instead of a concession of the absolute right of inheri tance, it has been supposed, met any defect in the treatymaking power of the federal government, either as it stood, at the time of the Confederation, when it was first inserted, or under the existing Constitution. It is, however, quite evident that if the President and Senate have not power to regulate permanently by treaty the transmission of real estate where aliens are interested they cannot temporarily arrest the legal course of descent. This is not a case in which, according to the common law, the fee can be kept in abeyance, but it must pass at the death of the person in whom it was vested to the heir or devisee competent to take it. If there be no such heir or devisee, it will, without any inquest of office, vest in the State. Moreover, if it were possible for an estate to pass by a treaty temporarily to the alien heir, to be divested, either by a sale or a failure to make one, what authority is to determine when the time prescribed by the treaty for making such sale has expired, or what authority is there to enforce a sale? Is it the Federal or State government that is to interpose? In the case of a failure to comply with the terms of the existing treaties, does the estate go to more remote relatives, who are citizens, and in whom the title would have vested at the death of the party last seised, if there had been no treaty, or does it escheat to the State? In case of the estates rendered defeasable under State laws, the same authority which

creates them has the means for ensuring their termination by appropriate action.

Whatever may be the treaty-making power of the general government, it is only by State legislation that the legal difficulties, occasioned as well by the conflict of jurisdiction in the case of the treaties abolishing the droit d'aubaine, as by the changes in national status effected by the naturalization treaties, can be adjusted. Even in the case of matters wholly within federal cognizance, unless the treaty executes itself, however binding it may be on the national faith, the action of Congress is necessary to carry it into effect. The most earnest advocate of the treaty-making power of the federal government has never contended that Congress could legislate about the succession or descent of property in the States. Applying the same rule to matters belonging to the internal legislation of the States, if the President and Senate can make a treaty with foreign powers about them, it is difficult to perceive how State laws, providing the details for their operation, can be dispensed with. Assuredly no friend of State rights, no opponent of centralization would desire, that the absence of appropriate State legislation should invite further usurpation on the part of the federal government, and it is respectfully submitted that all excuse for interference can only be effectually avoided by the removal of alien disabilities by the States. For the manner of doing this, the recent English statute, the result of the investigation of the ablest jurists of that country, from which

we derive our system of laws, affords a safe precedent. Such a course would not only abolish the particular anomaly to which I have solicited your attention— the disabilities of American women married abroadbut would assimilate the laws of New York to the general legislation of the civilized world.

It is not necessary for me to remind your Excellency of the very different state of things, which now exists everywhere, compared with the condition of the world when the common law rule of descents came into existence, and the intercourse between nations was confined to purposes of trade. I will not consider how far the restriction on the natural course of descents, and the superior importance attached to real property, were connected with the feudal system-a system utterly at variance with institutions which have wholly abrogated the rule of primogeniture and the distinction between males and females in respect to inheritance; but I may refer to the fact that steam and electricity, by annihilating space, have brought the whole civilized world into intimate social relations, resulting, to a greater or less extent, in the intermarriage of persons of different nationalities.

It is a principle of private international law, to which in England and the United States no other conditions apply, that a marriage, if valid in the country where it is celebrated, is valid everywhere, and unless valid there, it is valid nowhere. The laws of the dif ferent countries of Europe differ materially, in their

numerous preliminary requirements, from the simple principle of the old common law of Christendom, as it prevailed before the Council of Trent, and which constitutes the rule in the States of the American Union. It being understood that I had directed my attention to the comparative legislation of marriage and cognate subjects; my advice, always gratuitously rendered, was frequently invoked, during my late residence abroad, when the one or other of the parties about to be married was an American, respecting the measures proper to be pursued to make the proceedings regular, and, as the law of France and of other continental States adopted, in the absence of a nuptial contract, the rule of the community of goods, it was frequently expedient to regulate, in advance, the pecuniary relations of the parties, and in these cases, the law of the State to which the Amer ican might belong became an essential matter in the adjustment of the contract.*

It was often with no little astonishment that a father, who had invested all his property in real estate in New York, about to marry his daughter to an alien, learned what foreign lawyers could not comprehend,

* An exposition of the law of the different countries of Europe and America, as to what is required to constitute a valid marriage, will be found in a treatise originally published in the "Revue de Droit International," by the writer of this letter, entitled "Etude de Législation comparée et de Droit international sur le Mariage," Gand, 1870. The London Law Magazine, vol. 29, pp. 90–114, March, 1870, contains, under the title of “The marriage laws of various countries, as affecting the property of married women," a speech, by the Author, at the Congress of the Social Science Association, held at Bristol, England, October, 1869. It is reprinted as Appendix B.

that the land, in her own country, which he had set apart as her patrimony, even if she could legally hold it herself, could not pass to her children, whatever might be the provisions of the father's will; but would, at her death, go to collateral relatives, and that, in order to ensure anything to his grandchildren, it must be converted, possibly at a great sacrifice, into money, and at all events exposed to all the contingencies arising from investments depending on the judgment and good faith of trustees, whose interests would not necessarily be identical with those of the cestui que trust.

Believing that a fair representation of the state of the existing law could scarcely fail to induce a modification of it; moreover, actuated by a common interest with that of your constituents, to whom I have referred, I promised to do whatever depended on me to place our daughters married abroad on an equality before the law with their brothers and sisters, wherever they may reside. This must be my apology, independently of showing the necessity of conforming the general law of real estate to the late conventional arrangements, for the extent of this intrusion.

I am, dear Sir, your Excellency's obedient servant,

W. B. LAWRENCE.