646

THE GREEN BAG

of intention was required, the period of residence in the United States was but two years, and the power was one to be exercised by any common law court of record in any one of the states. This first act was superseded in 1795 by the act approved January 2oth, of that year. Under this the term of residence in the United States was raised to five years, and a declaration was required three years before naturalization could be granted, while the exercise of the powers was con fided to the circuit or district courts of the United States, and concurrently to the supreme, superior, district or circuit courts of any one of the states. To make it plainer what courts were intended by this act, the Act of 1802, chapter 3, was passed, which granted the power to any state court having common law jurisdiction, and possessing a seal and a clerk. This act further provided that all persons arriving in this country, in order to be naturalized should be registered in the office of the clerk of the court, and the registration was required to contain the name, birthplace, age, nationality and alle giance of each alien, together with the coun try whence he or she had migrated, and the place of his or her intended settlement. This requirement of registration was for mally repealed by the Act of 1828, but had been virtually so by the Act of 1824, under which there was practically a consolidation of the registration and the declaration of intention. The Act of 1824 also introduced the naturalization of those who had come to this country under the age of eighteen, without requiring a prior declaration of intention. The grant of the power of naturalization to Congress by the Constitution was an exclusive one, as will be seen when in con nection with it there is taken the provision entitling the citizens of each state to all the privileges and immunities of citizens of the several states (Taney, C. J., in Thurlow v. The Commonwealth, 5 How. 504), and from this it followed that the passage of a

naturalization statute operated practically to repeal all the previously existing state statutes, since it was then no longer possible for a state court to grant the right of citi zenship merely upon a compliance with the state statutes. (Matthews i-. Rae. Fed. Cas., No. 9, 284; Lanz r. Randall. Fed. Cas., No. 8,080.) No power therefore remained in the states to change or vary the rule of naturaliza tion Congress imposed, by imposing new or different or additional conditions, qualifica tions or restrictions, or to authorize any foreign subject to denationalize himself and become a citizen of the United States, with out compliance with the conditions Con gress had prescribed (Minneapolis v. Reum, 56 Fed. Rep. 580 C. C. A.). If, therefore. the respective rulings of Judges Gregory and Marr did impose any qualification not war ranted by the language of the naturalization acts, their zeal to elevate the standard of American citizenship prevailed over the proper interpretation of the act. It is somewhat anomalous that at the time when the regulation of naturalization was bestowed upon Congress the reason for so doing was to guard against a too rigid instead of a too liberal mode of conferring citizenship (Collet v. Collet, 2 Dall. 294), and yet in these later days a single court is claimed to have naturalized in the neigh borhood of 5,000 individuals in a single day. and this suggests a glance at the tribunals in and by which the process of naturaliza tion is affected. Ordinarily when exclusive authority over a subject is given to Congress, the courts invested with the jurisdiction pertaining to it are the federal courts — for example, cases in admiralty — and it has even been held in some cases that Congress has no power to confer jurisdiction on state courts (Ex parte, Knowles, 5 Cal. 304), yet from the very first act of Congress upon the sub ject of naturalization, the exercise of the power has been entrusted to certain state tribunals, and it is no exaggeration to say