one country or state, (in the silence of the local legislation or customary law on that point,) to adopt them, as being presump tively accordant with the legislative will of the nation or state whose juridical authority they exercise.' But it appears to have been difficult, even by such an a posteriori or inductive method, to discover any harmonious and consistent system of rules applicable in such cases."

The determination of the second class of relations is simpler, because the relations are first taken to be in existence under the legislative action of one state or nation, or one possessor of sovereign power, and the question is of their continuance or realization under the legislative and juridical power of another.

§ 73. Since status or personal condition, as defined in the first chapter, consists principally in the possession of individual rights, and the relations of which it is an incident do not imply the exercise of rights relative to specific things, it must always be at any one time under the legislative power of some one state; that is, the state within whose actual territorial jurisdiction the natural person may be found, whose status or personal condition is to be determined. So far, therefore, as it may become a topic of private international law, it appears as an incident of the relations of the second class above described. That is to say, the status of a natural person can become a question of private international law, only when such person is supposed to have had a status or personal condition in relations created under some foreign law, which relations being regarded as existing or having existed under the foreign law-the question is of their realization, actualization, or continuance.

Since the inquiries to be pursued in the following pages will be limited to questions connected with the law of status or condition, private international law will in this chapter be further considered only as it may determine relations of the second of the two classes above described.

'The principle-locus regit actum, when applied to this class of cases, may however be cited as an example. And compare Savigny: Heut. R. R., B. 3, c. i, § 348. The eighth volume of this work of Savigny relates exclusively to the conflict of laws.

Saul vs. His Creditors, 17, Martin's Rep. Louisiana, 569, by the court: "We know of no matter in jurisprudence so unsettled, or none that should more teach men distrust of their own opinions, and charity for those of others."

874. Although the question before the tribunal determining the status, or condition of private persons under international law, regards the maintenance of legal relations of persons, or of correlative rights and duties of persons, in respect to persons and things included under a certain national jurisdiction, those relations, or those rights and obligations, are not, by the very implication of the third maxim, to be regarded as entirely dependent, or not so in the first instance, upon that municipal (internal) law which is the territorial law, or local law, of that jurisdiction in which those persons and things are found. Whenever a question is made of the determination, under private international law, of rights and duties incident to the class of relations now under consideration, a recognition of private persons as aliens, in respect either of birth or of domicil, or at least as having been anteriorly subject to some other jurisdiction, is pre-supposed; and the private international law (i. e., that part of the national law of the jurisdiction which is to determine that question,) is applied as a personal law,—a law attaching to certain persons in virtue of their anterior subjection to a foreign jurisdiction, irrespective of the general territorial operation of that municipal (internal) law of the forum to which they are, or have been, alien in a greater or less degree, or under a greater or less variety of circumstances, (ante, § 53.)

It was stated in the first chapter, that the contrasted relations (conditions) of alien and native subjects are necessary or axiomatic ideas in international law, being stated in those definitions which form the first portion of international law (public and private) according to the division there given. But the fact of mere subjection, independently of place of birth, to different jurisdictions, is that upon which the distinction of an international law-being a rule determining the relations of private persons, and operating as part of the municipal (national) law of some one state, or nation-is founded. It being possible that within the jurisdiction of any particular state persons may be present who have been subject to the territorial jurisdiction of another, the laws of the first may be conceived of as making no distinction between them and others in consequence of that fact. But the laws of a state are not necessarily nor usually

thus equally operative. All within a national jurisdiction are equally subject to the supreme power of the state, but the laws therein (i. e., the national law,) may apply differently to natives, and to those originally coming from another national jurisdiction. This difference in the application of the national law may be combined with the recognition of the rights and obligations of private persons in relations caused by a foreign law to which they have been previously subject; and there may be a difference in the degree of this recognition, and in the extent of the local, or territorial law of the forum to persons who are not native, by discriminating between them in respect to their being either permanent and domiciled, or transient and temporary subjects. When the previous actual, or territorial subjection of certain private persons to a foreign law is judicially recognized in the forum of jurisdiction, and the question is made of the realization or continuance therein of rights and obligations of those persons in relations existing under that foreign law, then the local or national law operates as private international law. For though this distinction between persons is made under some municipal (national) law-i. e., some law known as the positive law of some one nation, or state-that law, being differently applied to persons thus discriminated, or distinguished,—may be denominated international, because it then determines the operation of the municipal (national) laws of different countries, or states. In these cases, the relations of certain persons are recognized simply as facts existing by the operation of a foreign law; but the validity of the rights and obligations included in them is determined solely by the local juridical authority. And so far as the tribunals of the forum are concerned, the relations existing under the foreign law are to be brought to their judicial cognizance by proof, like other facts: they are not legal effects which the tribunal is bound independently to take notice of."

