shall not do certain things, this declaration operates not only upon the thirteen original States, but also upon all who subsequently become such; and when Congress places certain restrictions upon the powers of a territorial legislature, such restrictions cease to operate the moment such territory is admitted as a State. By parity of reasoning a country ceases to be foreign the instant it becomes domestic. So, too, if Congress saw fit to cede one of its newly acquired territories (even assuming that it had the right to do so) to a foreign power, there could be no doubt that from the day of such cession and the delivery of possession, such territory would become a foreign country, and be reinstated as such under the tariff laws. Certainly no act of Congress would be necessary in such case to declare that the laws of the United States had ceased to apply to it.

The theory that a country remains foreign with respect to the tariff laws until Congress has acted by embracing it within the Customs Union, presupposes that a country may be domestic for one purpose and foreign for another. It may undoubtedly become necessary for the adequate administration of a domestic. territory to pass a special act providing the proper machinery and officers, as the President would have no authority, except under the war power, to administer it himself; but no act is necessary to make it domestic territory if once it has been ceded to the United States. We express no opinion as to whether Congress is bound to appropriate the money to pay for it. This has been much discussed by writers upon constitutional law, but it is not necessary to consider it in this case, as Congress made prompt appropriation of the money stipulated in the treaty. This theory also presupposes that territory may be held indefinitely by the United States; that it may be treated in every particular, except for tariff purposes, as domestic territory; that laws may be enacted and enforced by officers of the United States sent there for that purpose; that insurrections may be suppressed, wars carried on, revenues collected, taxes imposed; in short, that everything may be done which a government can do within its own boundaries, and yet that the territory may still remain a foreign country. That this state of things may continue for years, for a century even, but that until Congress enacts otherwise, it still remains a foreign country. To hold that this can be done as matter of law we deem to be pure judicial legislation. We find no warrant for it in the Constitution or in the powers conferred upon this court. It is true the non

action of Congress may occasion a temporary inconvenience; but it does not follow that courts of justice are authorized to remedy it by inverting the ordinary meaning of words.

If an act of Congress be necessary to convert a foreign country into domestic territory, the question at once suggests itself, what is the character of the legislation demanded for this purpose? Will an act appropriating money for its purchase be sufficient? Apparently not. Will an act appropriating the duties collected upon imports to and from such country for the benefit of its government be sufficient? Apparently not. Will acts making appropriations for its postal service, for the establishment of lighthouses, for the maintenance of quarantine stations, for erecting public buildings, have that effect? Will an act establishing a complete local government, but with the reservation of a right to collect duties upon commerce, be adequate for that purpose? None of these, nor all together, will be sufficient, if the contention of the Government be sound, since acts embracing all these provisions have been passed in connection with Porto Rico, and it is insisted that it is still a foreign country within the meaning of the tariff laws. We are unable to acquiesce in this assumption that a territory may be at the same time both foreign and domestic.

We are therefore of opinion that at the time these duties were levied Porto Rico was not a foreign country within the meaning of the tariff laws but a territory of the United States, that the duties were illegally exacted and that the plaintiffs are entitled to recover them back.

The judgment of the Circuit Court for the Southern District of New York is therefore reversed and the case remanded to that court for further proceedings in consonance with this opinion. MR. JUSTICE MCKENNA, (with whom concurred MR. JUSTICE SHIRAS and MR. JUSTICE WHITE,) dissenting.

NOTE.-Cession as a means of transferring jurisdiction from one state to another may be voluntary, as in the case of a sale or exchange of territories, or it may be involuntary, as in the case of the surrender of territories in consequence of defeat in war or a threat of use of force. In the history of the United States the purchase of Louisiana from France in 1803, of Florida from Spain in 1819, of Alaska from Russia in 1867 and of the Danish West Indies from Denmark in 1916 are examples of the former, while the forcible taking of California from Mexico in 1848 and of Porto Rico and the Philippines from Spain in 1898 are examples of the latter. The voluntary union of one country with another, such as the union of Texas and

Hawaii with the United States, may also be described as a cession. Relinquishment should be distinguished from cession, since the former sovereign merely withdraws its jurisdiction without naming a grantee. Thus Spain relinquished its sovereignty over Cuba in 1898. The treaty of Versailles contains numerous clauses (conveniently arranged in Hyde, I, 178 note) in which Germany renounces its sovereignty over various territories in favor of a particular state or group of states. Such a renunciation has all the marks of a cession.

