IV. Huus v. S. S. Co. A libel was filed to recover spoken pilotage at New York, June 25, 1900, on the American-built steamship Ponce, belonging to a New York corporation, and duly enrolled and licensed for the coasting trade, and then on a voyage from San Juan, Porto Rico, to New York. The following questions were certified to the Supreme Court: 1. Were Porto Rican ports, at the date in question, foreign ports in the sense of the New York pilotage statutes? 2. Were vessels then engaged in trade between Porto Rican and United States ports engaged in the coasting trade in the sense of those statutes? 3. Were steam vessels engaged in such trade coastwise steam vessels in the sense of sec. 4444 of the Revised Statutes of the United States? The court, Mr. Justice Brown delivering the opinion, answered the second and third questions in the affirmative. An answer to the first question thus became unnecessary. Huus. New York & Porto Rico S. S. Co. (May 27, 1901), 182 U. S. 392. V. Goetze v. United Petitions were presented for a review of two decisions of the Board of General Appraisers, holding subject to duty certain merchandise, imported, in the one case from Porto Rico, and in the other from Honolulu, in the Hawaiian Islands. Mr. Justice Brown, delivering the opinion of the court, said: "As the sole question presented by the record in these cases was whether Porto Rico and the Hawaiian Islands were foreign countries within the meaning of the tariff laws, we must hold, for the reasons stated in De Lima v. Bidwell, just decided, that the Board of General Appraisers had no jurisdiction of the cases." Goetze r. United States (May 27, 1901), 182 U. S. 221; Crossman v. United The diamond rings. VI. Emil J. Pepke, returning to the United States as a soldier from the Philippines, in September, 1899, brought with him fourteen diamond rings, which were afterwards seized by the customs authorities for nonpayment of duty. The rings were acquired by Pepke in the Philippines after the exchange of ratifications of the treaty of peace by which the islands were ceded to the United States. Were they subject to duty as having been imported from a foreign country? Fuller, C. J.,, delivering the opinion of the court, held that this question must be answered in the negative on the strength of the decision in De Lima. Bidwell, the applicability of which was not affected either by the Senate resolution of February 14, 1899, or by the existence of armed native resistance to the authority of the United States. Mr. Justice Brown delivered a concurring opinion. Justices Gray, Shiras, White, and McKenna dissented for the reasons stated by them in their opinions in De Lima . Bidwell, Dooley v. United States, and Downes v. Bidwell. Fourteen Diamond Rings, Emil J. Pepke, claimant, v. United States (Dec. 2, 1901), 183 U. S. 176. In a report to the Secretary of War, November 18, 1901, Mr. Magoon, law officer, Division of Insular Affairs, War Department, advised that the government of the Philippine Islands, instituted by the President of the United States, had the power to regulate commerce with the archipelago, and incidentally to impose import and export duties. In this report Mr. Magoon maintains that the treaty-making power is not authorized to establish the relations of territory acquired by conquest or of the inhabitants thereof to the United States, and that "the territory of the Philippine Islands being hostile by reason of the insurrection therein, such territory and its inhabitants are thereby brought within the governing authority of the war powers of the nation, the exercise of which said powers is regulated by the laws of war and not by constitutional provisions, legislative enactments, or treaty stipulations intended to provide for the conditions of peace." (Magoon's Reports, 210.) By the act of March 8, 1902, "temporarily to provide revenue for the Philippine Islands," provision was made for the collection of duties on articles imported into the United States from the Philippines, and vice versa. See, also, the act of July 1, 1902, relating to the civil government of the islands. VII. Second Dooley case. Dooley, Smith & Co. brought suit to recover duties paid under protest at San Juan, Porto Rico, on goods imported from New York after May 1, 1900, when the Foraker Act took effect. The validity of the act was assailed on the ground that it violated the constitutional provision (Art. I., sec. 9) that "no tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any State." Mr. Justice Brown, delivering the opinion of the court, held that the word "export" in this clause referred only to goods exported to a foreign country:" that Porto Rico was no longer a foreign country;" that, while the place