§ 75. When persons and things pass from one national jurisdiction into another, it is impossible, in the nature of things, that all the relations in which they were the subjects, or objects of rights and duties under the law of their original jurisdiction,

1 Fœlix: Dr. Int. Pr., § 18. Story: Conf. L., § 637, and the cases cited.

should exist under the jurisdiction to which they have been removed; because all the persons and things which were with them the subjects, or objects of corresponding rights, or duties, in those relations, are not transferred with them to the new jurisdiction. It is not, therefore, supposable, when persons thus pass from one jurisdiction into another, that all their rights and obligations, existing under the law of the first jurisdiction, should be maintained by the law of the second. That class of rights of persons, which in the first chapter were called absolute, or individual rights, may (since they exist in a relation of individual persons to the whole community, without distinction of specific individuals in it, and as rights of action have no determinate, or special objects,) continue to be, for the subjects of them, the same in effect; though the objects may be different, and the supreme power sustaining them is a different political personality. But those rights (the right to private property, or of private property, for instance,) so far as they are relative to specific persons and things, and those rights which were in the same chapter called relative, because arising under relations of persons to other determinate persons, cannot, it is plain, subsist under the law of the new jurisdiction unless the persons and things which are the relative subjects and objects of those rights are transferred to the new jurisdiction. But it is plain that so far as the action implied in any legal relation continues to be physically possible, notwithstanding a change of place on the part of the persons between whom, or the persons and things in respect to whom, or to which that relation has once subsisted, any of the rights of persons arising out of a relation constituted by the law of one jurisdiction, may be allowed to retain the character of a legal right, under the sovereign authority of the new jurisdiction. Whenever this is the case, the supreme national authority, having independent power in a specified territory, adopts the law of another, or allows it to take effect therein as a law of foreign origin; though its authority as law, in the strict sense, must always in that jurisdiction depend on the local sovereignty.

§ 76. Since, then, this allowance, or disallowance, depends on the same authority as the municipal (internal) law, it must

be ascertained in the same manner as the n unicipal (internal) law, resting on that authority, is ascertained. According to the view given in the first chapter of the manner in which the will of the supreme authority in states becomes expressed or assumes the form of law, that will may be ascertained either-1; from the direct expression of the will of the state in positive legislation, (esto;) or, 2; from an interpretation of natural reason by tribunals appointed by the state, (videtur.) If the sovereign or supreme power has expressed its will by legislative enactment or action having that effect, that expression is equally authori tative and controlling in this case as in the case of relations falling under municipal law strictly so called, (the internal law.) If no such expression exists, the tribunal must make this allowance or disallowance by reverting to the law of natural reason, as it reverts to the same for the presumed legislative will of the sovereign in enforcing the municipal or internal law. And, however autonomic or independent in its estimate of natural reason, as bearing on the relations of nations to each other, or of its own obligations (under that international law, which, as a law binding on states, is a law in the imperfect sense only,) the possessor of supreme legislative power, or the national sovereignty of any state may be when allowing or repudiating the effects of foreign laws, the judicial tribunals of any nation, at the present day, in pronouncing a judgment upon the same point, can refer only, either, as has just been said, to the positive legislation of the sovereign, or to standards of natural reason which have, by anterior judicial recognition and the implied sanction of the sovereign power whose will they execute, acquired the authority of law. These are-judgments of antecedent tribunals under the same national authority in like international cases; customs which have existed under that authority; accepted expositions of law by private persons; and, in cases where these domestic precedents do not furnish a criterion applicable to the case in question, the laws, usages, and judgments of other nations, in respect to the international recognition of the laws of foreign states, may be referred to, on the same principle by which such tribunals refer to the municipal (national) laws of other nations for an exposition of natural reason to be applied