tries differ both as to the position they take up towards their own citizens naturalized abroad and as to the protection they afford to foreigners who have become their citizens by naturalization. With regard to the subject who has acquired a foreign nationality, we find that on the one hand the old doctrine of inalienable allegiance, set forth in the maxim Nemo potest exuere patriam, is still acted upon in all its severity in Russia,1 and that on the other hand a "right of expatriation" has been asserted by the Congress of the United States in a statute of 1868 to be "a natural and inherent right of all people."2 Between these extremes the law of the great majority of states hovers, imposing conditions upon expatriation and declaring that the subject naturalized abroad loses by naturalization his quality of citizen for most purposes. Some states, like Italy, still regard him as subject to military service, and several consider him to be punishable with death if he bears arms against his native country. In the converse case of a citizen of a foreign country who has become a naturalized subject, some states regard him as entirely and for all purposes on an equality as to rights and protection with their born subjects, while others recognize that the country of his birth still has rights against him, which it may enforce if he goes within its territory. The legislative department of the United States Government seems to be in advance of the executive in its doctrine of a natural right of expatriation. Mr. Wheaton, when Minister at Berlin in 1840, refused to take up the case of J. P. Knacke, a Prussian who had been naturalized in the United States and had returned to Prussia. He was there compelled to serve in the Prussian army, and Mr. Wheaton held that the United States could not

1 British State Papers for 1869, Report of the Naturalization Commission, Appendix, p. 59.

2 Revised Statutes, § 1999.

3 British State Papers for 1869, Report of the Naturalization Commisston, Appendix, p. 28.

interfere to protect him in the country of his birth. Mr. Webster took similar ground when Secretary of State in 1852 in the cases of Ignacio Tolen, a Spaniard, and Victor Depierre, a Frenchman. But General Cass, who held the same high office in 1859, drew a distinction in the case of Hofer, a Prussian, between inchoate and perfect obligation, and claimed a right to protect naturalized citizens in the countries of their birth unless the offence was complete before expatriation. The Prussian Government declined to admit this contention, but gave a discharge from the army at the request of the United States Minister, thus granting as a favor what it refused as a right.1 The executive department has never gone beyond the position taken up by General Cass, and has succeeded in getting it embodied in recent treaties. The year 1868 witnessed considerable activity of negotiation on the subject of Naturalization, and conventions were negotiated with Austria, the North German Confederation which grew in 1870 into the German Empire, and Baden. These have since been followed by others, and nearly all of them expressly provide that a naturalized citizen of the one country who is by birth a subject of the other may be tried on his return to his fatherland for offences against its laws committed before his emigration. In some special mention is made of military service, and it is stipulated that the obligation must have actually accrued before emigration in order to render the offender liable to military duty on his return, or to trial and punishment for the neglect of it. The possibility of a future call to service is not enough. The call must actually have been made.2 Till recently the law of Great Britain embodied the doctrine of inalienable allegiance; and one of the chief causes of her

1 Halleck, International Law (Baker's ed.), I., 357-359; Wheaton, International Law (Dana's ed.), 142, note; Wharton, International Law of the United States, § 181.

2 See Art. II. of the Baden Treaty of 1868; Treaties of the United States, p. 43.

war with the United States in 1812 was the rigor with which that doctrine was applied by her Government. British cruisers took from American vessels on the high seas naturalized American citizens and impressed them for service in the royal navy, on the grounds that they were British subjects by birth and that no forms gone through in America could divest them of their British nationality. But practice softened as the century wore on, and gradually opinion changed, till by the Naturalization Act of 1870 the old doctrine of the common law was abandoned and Great Britain recognized the naturalization of her subjects abroad. The Act laid down that they lost their British citizenship by voluntarily assuming citizenship in another state; and, with regard to naturalized citizens of Great Britain, it declared that they would be protected wheresoever they might be except in the country of their original allegiance. They would not be entitled to the privileges of British citizens within its borders, unless by acquiring their new nationality they ceased to be its subjects according to its laws or the stipulations of a treaty made with it.

This rule seems to accord best with sound and undoubted principles. A state as an independent political unit has a right to accept as citizens on its own conditions all who may come into its territory and desire to attach themselves to it. But it can hardly claim a right to dictate to another state the conditions on which that state shall give up all claim to the allegiance of its born subjects. To do so would be to intrude into the sphere of its legislation and trench upon its independence. No surer method of producing international complications could well be found; whereas the rule of leaving to the state of birth to determine whether it will recognize the new citizenship or not, when the individual who has acquired it returns within its territory, precludes all possibility of controversy, while recognizing both the right of the naturalizing state to acquire citizens in its own way, and the right of the mother state to deal as it thinks fit

with all persons in its dominions who are its subjects according to the provisions of the local law. The United States and some other countries, as we have just seen, endeavor to settle these questions by treaty. It cannot be said that there is any rule of International Law with regard to them. Neither opinion nor practice is yet sufficiently uniform to create one; but the tendencies seem in favor of the rule of the United States treaties or the rule of the British Naturalization Act. Both are based upon the same principle; but the treaties stop short in its application, whereas the Act carries it to its logical conclusion. There can be no doubt that a naturalized citizen can denaturalize himself and get rid of his acquired character, just as he got rid of the character given him by birth. If he returns to his fatherland and shows an intention to remain there indefinitely, his original nationality easily reverts to him.1

Domiciled aliens.

§ 117.

Having dealt with natural-born and naturalized subjects, we have now to deal with a class of persons who are not subjects at all, but whose long residence within a state gives them a peculiar position under its law. They are called Domiciled Aliens. In order to obtain a domicil in a particular place it is necessary to reside there and to have an intention to remain in it for an indefinite time. In short a man's domicil is his home. Temporary absences will not destroy his legal relation to it; for whenever he goes away he has an intention of returning. It is not necessary that he should mean to spend his entire life there. A subject of one country may go into another for business purposes, with the intention of returning to his own land when he has made a fortune or acquired a certain position. But seeing that his stay is of indefinite duration, and that while it lasts the centre of his affairs and his

1 Wharton, International Law of the United States, §§ 176-179, 190.

domestic relations are in the foreign country, he is domiciled there. He need not become a citizen in order to acquire a domicil. The great majority of residents in a country are its citizens and subjects; but neither in law nor in fact is there any necessary connection between citizenship and domicil. The former is a relation between state and subject created by the law and depending entirely upon its provisions. The latter is a fact of which the law takes note and on which it bases many of its rules. Most persons are domiciled in the country of which they are citizens; but it is quite possible for a man to be a citizen of one state and have his domicil in another; and it is in these latter cases that international questions sometimes arise owing to the conflicting claims of the two countries.

For international purposes domicil is of two kindsDomicil of Origin, which in the case of legitimate children is the domicil of the father at the time of birth and in the case of illegitimate children that of the mother at the same time; and Domicil of Choice, which is the domicil deliberately adopted by a person of full age. Till years of discretion are reached the domicil of a child may be changed by a change of domicil on the part of parents or guardians, but not by its own volition. A domicil of choice is by no means unchangeable. A man may lose it and gain another by the same means as those by which he acquired it; and if he returns to his own country his domicil of origin easily reverts to him. It is difficult to say with any degree of exactness how far the rules with regard to domicil come within International Law. In so far as they bear upon questions of belligerent capture, and the liability of the domiciled alien to war-burdens both personal and pecuniary, they clearly belong to the province of the publicist, and we shall discuss them when we come to consider the Law of War. But in so far as they deal with a man's private rights and obligations, they seem to be outside the bounda2 See § 177.

1 Westlake, Private International Law, §§ 243, 253.