle it had decided on the
pleadings, and gave judgment for the defendant, where, upon the facts
admitted in the exception, it had no jurisdiction.

We are at a loss to understand upon what principle of law, applicable
to appellate jurisdiction, it can be supposed that this court has not
judicial authority to correct the last-mentioned error, because they
had before corrected the former; or by what process of reasoning it
can be made out, that the error of an inferior court in actually
pronouncing judgment for one of the parties, in a case in which it had
no jurisdiction, cannot be looked into or corrected by this court,
because we have decided a similar question presented in the pleadings.
The last point is distinctly presented by the facts contained in the
plaintiff's own bill of exceptions, which he himself brings here by
this writ of error. It was the point which chiefly occupied the
attention of the counsel on both sides in the argument--and the
judgment which this court must render upon both errors is precisely
the same. It must, in each of them, exercise jurisdiction over the
judgment, and reverse it for the errors committed by the court below;
and issue a mandate to the Circuit Court to conform its judgment to
the opinion pronounced by this court, by dismissing the case for want
of jurisdiction in the Circuit Court. This is the constant and
invariable practice of this court, where it reverses a judgment for
want of jurisdiction in the Circuit Court.

It can scarcely be necessary to pursue such a question further. The
want of jurisdiction in the court below may appear on the record
without any plea in abatement. This is familiarly the case where a
court of chancery has exercised jurisdiction in a case where the
plaintiff had a plain and adequate remedy at law, and it so appears by
the transcript when brought here by appeal. So also where it appears
that a court of admiralty has exercised jurisdiction in a case
belonging exclusively to a court of common law. In these cases there
is no plea in abatement. And for the same reason, and upon the same
principles, where the defect of jurisdiction is patent on the record,
this court is bound to reverse the judgment, although the defendant
has not pleaded in abatement to the jurisdiction of the inferior
court.

The cases of Jackson _v._ Ashton and of Capron _v._ Van Noorden, to
which we have referred in a