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This will do away with the acquisition of title | fully provides for protection in all interests by adverse possession. Squatters are given no that cannot be brought forward within five quarters under the act. No new offices are years, such as contingent remainders, revercreated if we except examiners of titles, who sionary interests, and the like. are deputies of the registrar. The recorder is ex officio registrar of titles in his county, and the offices of the recorder and registrar are kept together. No person is compelled to register his title, but may do so at his option. A title once registered must continue under the system.

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"One of the prominent features of the act, which it is thought will protect the rights of infants, is that there can be no dealings with the real estate of the deceased person till the heirship is proved in the probate court, and the court has found the rights of the several heirs or devisees and has entered an order for the

transfer of the title to them. On the filing of that order with the registrar, and the surrender of the certificate of title, he registers the title in the heirs or devisees pursuant to the order. If any interested party is dissatisfied with the order of the probate court, he can appeal, but when the title is once registered pursuant to the order of the court that is final, and anyone who wishes to deal with the property can thereafter do so safely. The policy of the act may be likened to that with reference to negotiable instruments, which enables one to deal in them with safety so far as latent equities are concerned, and with the least expense or delay."

Part of the argument made by William D. Guthrie, Esq., on the rehearing of the income tax cases is printed in the American Lawyer and is so scholarly and affective that we publish it. Mr. Guthrie said in part:

The most difficult questions which the act has to deal with, are those pertaining to first registration-the effect to be given the first certificate of title. In Australia, England, Prussia, Canada, etc., where the system is in operation, there is no difficulty about giving the certificate conclusive effect immediately upon its being granted, but in this country that cannot be done. The Constitution of the United States, and of the several States, render it impossible to divest one of his interest in property except by due process of law, and the act does not attempt to violate this principle. The registrar is not made a judicial officer, and the granting of the certificate of title is not a judicial act. The certificate is not by its own vigor conclusive. By the terms of the act, the registration of this certificate starts the running of the statute of limitations contained in the act. It is this statute of limitations running upon this matter of record, which concludes adverse claims, and not the finding of the registrar. The time given in which one may claim adversely to the registered certificate is five years. "In other words, no one can gainsay a certificate who does not come forward with his claim within five years after the first certificate is registered. This limitation cuts off all claims of every nature, whether in favor of infants, lunatics, or other persons. But the law provides for an indemnity fund, out of which anybody, whose interest is cut off by this limitation or by any mistake or wrong of the registrar or anybody else, may obtain the value of such interest. The registration becomes effective at once as to all persons dealing with the land after it is bought under the act. It is only those who may possibly have an interest adverse to the registered title who have the five | eignty of the union is the taxing power; and when years to bring forward their claims. The act we discuss it, we enter the realm of national

May it please the court: No one could be indifferent to the responsibility of opening this argument, nor fail to be almost awed by the consciousness of the great importance, to the whole people, of the questions about to be discussed. It must be a subject of regret that the generosity of Mr. Seward has prompted him to push his junior forward when he would, so much more satisfactorily, have presented the results of his scholarly research. So, too, of our associates, Gen. Bristow and Mr. Wilcox. We cannot consider the merits of this controversy or seek for the true interpretation of the words " direct taxes" found in the Constitution of the United States without realizing how intimately connected and interwoven are the science of government and the principles of taxation. The most essential attribute of the sover

statesmanship. As civilization is but the art of governing the peoples of the earth, so political thought and activity constitute one of the supreme interests of man. History, philosophy, ethics, the nobler truths of religion itself, in a word, all the highest thoughts of mankind, become mere guides and ministrants to the service of politics in its grandest signification. Each new day has needs and difficulties of its own; new emergencies constantly arise incident to new modes of thought and new ways of life. The problems of to-day require for their solution that intellectual integrity and moral courage which are ever so much rarer and nobler than even the loyalty and bravery of the battlefield.

The Constitution is the political creed as well as the embodiment of the conscience of the nation; and as this court shall preserve it intact, according to its spirit and its letter, or permit error to affront and darken its light, so will our future be progress or decline, happiness or misery, glory or shame.

But, if your honors please, we felt that a great constitutional controversy, involving questions of vital and transcendant interest to the whole country ought not to be permitted to resolve itself into a rivalry of shrewdness or a problem of tactics. Advocates at this bar, inspired by its traditions, we could not for a moment imagine ourselves released from the responsibility and obligation of patriotism. According to our conception of duty, it was incumbent upon us, as well as upon our adversaries, to bring about a speedy determination of these important questions, to put an end, if possible, to litigation, in the interest of the republic itself, to lay the facts before your Honors as fairly and as clearly as we could, leaving you to analyze their significance and to adjudge the truth.

