as has been shown in the preceding chapters, the power of limitting, in the first instance, and, finally, of prohibiting the importation of chattel slaves from abroad was claimed by the several colonial legislatures, each for its own jurisdiction. The power to regulate the introduction by land, or from the other colonies, of Africans and Indians held in servitude appears to have always been left to their discretion, without controversy.

§ 244. The condition of the African or Indian, when once settled within a colonial jurisdiction, either by becoming a free domiciled inhabitant, or the property of a resident, appears to have always been exclusively within the prerogative of the local sovereignty. It would seem, from the personal distinction which constantly obtained in the application of municipal (internal) laws in the American colonies, that there was no law,affecting the condition of the African or Indian domiciled subject, having like national foundation and extent with the common law, applied to the white colonist. For while the legal condition of the African or Indian inhabitant, in any particular jurisdiction, might vary therein, from chattel slavery-the negation of all legal rights-to the possession of all individual and relative rights of a private person known to the common law of England, that condition rested, apparently, only on the local law of that jurisdiction, and was not supported therein by a law of the national power, having national extent and recognition as a law of the national or imperial jurisdiction. And it has been shown that even the terms of those royal charters which guaranteed to the colonists, generally, and their descendants, the rights of subjects of English birth, must be interpreted with reference to this limitation existing in the law of nations, or universal jurisprudence, then received as an authoritative exposition of natural reason and applied in municipal and international law,' and that therefore the condition of Indians and negroes, born within the colonial jurisdictions, was not determined by that personal law of privilege, derived from the common law of England, which had, for whites or European subjects, a national extent. What

Ante, § 202.

ever support the condition of the African or Indian might have in the sovereignty held by the imperial government, while considered an alien to the British empire,-when he became a domiciled subject, his relations and rights were determined only by the law of the particular district in which he might be found;-by the municipal (internal) law thereof, if therein domiciled, and by the international law as received and applied in that jurisdiction by the local sovereignty, if domiciled in some other part of the empire: each particular jurisdiction being, in respect to aliens of these races, independent in its interpretation of private international law; except so far as that law concerned relations of foreign commerce and intercourse. And there was no law, resting on the national authority and having national extent, by which, as a personal law, the condition of such persons domiciled in some one particular jurisdiction could be determined throughout the empire, independently of the local authority of each several jurisdiction; not even if, while being such alien in respect to such several jurisdiction, he were claimed by other persons as an object of property. Because, as before shown, it was only in the relations of foreign commerce that that condition received any support from the imperial power. If claimed as property of a master, domiciled in some other division of the empire, who by the law having national extent enjoyed the individual or absolute right of private property, still his property in the African or Indian slave would not rest upon such national law, unless the common law of England could be taken, at the time, to admit that kind of property or to include the doctrines of the historical law of nations (jus gentium) as known at the first introduction of slaves into America,1

§ 245. It has been shown in the fourth chapter, that—if at ⚫ any period the doctrines of the historical law of nations, in respect to chattel slavery, had had force in England itself, as part of the common law, either those principles were applied to heathen negroes or Indians only while alien, and before becoming Christianized, and, on becoming domiciled inhabitants and

1Compare ante, § 138.

baptized, their legal condition became determined by some law originating in the local juridical power, some jus proprium; or else, that the law of nations must itself be taken to have changed in the judicial recognition of English courts, during the colonial period; and, that in England, towards the close of that period, the law which had attributed the possession of individual rights and a capacity for relative rights to all persons of the white or European race, irrespectively of their national domicil, was taken to extend to all natural persons of whatever race. The question of the recognition or non-recognition, in England, of such a doctrine, in the application of private international law, is to be considered in the next two chapters. It will here be assumed that the historical facts stated in the fourth chapter, the course of colonial legislation which has been shown in the sixth, together with the judicial authorities which will be set forth in the next chapter, indicate that such a change in the law of nations did take place at some period prior to the American Revolution; and that, whenever it may have occurred, it must be taken to have modified the common law of England in its national extent throughout the empire. So that, regarded as the personal law supporting the liberties or privileges of the master, it did not, or at least at a point of time shortly before the Revolution, did not support in any one part of the empire the slavery of any Indian or African domiciled in another part: not even if it is to be admitted that, while the African slave trade continued to be sanctioned by the British government, the title to right of ownership in heathen Africans, when imported by the traders, rested on common law, or the "law merchant."

