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1874; Great Britain and Prussia, August 9, 1880; Italy and Russia, April 28, 1875; Spain and Russia, June 26, 1876.

392. The declarations and sentences of power and recognition pronounced by competent judges in one of the two countries in favour of the heirs and legatees interested in successions opened in their absence in the other countries will be executed in the latter on their being for that purpose communicated by diplomatic means or presented by attorneys.

393. These declarations or sentences will indicate the degree of parentage of the heirs or the title of the legatees, in order that the tax due for the same may be assessed by the Treasuries of the two countries.

394. When these are communicated by diplomatic means, they must be accompanied by translations made by the Consul residing in the place where they are executed; and if they are presented by attorneys, they must be authenticated by the Consul residing in the country from which they are sent, and accompanied by a translation made in the place where they are executed,

whether by the Consul there established or by

sworn translators

SECTION VIII.-PROPERTY.

395. Movable property is subject to the law of the place where the owner resides. Land and other immovable property are governed by the law of the place where such property is situated.

396. Public funds and stocks, as well as shares of bodies politic, corporate, or semicorporate, are governed by the law by which they are created, subject to any restriction imposed by the law of the place where the same are delivered or transferred.

397. Property in shipping is governed by the municipal law which determines the nationality of the vessel.

398. Incorporeal chattels, including rights or interests which may grow out of or incident to personal property, such as patent right, or the exclusive privilege of selling and publishing particular contrivances of art, trade mark, or the exclusive privilege of a manufacturer to sell goods under a certain mark or name, and copy

right, or the exclusive privilege of the writer or his assignee of selling and publishing particular works of literature or designs, are all governed by the law of domicile.

SECTION IX.-CONFLICT OF PRIVATE INTER-
NATIONAL LAW.

Whilst Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Italian Government, Sig. Mancini, in September, 1881, opened communication with foreign Powers with a view to the settlement of certain rules, uniform in all States, relative to the civil condition of aliens, the extension and guarantee of their rights, and their participation in the benefits of their respective legislation. And in furtherance of the object he sent the following Memorandum :—

"I. Jurists and statesmen have noticed with regret the incontestable imperfection of international relations in what regards the civil condition of foreigners, the extension and guarantee of their rights, and their participation in the benefits of their respective legislation. Such a state of things is, unhappily, inevitable, so long as there is no system of fundamental laws accepted in common, and consented to by the Powers, of a nature to terminate the uncertainty inherent to the jurisprudence of each country under the influence of different legislation. A few examples will enable us to appreciate the extent of the inconvenience in question.

"II. In several countries of Europe the law which regulates the status and capacity of the person, or, in other terms, the personal status, is the Lex domicilii; that is to say, the law of the place where the person fixes his domicile or his principal establishment, without any regard to his nationality.

"The Code Napoleon, on the contrary, has the merit of being the first to make the personal status of the Frenchman depend on his national law, so as to cover him with its protection wherever he might go. This rational substitution of the principle of nationality for the accidental and empiric principle of domicile, necessarily variable, has been equally introduced in other modern legislations, and in the new Italian Civil Code.

"But these different rules produce an insoluble conflict between the legislation of the countries which make the civil status or capacity of the individual depend on the rules in force in the State where he has a domicile, and those which make such capacity depend on the nationality of origin.

"The same conflict affects a French or an Italian subject who may be born in England or South America, because whilst a South American, according to the law of his country, is deemed to have the nationality and to follow the civil condition of his father, English or Brazilian law considers the same person as English or Brazilian by the simple fact of his birth in the territory of these countries.

"A French or an Italian woman marrying an Englishman loses the personal status of origin in virtue of the law of his country; yet she might have acquired at the same time the personal status of her husband, because English law till recent years did not accord the right of English nationality to a foreign woman who married an Englishman.

"The loss of French or Italian nationality by one of the causes foreseen in their respective Codes, or the protection of French law accorded to an Italian, or, lastly, Italian naturalization accorded to a Frenchman, produce, according to the spirit of the legislation and jurisprudence of France, simple individual effects; that is, effects which do not extend to the wife or to the children the issue of the individual, such issue not being affected by what is exclusively of a personal character. And yet according to the Italian Civil Code this change of status applies also to the wife and children of the individual, who acquire the new nationality of their father. Here we have, then, an inextricable conflict between France and Italy, each of the two magistratures having to give to the same individuals a different nationality.

"III. If we pass to the region of property, it is easy to multiply examples of such contradictions. It is sufficient to state that on the subject of movable property the rule professed by the jurists, according to which mobilia sequuntor personam, receives in different countries a different sense and application ;

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