We signally fail in making our motives clear if we create the impression that we are seeking the vain and empty satisfaction of a personal triumph, or desire the worthless honor of success in the obscurity of doubt, through the lottery of health, or by accident or technicality.

If your Honors please, we are not challeng ing the power of Congress to reach by direct taxes all the real and personal property of the country, but we insist that the procedure and method of the assessment and levy of this tax are unconstitutional. Doubt as to the method in which Federal taxes should be laid ought to be removed at the earliest opportunity. Months were about to elapse before the Court would again convene. We contemplated that in these days, when events follow each other with such startling rapidity, an emergency might suddenly arise requiring the prompt and decisive exercise of the taxing power of the Federal Government; and that as matters now stood, Congress might be embarrassed or hampered by the suggestion that there was doubt, not as to the power, but as to the method of laying taxes; not as to the power of Congress to reach personal property - all the personal property of the country but as to the method in which Congress should tax it. There were also questions unanswered as to whether or not the Constitu

In presenting our petition for a rehearing, we anticipated and faced the censure and criticism it invited on the part of many who were opposed to the enforcement of the income tax provisions of the law of August 28, 1894. According to ordinary methods, and practice, it was obviously inexpedient to risk reopening questions already decided in our favor. The mandate of the court was about to issue upon an opinion which, the Government would be compelled to conclude, logically excluded from the operation of this particular law, because not apportioned, the tax upon all the real estate of the country as well as its invested personal property. Yet many questions were left still undetermined, probably because not adequately presented, although unlimited time was allotted. It was certain that the tax would be paid by all under protest, or the collection of it contested in the courts. The Department of Justice would be overwhelmed with litigation. Nor were suggestions wanting that the decision of any circuit judge in our favor might be affirmed by a divided court. Even when we did file our petition, no aid was furnished by | tion required equality in taxes; as to whether the Government, but simply the intimation that it a rehearing became inevitable, then and then only it would ask to be heard anew on the questions already definitely decided.

or not the Constitution permitted Congress to discriminate in favor of individuals and partnerships and against corporations; and, above all, as to whether or not Congress could arbi

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trarily exempt from taxation certain classes of favored corporations holding vast accumulations of real and personal property.

We thought, therefore, that there ought to be a rehearing at the earliest opportunity, not merely for our clients' sake, but for the sake of the Government, for the sake of the court, for the sake of the people. The decision in these cases will settle one of the most important constitutional questions ever passed upon in this court. The rule announced should unfold a standard of truth as to the interpretation of our organic law, not for a party and a day, but for all parties and all times, thus meriting the obedience and respect of men. We took it upon ourselves, so far as it lay in our power, to see to it that the decision of this court, as soon as it was delivered, should not be impaired or nullified or undermined by the suggestion, in court or out of court, that the questions decided had not been fully argued, or that the Government had not been prepared, or that its representatives had not had the fullest opportunity to be heard.

We, therefore, invite, here and at this time, reinvestigation and reargument upon all points. Let us have every view, every suggestion, every historical fact, every argument, tending in any way, even in the slighest degree, to meet our contention and to convince the court that it has misconveived the true purpose and intention of the framers of the Constitution and of the people who voted to adopt it. Our adversaries need have no misgivings and no apprehensions. The courage and patriotism of the opinions which have thrilled us with confident hope in the living strength of our institutions, will not hesitate to confess and correct error, if any can be shown.

If your Honors please, no statute and no decision inconsistent with the Constitution can be allowed to stand. A century of error should not overrule the Constitution. The people are not to be deprived by erroneous precedents of inherited rights, imbedded in the Constitution. Those rights may slumber, but, nevertheless, they live and breathe. Where would we be to-day if the rule of precedent had controlled our forefathers? Is the Constitution to be enslaved by any such technical doctrine as stare decisis and thus manacled with parchment

chains? When Franklin stood at the bar of the English Commons ought he to have been satisfied to abandon the claims of the colonists be

cause the school of Mansfield, Thurlow, Eldon and Boston-born Copley could have demonstrated to him that precedent upon precedent fully sustained the right and power of Parliament to tax the colonists without giving them representation?

The rule of precedent and stare decisis presupposes error, and closes the door on reason and on truth. The most technical work in the common law, Fearne on Contingent Reminders, is cited to sustain the claim that an erroneous interpretation of the Constitution must be perpetuated. We can answer in the language of our great historian: "Woe hangs over the land where the absolute principles of private rights are applied to questions of public law, and the effort is made to bar the progress of the undying race by the despotic rules which ascertain the property of evanescent mortals."

