Upon my return home, I looked into the question which you mentioned yesterday,1 and I find two cases in Cranch’s reports, distinctly asserting the principle, that a trustee who is a citizen of a different state, may sue in the Circuit Federal Court, for the benefit of a Cestui que trust,2 who is a citizen of the same state with the deft. The cases take a distinction, between the case of a trustee, of whom they say “That he is a real person, capable of being a citizen or alien, having the whole legal estate in himself, & competent to sue in his own right, and that therefore where he is a citizen of the same state with deft. he cannot sue in the Federal court, on the ground that the cestui que trust is a citizen of another state” and the case of a merely nominal plaintiff, who can sue tho’ he be a citizen of the same state with deft, if the persons really, & beneficially interested be not. An example of this kind is given in 5th. Cranch, in the case of the Stafford justices vs Strode;3 the ptffs were the magistrates of Stafford County in Virginia to whom the deft. as executor executed a bond for the faithful discharge of his executorial duties. The suit was brought in the Federal Court of Virginia in the names of the Justices citizens of Virginia against the deft also a citizen. Here the Jurisdiction was sustained on the ground, that tho’ the nominal pliffs were citizens, yet the real persons (the creditors) for whose benefit the suit was brought, were aliens. In this case the ptiffs were wholly nominal. In the case of trustee, the legal title is in him, tho’ equity holds him responsible to the cestui que trust. Yours resp’ly