at which a duty was actually laid was not necessarily decisive as to its being an export tax, yet, in determining the nature of the duty, it was important to consider for whose benefit it was levied; and that the duty in question was under the Foraker Act in reality laid for the benefit of Porto Rico and was properly collected. @ Woodruff . Parham, 8 Wall. 123; Brown. Houston, 114 U. S. 622; Fairbank e. United States, 181 U. S. 283; Muller v. Baldwin, L. R. 9 Q. B. 457. De Lima . Bidwell; Dooley v. United States. Mr. Justice White delivered a concurring opinion. Chief Justice Fuller, with whom concurred Justices Harlan, Brewer, and Peckham, dissented. Dooley v. United States (Dec. 2, 1901), 183 U. S. 151. Discussions of the ques tions involved in the insular cases may be found in the following publications: The Status of our New Territories, by Prof. C. C. Langdell, Harvard Law Rev. (Jan., 1899), XII. 365; The Constitutional Questions incident to the Acquisition and Government by the United States of Island Territory, by the Hon. Simeon E. Baldwin, id. 393; The Constitution and New Territory, by Prof. J. W. Burgess, Political Science Quarterly (Sept., 1900), XV. 381; The Law and Policy of Annexation, by Carman F. Randolph (Longmans, Green & Co., New York and London, 1901); The Insular Cases, by the Hon. Chas. E. Littlefield, before the Am. Bar Assoc., Aug. 22, 1901; The Supreme Court and the Insular Cases, by Prof. L. S. Rowe, Annals of the Am. Academy of Polit. and Social Science, Sept., 1901; The Supreme Court and the Insular Cases, by the Hon. Simeon E. Baldwin, Yale Review, Aug., 1901; The Insular Cases, by Carman F. Randolph, Columbia Law Review (Nov., 1901), I. 436; The Porto Rico Tariffs of 1899-1900, by Edward B. Whitney, Yale Law Journal, May, 1900; The Insular Decisions of December, 1901, by Edward B. Whitney, Columbia Law Review, Feb., 1902, p. 79; Two Treaties of Paris and the Supreme Court, by Sidney Webster (New York, Harpers, 1901, pp. 133); Practical Legal Difficulties incident to the Transfer of Sovereignty, by Frederic R. Coudert, jr., being an address delivered before the Academy of Political Science at Columbia University, May 27, 1902. Division of territory. By the treaty between the United States and the Sultan of Muscat, then sovereign of Zanzibar, which was concluded Sept. 21, 1833, and which was accepted, ratified, and confirmed by the Sultan of Zanzibar Oct. 20, 1879, it was provided that vessels of the United States entering any port within the Sultan's dominions should pay no more than five per cent duties on the cargo landed. Under this stipulation it was the custom to import into the island of Zanzibar all goods intended for the Sultan's East African dominions, and after paying the duty there to transship them to the various coast ports, the island being used merely as a base of distribution. Dec. 22, 1890, the German consul at Zanzibar notified the consul of the United States that from Jan. 1, 1891, the duty of five per cent would be collected by his Government on the coast now known as the German East African coast, which the Sultan had then recently sold to Germany. At that time the American house of Ropes, Emmerton & Co. held in the city of Zanzibar goods valued at $44,746, imported for the coast in question, and on which they had paid to the Zanzibar customs the stipulated duty. No arrangement was made between the German Government and the Sultan of Zanzibar as to goods so situated. The Government of the United States took the ground that, under the circumstances, the American merchants were entitled either to have the merchandise, on which the duty had been paid, admitted free of duty into the coast, for which it was actually imported, or else to receive a drawback from the Sultan to the amount of the duties paid; and an application was made to the German Government for relief from the exaction of the additional duty. The German Government refused to entertain the claim. The Government of the United States continued to press it, maintaining that it involved "a substantial hardship calling for that equitable treatment which the Foreign Office admits the case should receive." It was not deemed necessary, said the United States, to consider the question whether, by the payment of the duty, the goods themselves were invested with a right of free transportation into any part of what were then the Sultan's dominions. The duty was in fact paid on the goods for sale on the coast; by the entry of the goods at Zanzibar, they were in reality imported into the coast; but, the government of the coast having changed, a new entry was demanded and a second payment of duty exacted, simply because the government had changed. To the contention of