362 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXI. No. 532. 



tion to it. Government securities held by 

 any foreigners passed to their natural 

 successoi*s or by v?ill. * 



The interest of the government called for 

 such relaxations of its so-called right, and 

 the king who relaxed it most, because he 

 saw most clearly that it was for his ad- 

 vantage so to do, found the foreign trade 

 of his dominions grow most rapidly and 

 settle itself upon the most stable footing. 



The droit de naufrage was the first to 

 disappear. The humaner law of the Chris- 

 tian emperors of Rome,-j- followed by the 

 Visigoths in Spain in the seventh century,J 

 and enforced in the twelfth by the laws of 

 Oleron, appealed successfully to the awak- 

 ening conscience of the modern world. 



Anything in the nature of a droit 

 d'auhaine had also been denounced in the 

 Corpus Juris of Roman law.'H As time 

 went on, its range became more and more 

 contracted, and by the close of the middle 

 ages it had become, so far as personal prop- 

 erty was concerned, generally softened in 

 practise to what was called a jus de- 

 tractns,\ except in case of those dying 

 intestate and without known heirs. 



As respects real estate in one country 

 owned by citizens of another the sovereign 

 of the former might still claim it as his 

 own ; but it was because political consider- 

 ations were deemed to require it. In a 

 nation whose constitution of government 

 or family institutions rest on a landed 

 electorate or aristocracy, it is right to de- 

 bar foreigners from holding what might 



* Merlin, ' Repertoire de Jurisprudence,' Au- 

 baine. No. VII. 



t Code, XL, iii., 5, de naufragiis, 1. Cf. Digest, 

 XLIX., XV., de captivis et de postliminio, 5, 2. 



J v., 5, Corpus Juris Germanici, 2001. 



§ Art. 25, 26. 1 Peters' Admiralty Decisions, 

 xli., note. 



II Code, VI., lix., Communia de Succcssionibus, 

 10. 



fFiore, Droit International Priv6, I., Pre- 

 liminaries, cb. II. 



enable them to influence directly the con- 

 duct of government. This is the defence 

 of the system of escheats under the common 

 law of England, abolished there in 1870, 

 but which still lingers on in many of the 

 United States. 



It took the flames of revolution to burn 

 the droit d'auhaine out of the institutions 

 of France, and for a time, under Napoleon, 

 it M^as restored as respects citizens of any 

 nation which yet might retain it.t 



Under the jus detractus, the sovereign 

 within whose dominions a foreigner 

 chanced to die no longer claimed title to all 

 his goods, unless no will and no next of 

 kin were anywhere to be found. + He was 

 content with part, and, after making this 

 'detraction,' or, as we should say, 'sub- 

 traction,' gave up the rest to the natural 

 heirs, or those to whom it might have been 

 bequeathed by will. 



So if a subject of his own should die, 

 leaving a will in favor of foreigners, or 

 having only foreign heirs, they were ad- 

 mitted to the succession, subject to a de- 

 traction of the same kind. 



The percentages retained, in either case, 

 as time went on, became more and more 

 moderate. Reciprocal conventions between 

 different nations for their regulation in 

 this respect were not uncommon. Five 



* With a proviso that an alien acquiring land 

 should gain no political rights thereby. 



Civil Code, Arts. 726, 912; Law of July 14, 



1819. 



J If there be no better claim, that of the 

 sovereign within whose territory property left 

 by the dead is found is clearly good. The lead- 

 ing powers of continental Europe at their Con- 

 ference held at the Hague in 1904, agreed (sub- 

 ject to the principle of reciprocity) to the mutual 

 recognition of this right and the denial of any 

 other in the nature of escheat or aubainc. ' Pro- 

 jet d'un Convention sur les eonflits de lois en 

 matifere de succession et de testaments,' Art. II., 

 Revue de Droit Internatiojial Prive, VI., 348. 

 Sixteen European powers and also Japan agreed 

 to and signed this project, June 7, 1904. 



