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 legisla tion 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.

APPENDIX A.

I.

THE UNITED STATES LAWS OF

NATURALIZATION & EXPATRIATION.

I.

NATURALIZATION.

By the act of April 14, 1802, and which is the law now applicable, in ordinary cases, a free white person may become a citizen by having declared on oath before a court of the United States, in any State or Territory, three years before his admission, that it was his bona fide intention to become a citizen, and renounce forever all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty, and by name the prince, &c., whereof such alien may at the time be a citizen or subject; and he shall declare at the time of his admission, on oath, before the court, that he absolutely renounces and abjures all allegiance, &c., to every foreign prince, &c., as aforesaid, which proceedings shall be recorded; the court must be satisfied that he has resided five years in the United States and one year within the State where the court is held; that he has behaved as a man of good moral character, and is attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States. By this same act, minor children, whose parents had been naturalized citizens, and children of citizens that had been born out of the United States, were not to be deemed aliens. (United States Statutes at Large, vol. II, p. 153.)

By the Act of May 26, 1824, minors who shall have resided in the United States three years next before they are twenty-one years

of age, after a residence of five years, including the three years of minority, may, without having made the previous declaration, be admitted by taking the oath of alienation, &c., as in other cases. (Ib. vol. IV, p. 69.) And to meet a supposed defect in the Act of 1802, by the Act of February 10, 1855, persons heretofore born or hereafter to be born out of the United States, whose fathers were or shall be at the time of their birth, citizens of the United States, shall be deemed citizens, but the rights of citizenship shall not be deemed to descend to persons, whose fathers never resided in the United States, and a woman who might be naturalized under existing laws, who is married, or who shall be married to a citizen, shall be deemed a citizen. (Ib. vol. X, p. 604.) By an Act of July 17, 1862, any alien of the age of 21, who has enlisted or shall enlist in the regular or volunteer forces of the United States, and has been or shall be honorably discharged, may be admitted a citizen upon his petition, and shall not be required to prove more than one year's residence in the United States previous to his application. (United States Statutes at Large, vol. XII, p. 597.)

By an Act of July 14, 1879, the naturalization laws were extended to aliens of African nativity and to persons of African descent. (United States Statutes at Large, 1869-71, p. 256.)

11.

EXPATRIATION.

Act concerning the Rights of American Citizens in Foreign States, approved July 27, 1868.

WHEREAS the right of expatriation is a natural and inherent right of all people, indispensable to the enjoyment of the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and whereas in the recognition of this principle this government has freely received emigrants from all nations, and invested them with the rights of citizenship; and whereas it is claimed that such American citizens, with their descendants, are subjects of foreign states, owing allegiance to the governments thereof; and whereas it is necessary to the maintenance of public peace that this claim of foreign allegiance should be promptly and finally disavowed: Therefore,

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That any declara