A person who signs an instrument without reading it, when he can read, cannot, in the absence of fraud, deceit or misrepresentation, avoid the effect of his signature, because not informed of the contents of the instrument. The same rule would apply to one who cannot read, if he neglects to have it read, or to inquire as to its contents. This well-settled rule is based upon the sufficient reason that in such case ignorance of the contents of instruments is attributable to the party's own negligence. But the rule is otherwise, where the execution of an instrument is obtained by a misrepresentation of its contents; where the party signed a paper he did not know he was signing, and did not really intend to sign. It is immaterial, in the latter aspect of the case, that the party signing had an opportunity to read the paper, for he may have been prevented from doing so by the very fact that he trusted to the truth of the representation made by the other party with whom he was dealing.

This is the clear-cut manner in which the Supreme Court of Alabama, in the case of Beck & Pauli Lithographing Co. v. Houppert et al. (16 So. Rep. 522), reiterates the wholesome doctrine that a person cannot take advantage of his own wrong or negligence.

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OPERATION OF FOREIGN GENERAL AS

SIGNMENTS AS AFFECTED BY A CON-
FLICT OF LAWS.

ROBABLY there is no feature of the law of

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general assignments for the benefit of creditors more confusing, as well as interesting, than that concerning the validity and effect of a foreign general assignment as effected by a conflict of laws. The decisions of the various States are not all

agreed, and in endeavoring to lay down the general
principles we are confronted not only by a conflict
of law but with a conflict of decisions as well.
Much confusion arises because of the variety of
interest represented; the assignment may be exe-
cuted in one State, the property situated in another,
the creditors may be residents of either of those

in still another State.

And with the extraordinary diligence on behalf of creditors to reach the estate of their failing debtor this subject becomes an important and practical one.

Wall. 610.) In this case an assignment was made by the owners, residents of Massachusetts, of the ship"Arctic," while the ship in question was on the high seas. She sailed into port at New York city, where she was attached by creditors, residents of New York. The United States Supreme Court carried with it the title to the ship and thus deheld that the assignment executed in Massachusetts

feated the lien of the attachment.

difficult to determine their exact situs; but under Regarding choses in action we find it more general jurisprudence they follow the person of the owner or creditor and have their situs at his domicile. And a transfer valid where made will be recognized as valid everywhere although not valid by the law of the debtor's residence.

In a

States or of another, and the litigation may arise leading case in this State the court laid down substantially this rule, to wit: That personal property follows the person of the owner and has no other situs, and a transfer valid according to the law of the situs would be valid everywhere, unless the corpus of the property is situated in another State and the transfer is invalid according to the law of that State. And this is a general rule. In other words, the law of the place of transfer governs unless it is in conflict with the law of the situs, in which event the law of the situs controls; and as a rule the situs of the debt and the debtor's domicile are the same.

The question at once arises, assuming there is a conflict of laws, by the laws of what State are the rights of the parties to be determined? Can the law or adjudications of one State have any operation in another State? In other words, can the law of one State be extended beyond the limits of that State into the jurisdiction of another State and control the decisions of its courts? Hence in deciding a particular case four questions must be considered, to wit: 1. The legal situs of the property. 2. The nature of the assignment, whether voluntary or involuntary. 3. The nature and policy of the

law of the situs. 4. The domicile of the creditors

invoking the law of the situs. And these will be

discussed in their order.

REGARDING THE LEGAL SITUS OF PROPERTY. Regarding the legal situs of property the rule differs as to real and personal property. It is no longer a question of dispute or doubt that the validity of an assignmenr or other transfer to dispose of lands depends entirely upon the law of the State or country where the land is actually situated at the time. This is an invariable rule; and an assignment in order to invest a valid title in the assignee, in any event, must be executed in all respects to satisfy the law of the situs. (Nicholson v. Leavitt, 4 Sandf. 252; Chapman v. Peabody, 159 Mass. 420; Moore v. Church, 70 Iowa, 208.)

And of course in case of tangible personal property as well as real estate the legal situs is where the property is actually situated, except in case of ships at sea, which, by a fiction of the law, are supposed to remain a part of the territory of the State from which they sail while on the high seas, and hence have their situs in such State. (Crapo v. Kelly, 16

But this general rule is not invariable, and always yields where the law or public policy of the State, where the corpus of the property is actually situated, has provided a different rule of transfer from that of the State where the owner resides, (Kelly v. Paine, 107 N. Y. 83); and so local laws may fix the situs of the debt at the domicile of the debtor for the purpose of subjecting it to legal remedies provided by the statutes of the State of the debtor's residence, such as attachment, garnishment, execution, etc. (Williams v. Ingersoll, 89 N. Y. 508; O'Neil v. Nagle, 15 St. Rep. 358; s. c. 19 Abb. N. C. 399, and Note; Connor v. Hanover, 28 Fed. Rep. 549; Matter of Estate of Romaine, 127 N. Y. 80.)

