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jury duty or military duty-the former certainly would not be permitted to him.*

It would seem from the debate, that neither the legislation of Congress respecting expatriation, nor the naturalization treaties which demanded, in the view of all English jurists and publicists, important modifications in the existing legislation, wherever the English common law prevailed, was alluded to, much less was anything said as to the disabilities of the issue of American women married abroad, if not, since the naturalization treaties, of the women themselves, resulting from the laws of New York, which had been rendered more severe by the provisions of the Revised Statutes. It was, therefore, deemed advisable, even at that late period of the session, to attempt to obtain such a modification of these laws as would place an American female citizen married abroad and her descendants, in at least as favorable a position as a male citizen who had made a foreign marriage, and his descendants, which was, indeed, the primary motive for addressing Governor Hoffman, and a project of a law to that effect, as well as one for the general removal of alien disabilities, accompanied the letter to him. In the hope of drawing public attention to the subject, that letter was inserted in one of the principal journals of the city of

* "Every alien who shall hold real estate, in virtue of any of the foregoing provisions shall be subject to duties, assessments, taxes and burthens, as if he were a citizen of this State, but shall be incapable of voting at any election, of being elected or appointed to any office, or of serving on any jury. (New York Statutes at Large, vol. I, p. 669.)

New York. (See New York Evening Post, April 11, 1871.) The many communications which it has elicited from jurists, at home and abroad, and the surprise expressed by those who, owing to foreign intermarriages of members of their families, were interested in the disposition to which their property is exposed at their death, have induced the republication of the paper in its present form, with the pieces justificatives annexed.

The writer trusts that it may not be deemed indelicate on his part to indulge in the expectation that the approbation which has been accorded to his labors in another department of jurisprudence by the highest tribunals of England and America, may induce an inquiry, on the part of those who control the councils of the State, as to the correctness of the preceding views; * and if he should fail to convince them of the

* We refer in preference to the two editions of Lawrence's Wheaton, 1855 and 1863, as they have been submitted to a judicial ordeal. In the case of Lawrence v. Dana, Circuit Court of the United States for Massachusetts District, before Clifford and Lowell, J. J., Clifford, presiding Justice, in pronouncing the opinion of the court, said: "Evidence to show that the notes in the two annotated editions of Wheaton, as prepared by the complainant, involved great research and labor, beyond what appears in those two works, is unnecessary; and it is equally obvious and clear that the results of the research and labor there exhibited could not well have been accomplished by any person other than one of great learning, reading, and experience in such studies and investigations. Such a comprehensive collection of authorities, explanations, and well considered suggestions, is nowhere, in the judgment of the court, to be found in our language, unlessit be in the text and notes of the author of the original work. Uncontradicted as these propositions are, it would be an act of supererogation to add anything further in their support."

No higher commendation could well be accorded to an author's labors than is to be deduced from the existence of such a suit. That a Doctor of Laws, of the first literary institution of the country, should conceive of no surer way to vindicate his claim to his diploma than to appropriate to

expediency of making the changes which the English lawyers have deemed necessary in order to conform

himself our annotations, by publishing an edition, in which, at the risk of exposure to the charges, both of piracy and perjury, his name is substituted to ours, is a compliment paid to our work, of which any publicist might have just reason to be proud. Not to omit any means of establishing a title to the purloined property, Mr. Dana was not content with merely ignoring us in the body of our book, but in his preface it is announced: "This edition contains nothing but the text of Mr. Wheaton, according to his last revision, his notes and the original matter contributed by the editor." Again: "The notes of Mr. Lawrence do not form any part of this edition. It is confined, as has been said, to the text and notes of the author, and the notes of the present editor." (Preface, pp. v-xi, Elements of International Law, by Henry Wheaton, LL D., &c., &c., 8th edition. Edited, with notes, by Richard Henry Dana, Jr., LL.D., Boston, 1866.)

Evading the issue tendered in the preface, the most eminent lawyers of Massachusetts were employed to interpose to our bill technical objections. It was especially maintained that Mr. Lawrence's generous course towards Mr. Wheaton's family, in giving them the profits of all previous editions as well as the honoraries from the French work in Leipzig, had divested him of all title to his own literary property. Foiled in this effort, Mr. Dana was compelled to admit, that so far from his edition being according to the last revision of Mr. Wheaton's text, he had never seen such revised edition, but had printed the book from the editions of Mr. Lawrence, which had been collated with the French one, published subsequent to the last American, in Mr. Wheaton's lifetime. From this edition many pages had been translated and transferred by Mr. Lawrence to his publication. As to the notes in the spurious edition, the accurate scrutiny of Judge Potter, of the Supreme Court of Rhode Island, who acted as expert, having shown that they were essentially taken, with greater or lesser changes of phraseology, from the genuine edition, Mr. Dana could no longer avoid conceding the falsity of the statement in the preface, in all its parts, but was driven to an attempt to palliate the piracy, by avowing that the researches of Mr. Lawrence had been so complete, as to leave no alternative to any future commentator of Wheaton, who was necessarily obliged either to abandon his attempt, or to avail himself of the annotations of his predecessor. Our editions being long out of print, we constantly read in the writers of the present day our annotations with references to Dana, and, to avoid the supposition that we have abandoned our property to piratical intrusion, we think it necessary to avail ourselves of every suitable occasion to assure the public that we are taking every means to render available the judgment of the court in our favor.

their municipal law to international obligations, they will, at least, recommend to the Legislature to go as far as the English act of 1844, and provide that every person born of an American mother (though the naturalization laws over which the State has no control, may not make him an American citizen), shall be "capable of taking real or personal property by devise, purchase, inheritance, or succession."

If from whatever cause alien disabilities in general cannot be removed or relief granted in behalf of the class specially referred to, he would ask that the ancient common law be restored by the repeal of the Revised Statutes in the cases indicated (1 R. S., p. 754, § 22; 2 R. S., p. 58, § 4), the practical operation of which has been to render still more objectionable the anomalies of the New York law. (See page 12, supra.)

Did the professed reforms which we have examined not exist, the devisees and natural heirs, in which category children and their descendants are included, instead of being divested by an arbitrary enactment, which no human power can modify, of their estates in favor of individuals who are neither the objects of the decedent's bounty nor bound to him by any near ties of consanguinity, they would be remitted, in the case of an escheat to the State, by special acts of the Legislature, to the enjoyment of an heritage, their right to which, in the words already quoted from the most recent expositor of English law, "is to be traced to a higher source than mere institutions of civil society."

He trusts that the course of the last year's legislation on the proposed bill will not be an objection to its future consideration. It may not be proper, under ordinary circumstances, for a citizen of one State to question the wisdom of the parliamentary action in another State, but he may be permitted to suggest as an apology for soliciting attention to the subject at a future session, that when nearly two hundred laws presented to a Governor of distinguished intelligence and unimpeachable integrity for his approval, failed to receive the executive sanction, it may not be deemed extraordinary that a measure, which had no other support than its intrinsic merit, should not have passed through the forms of legislation.

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