This is a writ of error to the circuit court for the district of Kansas. In that court there was a judgment against the plaintiff in error for the sum of $1,282.06. The amount is too small to give this court jurisdiction on a writ of error to a circuit court. There is, however, a certificate of division of opinion between the circuit judge and the district judge sitting at the trial without a jury. We have decided that under the act of 1872 a case may be brought to this court on a certificate of division, without regard to the amount in controversy. Dow v. Johnson, 100 U.S. 158. But that decision was based upon a valid certificate which presented properly questions material to the decision of the case. If this were not necessary to our jurisdiction, a form of certificate which might present no question that this court can consider might be used to require of it a review of other matters than those on which the court divided, though the amount in controversy is insignificant. It is therefore only where the certificate does present, in accordance with the statute, a division of opinion in such a manner and on such a question as to give this court jurisdiction that the amount in controversy can be disregarded as an element of jurisdiction.
As to the character of the certificate on which this court will act, the statute of 1872 and the Revised Statutes have made no change, and the decisions of this court and full on that subject. The substance of these decisions, as applicable to the case before us, is that each question so certified must contain a distinct proposition of law which this court can answer negatively or affirmatively, and that the whole case cannot be presented by a recital of the evidence and interrogatories so framed as to require this court to decide the whole case on mixed propositions of law and fact. In short, while such a statement of facts must accompany the certificate as to show that the question of law is applicable to the case, the point on which the judges differed must be a distinct question of law, clearly stated.