the Foreign Office that notice should have been taken of the negotiations for the sale of the Sultan's dominions, it was answered that the importers could not reasonably be required to incur inconvenience and loss merely because negotiations were on foot of which they could not foresee either the result or the time of termination; that it seemed to be the more just and reasonable view that they had a right to continue to conduct their business according to methods which had all along been pursued and which had the sanction of law and treaty; and that the notice of Dec. 22, 1890, while it might be considered as an admission that they were entitled to be advised that they would be required to meet changes in the course of their business, was so short that it constituted rather a notification that they would be subjected to loss than an opportunity to avoid it. Mr. Blaine, Sec. of State, to Mr. Phelps, Feb. 27, 1891, MS. Inst. Germany, XVIII. 417; Mr. Adee, Acting Sec. of State, to Mr. Phelps, May 20, 1891, id. 520. The German Government appears to have adhered to its position. 4. ON PRIVATE LAW. "All the laws which were in force in Florida while a province of Spain, those excepted which were political in their character, which concerned the relations between the people and their sovereign, remained in force until altered by the Government of the United States. Congress recognized this principle by using the words 'laws of the Territory now in force therein.' No laws could then have been in force but those enacted by the Spanish Government." Marshall, C. J., American Insurance Co. v. Canter, 1 Pet. 542. In the case of the Island of Grenada, reported under the title of Campbell v. Hall, 20 St. Tr. 239, 322; Cowp. 204, 208, it was declared by Lord Mansfield that "a country conquered by the British arms becomes a dominion of the King in right of his Crown, and therefore necessarily subject to the legislative power of the Parliament of Great Britain." It was also declared that the "laws of a conquered country continue until they are altered by the conqueror." The latter position was approved by Lord Ellenborough in Picton's case, 30 St. Tr. 944. (See Dana's Wheaton, note 169.) See, also, Craw. e. Ramsey, Vaughan 274; Cross r. Harrison, 16 How. 164; Airhart . Massieu, 98 U. S. 491; Magoon's Reports, 526. In cases of conquest, among civilized countries, having established laws of property, the rule is that laws, usages, and municipal regulations in force at the time of the conquest remain in force until changed by the new sovereign. United States v. Power's Heirs, 11 Howard, 570; United States v. Heirs of Rillieux, 14 id. 189; Leitensdorfer v. Webb, 20 id. 176, affirming Leitensdorfer r. Webb, 1 N. M. 34. An adjudication as to title to certain lands in Louisiana, made by a Spanish tribunal in that territory after its cession to the United States, but before actual possession had been surrendered, the territory being de facto in the possession of Spain and subject to Spanish laws, was held valid as the adjudication of a competent tribunal having jurisdiction of the case. Keene . McDonough, 8 Peters, 308. By the law of nations the rights and property of the inhabitants are protected, even in the case of a conquered country, and held sacred and inviolable when it is ceded by treaty, with or without any stipulation to such effect; and the laws, whether in writing or evidenced by the usage and customs of the conquered or ceded country, continue in force till altered by the new sovereign. Strother . Lucas, 12 Peters, 410. Their Spanish laws prevailing in Louisiana before its cession, and affecting titles to lands there, must be judicially noticed by the court. existence is not matter of fact to be tried by a jury. United States r. Turner, 11 Howard, 663; S. P., United States v. Chaves (1895), 159 U. S. 452. The general principle that when political jurisdiction and legislative power over a territory are transferred from one sovereign to another, the municipal laws of the territory continue in force until abrogated by the new sovereign, is applicable as to territory owned by the United States, the exclusive jurisdiction of which is ceded to them by a State in a manner not provided for by the Constitution, to so much thereof as is not used by the United States for its forts, buildings, and other needful purposes. Chicago and Pac. Railway Co. v. McGlinn, 114 U. S. 542, holding that a law of Kansas, requiring railways not enclosed by lawful fences to pay damages for animals killed or wounded by their engines or cars, without regard to the question of negligence, remained in force in the Fort Leavenworth Military Reservation after the State had ceded exclusive jurisdiction over it. |