Cessions are usually effected by formal treaties which not only delimit the ceded territory, but also provide for the disposition of the public property therein and often contain stipulations as to the civil status of the inhabitants. A cession may be also effected by a mere offer and acceptance, as was done when Texas and Hawaii were annexed to the United States. Without a treaty or other formal act the long-continued occupation of neutral territory by the enemy in time of peace with the concurrence of the neutral sovereign may be construed as evidence that the occupation was the result of cession. The Bolleta (1809), Edwards, 171. See Phillipson, The Termination of War and Treaties of Peace; Hyde, I, 177; Bonfils (Fauchille), sec. 567; Moore, Digest, I, 273.

As the acquisition of jurisdiction, whether by formal cession or otherwise, is an act of state, its terms rest in the discretion of the annexing government, and more often than not the transaction presents no justiciable question. Among the many decisions to this effect are Nabob of the Carnatic v. East India Co. (1791), 1 Ves. Jr. 371, 2 Ves. Jr. 55; Elphinstone v. Bedreechund (1830), 1 Knapp, P. C. 316; Secretary of State in Council of India v. Kamachee Boye Sahaba (1859), 7 Moore, Ind. App. 476; Doss v. Secretary of State for India (1875), L. R. 19 Eq. 509; Rustomjee v. The Queen, (1876), 1 Q. B. D. 487, 2 Q. B. D. 69; Cook v. Sprigg (1899), L. R. [1899] A. C. 572; West Rand Central Gold Mining Co., Ltd., v. The King (1905), L. R. [1905] 2 K. B. 391.

CHAPTER VIII.

EFFECTS OF THE TRANSFER OF JURISDICTION.

SECTION 1. EFFECT ON PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LAW.

THE ADVOCATE-GENERAL OF BENGAL v. RANEE SURNOMOYE DOSSEE.

JUDICIAL COMMITTEE OF THE PRIVY COUNCIL OF GREAT BRITAIN. 1863. 2 Moore, Privy Council (N. S.), 22.

On appeal from the Supreme Court at Calcutta.

The question in this case was whether the interest of a Hindoo, a British subject, in a fund which was standing to the credit of an account in a cause in the Supreme Court at Calcutta, had been forfeited to the Crown, by reason of his having committed suicide in Calcutta, and found felo de se by a coroner's jury there.

The Right Hon. LORD KINGSDOWN: The question in this case arises on the claim of the Crown to a portion of the personal estate of Rajah Kistonauth Roy, who destroyed himself in Calcutta on the 31st of October, 1844, and was found by inquisition to have been felo de se. He was a Hindoo both by

birth and religion.

At what time then, and in what manner, did the forfeiture attached by the law of England to the personal property of persons committing suicide in that country, become extended to a Hindoo committing the same act in Calcutta?

The sum of the Appellant's argument was this:-that the English Criminal law was applicable to Natives as well as Europeans within Calcutta, at the time when the death of the Rajah took place, and the sovereignty of the English Crown was at that time established; that the English settlers when they first went out to the East Indies in the reign of Queen Eliza

beth took with them the whole law of England, both Civil and Criminal, unless so far as it was inapplicable to them in their new condition; that the law of felo de se was a part of the Criminal law of England which was not inapplicable to them in their new condition, and that it, therefore, became part of the law of the country.

Where Englishmen establish themselves in an uninhabited or barbarous country, they carry with them not only the laws, but the sovereignty of their own State; and those who live amongst them and become members of their community become also partakers of, and subject to the same laws.

But this was not the nature of the first settlement made in India-it was a settlement made by a few foreigners for the purpose of trade in a very populous and highly civilized country, under the government of a powerful Mahomedan ruler, with whose sovereignty the English Crown never attempted nor pretended to interfere for some centuries afterwards.

If the settlement had been made in a Christian country of Europe, the settlers would have become subject to the laws of the country in which they settled. It is true that in India they retained their own laws for their own government within the Factories, which they were permitted by the ruling powers of India to establish; but this was not on the ground of general international law, or because the Crown of England or the laws of England had any proper authority in India, but upon the principles explained by Lord Stowell in a very celebrated and beautiful passage of his judgment in the case of "The Indian Chief" (3 Rob. Adm. Rep. 28).

The laws and usages of Eastern countries where Christianity does not prevail are so at variance with all the principles, feelings, and habits of European Christians that they have usually been allowed by the indulgence or weakness of the Potentates. of those countries to retain the use of their own laws, and their Factories have for many purposes been treated as part of the territory of the Sovereign from whose dominions they come. But the permission to use their own laws by European settlers does not extend those laws to Natives within the same limits, who remain to all intents and purposes subjects of their own Sovereign, and to whom European laws and usages are as little. suited as the laws of the Mahometans and Hindoos are suited to Europeans. These principles are too clear to require any