142 INSTITUTIONS, GOVERNMENT AND LAWS OF SOUTH CAROLINA. 



ricultural products, minerals, &c. The Department of Agriculture regu- 

 lates the matter of immigration to the State. An annual report of all its 

 proceedings is made to the General Assembly. 



Immigrants and Seamen. No person is permitted to keep an immi- 

 grants' or sailor's hotel or boarding house in the city of Charleston with- 

 out a license from the City Council, and hotels not so licensed cannot so- 

 licit boarders. The City Council must issue badges and the agents or 

 owners of boarding houses must wear such Ijadges when engaged in 

 soliciting boarders. Harboring deserting seamen or enticing them to 

 desert is punishable by fine ancl imprisonment. Impressing seamen is a 

 misdemeanor punishable by fine and imprisonment. 



The Militia. All able-bodied male citizens of the State between the 

 ages of 18 and 45 years, except such as are exempt by law, are liable to 

 service in the militia, but there is no compulsory military service except 

 in certain cases of emergency. The Governor has power to call out the 

 militia to execute the laws, repel invasion, repress insurrection and pre- 

 serve the public peace. 



MARRiACiE AND DivoRCE. Complete freedom of marriage is allowed, 

 except within certain close degrees of consanguinity, and except that 

 intermarriage between the white and colored races is forbidden. The 

 real and personal propert}'- of a woman held at the time of her marriage, 

 or that which she may thereafter acquire either by gift, grant, inheri- 

 tance, devise, or otherwise, does not pass to her husband by her marriage, 

 nor become in any way subject to his debts, but remains her separate 

 property, and she can deal with it as she chooses during her life and dis- 

 pose of it by will as if she were unmarried. It is provided by the Con- 

 stitution that divorces from the bonds of matrimony shall not be allowed 

 but by the judgment of a court as shall be prescribed by law. For some 

 years after the adoption of the Constitution an Act was in force provid- 

 ing for and regulating such divorces by the courts, Imt that Act has been 

 repealed, and there is, therefore, now no tribunal in South Carolina by 

 which divorces can be granted. The Court of Common Pleas has, how- 

 ever, power to hear and determine any issue affecting the validity of con- 

 tracts of marriage, and to declare such contracts void for want of consent 

 of either of the contracting parties, or from any other cause going to 

 show that at the time the supposed contract was made, it was not, in fact) 

 a contract — provided that such contract has not been consummated by 

 cohabitation of the parties. 



General Remarks. Except as it may have been inodified by sj^ecial 

 enactment, the common laAV of England is in force in South Carolina. 

 The general tendency of the legislation under the new Constitution has 

 been towards the simplification of the tenure and dispo.sition of property^ 