§ 246. So, on the other hand, although the condition of a person of the African or Indian race, domiciled in any one jurisdiction of the Empire, might, under the local law of that jurisdiction, consist in rights of the same legal nature as those which characterized the condition of an inhabitant of the same

1 This assumption is made here, it is to be observed, in describing the character or authority (as being either national or local) of the law upon which the question of the continuance of the relation of master and slave beyond the place of their domicil would depend. The further proof can only be given by an analysis of the judicial decisions here referred to.

jurisdiction who was of English or European race, those rights were the result of a law confined in its territorial extent to the jurisdiction, and not of a law having national extent, and therefore their support in any other part of the empire would depend upon the private international law, as received and applied therein by the local source of power.

§ 247. If the bondage of indentured white servants or the redemptioners, was a relation which could not exist in England itself, and was created by a law having special reference to the colonies, as parts of the empire in which it was to be maintained, it was still a condition which originated under the imperial or national source of law. At least the law under which such persons were sent out in bondage, from England to America, must be taken to have had national jurisdiction to that extent. And it appears to have been recognized as such by the reception of those persons into all the various colonies, under the obligations originally created in the mother country. But, from the power assumed by the several colonial legislatures over the condition of this class of persons, when once incorporated into the resident population of any colony, the particular rights and obligations attending their servile condition and the period of their continuance in servitude, seem to have rested in each colony upon the local law alone. If the bondage of this class of persons, when domiciled in the colonies, did thus lose the support of statutes resting on the imperial authority, and if also the right of the master to the services of such bondsman was not supported by the common law having national extent, the international recognition of this condition in such persons, when found in any other jurisdiction of the empire than that in which they were domiciled, would depend only upon the will of the local authority in that particular jurisdiction, and the view held by it of the true doctrine of private international law (that is, what rules ought to be applied as private international law,) relative to such a condition of private persons. The only law to determine the condition of this class of aliens in the several parts of the empire, at least when they were recognized as having a domicil in some other one of the colonies, would therefore be such as in its

authority would be identified with the local municipal law thereof, and be derived from the local power; though it would be international law from the alien character of the persons to whom it should be applied; a law having the same character as that by which the condition of the African or Indian, domiciled in some one colony, would be determined in any other particular jurisdiction of the empire in which he might be found, i. e. municipal and local law in its authority; international by its application to those persons thus regarded as alien in respect to that jurisdiction.

§ 248. The law therefore which applied in any one of the several jurisdictions of the British empire, as private international law to these two descriptions of persons, viz.: indentured white servants and Africans or Indians having a domicil in some other one of the colonies must be ascertained in the same manner as if those jurisdictions severally constituted independent national jurisdictions, in all respects.

§ 249. There existed also, in the several jurisdictions of the British Empire, another class of persons who by law were obliged to render service to private masters, viz.: minor apprentices; and in case of the removal of such apprentices from the place of their domicil, or in case of their absconding and being found in some jurisdiction other than that in which their obligations first existed, the question of the continuation of the rights and obligations of the parties to the relation would resemble those which in the case of slaves and indentured servants in like circumstances, would be decided by private international law, as above distinguished from the common law having national extent.

But, though the condition of a minor apprentice was created by indenture, and was similar in its temporal limitation and some other incidents to that of the so-called redemptioners," it had a totally different foundation. The relation of master and apprentice was a continuation of, or substitute for, that of parent and child, or that of guardian and ward. The power of the master was a delegation of the patria potestas, and with the right to service was associated a personal duty in respect to the apprentice, which was not recognized in the case of the in