In O'Neil v. Nagle, a well considered case, the facts were that a voluntary general assignment was made in New York, containing preferences, part of the property included in the assignment being debts owing to the assignor by merchants residents of New Jersey. The New Jersey statute provided for the attachment and garnishment of the debts, and also prohibited preferences of any kind. Now applying our first proposition we see that the debt followed the person of the owner and had its situs in New York, but by applying our second proposition we find that the New Jersey statute has fixed the situs of the debt in New Jersey for the purpose

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of attachment, and hence the assignment, being in conflict with the law and policy of New Jersey, could not operate to pass title to the assignee as against the attaching creditor a resident of New Jersey.

The tendency of the decisions is to do away with the fiction of the law that personal property has no situs away from the person of the owner, and to substitute the truth in its stead, where, in a specified case, there is any good and equitable reason for doing so; and the power of the State to fix its situs for a specified purpose, such as attachment, taxation, etc., can hardly be doubted. (Matter of Estate of Romaine, supra; O'Neil v. Nagle. supra.)

NATURE OF THE ASSIGNMENT.

The fact that the situs of the property is determined does not settle the question, and we must inquire into the nature of the assignment. And here we notice a marked distinction between voluntary general assignments and assignments executed under bankruptcy and insolvency laws; the former is the voluntary and the latter the involuntary act of the assignor. The one has the universal effect of a contract, the other the territorial effect of a statute. As the foreign statute which gives life to the involuntary assignment can have no extra-territorial effect of its own vigor, so it is a general rule that such assignments have no effect on property outside the jurisdiction of the State where it was executed. One State has no power to dictate to another State the terms of administration and distribution of its property. A State by its sovereign power has the exclusive prerogative of determining the status of its citizens and their property within its borders. As to a State's power over its citizens, see Cole v. Cunningham, 133 U. S. 107.

and one Schofield was appointed trustee of the firm property, which, according to English law, vested in him the legal title to all firm property wherever situated. Waite continued to act as assignee of Haynes & Sanger, appropriating to himself under the preference to Pendle & Waite the sum of $14,000. The American creditors of his firm had been fully paid. Upon his accounting as assignee, Schofield appeared by attorney and claimed said sum as trustee of Pendle & Waite by virtue of the English bankruptcy proceeding. Waite's counsel argued that the bankruptcy proceeding could have no extra-territorial force as against a resident of New York State, and hence that his title was paramount to that of Schofield. The Court of Appeals decided against this contention. Earl, J., writing the opinion, said: "No principle of justice, no public policy requires the courts of this State to ignore the title of this assignee (Schofield) at the instance of one of the bankrupts. No injustice will be done to Waite if this money is taken to pay his creditors, and public policy does not require that the courts of this State should protect him in his efforts to cheat his creditors or his partner." After a careful consideration of the decisions on this question, the learned judge stated the following rules, to wit: 1. The statutory title of foreign assignees in bankruptcy can have no recognition here solely by virtue of the foreign statute. 2. But the comity of nations allows a certain effect to titles so derived, and the title of foreign statutory assignees will be recognized and enforced here when they can be without prejudice to the rights of creditors pursuing remedies under our statute; provided, also, that such titles are not in conflict with the law or public policy of our State. 3. Such assignee can appear and,

A few leading cases will serve to illustrate this subject to the proceeding rules, maintain suits in distinction:

The leading case in this State is the Matter of Waite, 99 N. Y. 433, which reviewed the conflicting authorities and settled a long mooted question. The facts were as follows: The firm of Haynes & Sanger, doing business in the city of New York, on October 15, 1885, made a general assignment to Charles Waite, a member of the firm of Pendle & Waite, who were doing business both in New York city and London. Waite was a citizen of New York and Pendle a citizen of England. The assignment contained a preference in favor of Pendle & Waite for about $14,000. Subsequently Pendle & Waite failed, suspending business in London in February, 1885, and Waite went to England, and they filed a petition in the London Court of Bankruptcy for a composition with creditors; but the composition failed. Then upon an application by their creditors, which was opposed by Waite, the firm of Pendle & Waite were declared bankrupts,

our courts against debtors of the bankrupt whom they represent.

These principles were reasserted by the Court of Appeals in the late case of Barth v. Backus, 140 N. Y., 230. In this case the contest arose between the assignee of a Wisconsin corporation and attaching creditors residents of New York, pursuing their remedy in New York. These creditors were assignees of claims formerly due Wisconsin creditors against the corporation, and took their title subsequent to and with full knowledge of the Wisconsin assignment. Thereafter they procured attachments against personal property of the Wisconsin corporation situated in the State of New York. The Wisconsin statute governing the assignment provided that the assignor "may be discharged from his debts as a part of the proceedings under such assignment, upon compliance with the provisions of this act," and that every creditor who should accept a dividend out of the assigned estate, or in

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