360 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the feudal tenure by which lands were held arose the notion, which 

 became a fiction of the law, that property, merely personal, always 

 attended the person of its owner; while lands, tenements, and heredi- 

 taments, being fixed and immovable, and of infinitely more consid- 

 eration, were held, from their very nature, as well as from motives 

 of political policy, to have a situs of their own, from which they 

 derived their laws and incidents, wholly regardless of the domicile 

 of the owner. Growing out of the same reasons, it was also the 

 prevailing opinion that, while immovables were exclusively gov- 

 erned by the law of locality, movables were controlled, accord- 

 ing to the same maxim, by the law of the domicile of the owner, and 

 not by that of its situs." In the changed condition of wealth and 

 property, such a fiction, however suitable and useful in primitive 

 times, would now, in many cases, work the greatest injustice, and 

 impair the supremacy which every government should maintain over 

 everything within its territory, both on the ground of public expedi- 

 ency and the private interests of its citizens. And, according to 

 Wharton (Treatise on the Conflict of Laws, 1872), this fiction of law 

 has been universally abandoned upon the continent of Europe, ex- 

 cept in cases as to rights in respect to personalty which sprang from 

 marriage and succession, and would not, furthermore, in Europe, 

 find a place in any discussion of the principles of taxation, except 

 possibly in a review of curious tax experiences, and for the reason 

 that nowhere, except in the United States, is there any system of 

 extra-territorial taxation, or any tolerance given to the ideas upon 

 which it is founded. 



This question of extra-territorial taxation has been raised repeat- 

 edly before the highest courts of the United States, and its illegality 

 in respect to visible, tangible property is believed to have been in 

 every instance afiirmed. 



Thus in the State of New York, up to the years 1861-62, the 

 rule of assessment of personal property appears to have been in 

 accordance with that now recognized in Massachusetts viz., that 

 it follows the owner under all circumstances; but in that year a 

 case of much importance was carried up to its Court of Appeals 

 under the following circumstances : One Hoyt was taxed in the city 

 of New York for personal property, and resisted the taxation on the 

 ground that, although he had personal property outside of the State, 

 he had none within the State in excess of his just debts and liabili- 

 ties; the property in question without the State being capital em- 

 ployed in business in New Orleans, and farm stock and household 

 furniture in New Jersey, each taxable by local law in the States 

 where situated. The Court of Appeals decided the assessment to be 

 illegal, and held (Comstock, C. J.) that the property was actually 



