356 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



an unjust system now set up in its defense is not a theological one, 

 but that personal property (more especially what is termed in law 

 choses in action, or credits, titles, notes, bonds, mortgages, which are 

 in their nature incorporeal, and therefore invisible and intangible) 

 has no situs away from the person or residence of the owner, but is 

 deemed to be present with him at the place of his domicile.* 



This rule or fiction of law originated, according to Savigny, in 

 Rome, and acquired the designation of " mobilia personam sequun- 

 ter "; but its applicability to property was never held to extend be- 

 yond Eoman territory. Subsequently it became a device of inter- 

 national comity, which the Supreme Court of Vermont (Catlin vs. 

 Hall, 12 Vermont, 152) has declared was subsequently " adopted 

 from considerations of general convenience and policy, and for the 

 benefit of commerce " ; and which, according to every principle of 

 common sense and equity, was never invented with a view of its 

 being used as a rule to govern and define the application and scope 

 of taxation, or was intended to have any other meaning than that 

 for the purpose of the sale, distribution, and other disposition of 

 property any act, agreement, or authority which is sufficient in law 

 where the owner resides shall pass the property in the place where 

 the property is; and more especially to facilitate the distribution of 

 decedents' estates, by enabling parties to dispose of their property 

 without embarrassment from their ignorance of the laws of the coun- 

 try where it is situated, f 



How comparatively recent, moreover, has been the extra-terri- 

 torial application of the rule or principle under consideration to taxa- 

 tion, is shown by the fact that the first English colonists and law- 

 makers who came to America do not appear to have brought with 

 them any of the narrow and illogical views which have characterized 

 their descendants. Thus, for example, one of the earliest laws of the 

 Massachusetts colony reads as follows : " No man shall be rated here 

 (Massachusetts) for any estate or revenue he hath in England, or in 

 any forreine partes, till it be transported thither." (Massachusetts 

 Historical Society Collections, vols, vii and viii, page 213.) And 

 in the first provincial codes of Pennsylvania especial care was taken 

 to confine taxation to land, and a very few articles of personal prop- 



* This subject, from its modern and strictly legal aspect, will be discussed hereafter. 



f " No fiction," says Blackstone, " shall extend to work an injury ; its proper operation 

 being to prevent a mischief, or remedy an inconvenience, which might result from the gen- 

 eral rule of law." At any attempt to misapply a fiction, it falls within, and is terminated 

 by, that other authoritative maxim of logic and the common law, cessante ratione legis^ 

 ccsmt ipsa lex. Another great authority in law, Lord Mansfield, says : " Fictions of law 

 hold only in respect of the ends and purposes for which they were invented ; when they 

 are urged to an intent and purpose not within the reason and policy of the fiction, the other 

 party may show the truth." 



