obtained in accordance with the local law before the date of adjudication.

Galbraith v. Grimshaw, [1910] A. C. 508, Loreburn, Macnaghten, James of Hereford, Dunedin, affirming Farwell, Buckley, Kennedy, and overruling Ridley.

The English doctrines which have thus been passed in review will be found to present much similarity to those prevalent in France. In each country the title of the bankruptcy trustees of the debtor's foreign domicile may be made available as paramount to that of a particular creditor attempting to take by subsequent execution or attachment, and, in the absence of a domestic bankruptcy, as carrying the debtor's property in the respective country, though in England with an exception as to his real estate. But in each country it is a matter of daily occurrence to declare the bankruptcy of a debtor not domiciled in it, and in France the cases where this may be done are not limited by the condition that there shall be no bankruptcy pending in the domicile, though it would seem that in England such a proceeding would leave nothing but the English real estate for a subsequent English adjudication to operate on. Further from either than these systems are from each other, stand on the one side the German law permitting execution notwithstanding the declaration of a foreign bankruptcy, and on the other the efforts made in Italy to maintain the unity of bankruptcy as advocated by Burgundus, Rodenburg, and Savigny. It may be found surprising that the English system should have gone as far as it has in support of the authority of the domicile in this matter, when it is remembered that in the matter of succession on death, in which the continental views were beyond all comparison more uniform in its favour, we have limited the authority of the domicile to the beneficial surplus of the personal estate, and in that part of the matter which alone resembled bankruptcy we have established separate administrations with differing priorities among the creditors of the succession. There were however two reasons: in bankruptcy the ecclesiastical courts were not present to lay hold of bona notabilia, and commercial convenience was present to plead in favour of unity of administration. Convenience will probably decide whether that unity should be advanced or restricted, or whether nothing should be done but to regulate within something like the extent which it has in this country. Regulation in any case it certainly

wants, and the extreme divergence of the existing views on the subject must convince all that neither judicial decision nor isolated legislation is likely to afford a remedy, that in fact order can only be established by international treaties and national legislation to give effect to them.

CHAPTER VII.

MOVABLES.

We have now gone through marriage, death, and bankruptcy, the three principal cases in which the conception of a person's fortune, or at least the movable portion of it, as an entirety, and necessarily therefore as connected with his person, is forced on us by circumstances. We must now consider the rights enjoyed in individual articles of property, movable or immovable, and the title to those rights. The law as to individual movables, as well as that on entire movable fortunes, has been widely considered to depend on the person of their owner, on account of a general connection supposed to exist between them and him, independent of special circumstances. It therefore forms a convenient passage between the cases which we have hitherto examined and that of immovables, for which no such general connection has been asserted except by the more extreme advocates of the influence of nationality on private law.

The general connection which has been supposed to exist between movables and their owner has been expressed in the maxims nomina creditoris ossibus inhærent, and mobilia sequuntur personam. The former, on the face of it, contemplates only debts, with regard to which, when we speak of the property in them, all that can be meant is the right of action for them, whether vested in the owner by their original creation or by their voluntary or involuntary assignment. Now such rights have always been considered to depend mainly on the lex loci contractus or solutionis, with perhaps some modification from the lex fori. Therefore such a maxim as nomina creditoris ossibus inhærent can hardly have been intended to assert any connection between the species of property it deals with and the owner's person, except for the purpose of those cases which suggested dealing with his fortune as an entirety. It amounts to no more than saying that in such cases, which are those of the so-called universal assignments, debts fall under the personal and not under the real statute; and it cannot be quoted in support of any

doctrine as to the law governing particular assignments of movables.

The other maxim, however, mobilia sequuntur personam, certainly may apply and has been intended to apply to corporeal chattels, and to assert that the transfer of property in them, individually and not as parts of an entirety, depends on the personal law of the owner. "Some are of opinion," says Story, "that all laws which regard movables are real; but at the same time they maintain that by a fiction of law all movables are supposed to be in the place of the domicile of the owner. Others are of opinion that such laws are personal, because movables have in contemplation of law no situs, and are attached to the person of the owner wherever he is; and, being so adherent to his person, they are governed by the same laws which govern his person, that is, by the law of the place of his domicile" (Conflict of Laws, § 377). Thus two different views as to the nature of laws and the ground of their international acceptance, each being completed by its appropriate fiction, have been made to lead to the same result. That result was also arrived at by Lord Loughborough in a third mode, treating the doctrine that movables follow the person not as assigning them a fictitious locality, either in the owner's domicile or in the place where he may happen to be, but as denying to them all locality. "It is a clear proposition," he said, "not only of the law of England but of every country in the world where law has the semblance of science, that personal property has no locality. The meaning of that is, not that personal property has no visible locality, but that it is subject to that law which governs the person of the owner. With respect to the disposition of it, with respect to the transmission of it either by succession or the act of the party, it follows the law of the person. The owner in any country may dispose of his personal property. If he dies, it is not the law of the country in which the property is but the law of the country of which he was a subject that will regulate the succession. For instance, if a foreigner having property in the funds here dies, that property is claimed according to the right of representation given by the law of his own country" (Sill v. Worswick (1791), 1 H. Bl. 690). The larger part of these remarks applies to the so-called universal assignments, and the case of succession furnished a very unapt parallel for any operation of the personal law on particular assignments, since the English rules on that case, as we have seen, limit the authority of the personal law to

the beneficial surplus, and are strict in requiring that title to the movable items composing the succession shall be made in accordance with the law which governs in their situation. But in spite of this, it is plain that Lord Loughborough intended to assert the law of the person as the rule for the disposition of particular movables.

A rule which has been reached by such various technical roads may be supposed to be dictated in reality by some strong substantial motives. One ground on which the law of a person may claim to regulate his movable property was stated by the majority of the court in Philips v. Hunter (1795) (2 H. Bl. 406). In the summary of their reasons which is given us, after noticing the claim of the lex situs founded on the protection which that law affords to the rights of ownership, they are made to observe that "the country where the proprietor resides, in respect to another species of protection afforded to him and his property, has a right to regulate his conduct relating to that property. This protection, afforded to the property of a resident subject which is situated in a foreign country, is not imaginary but real. The executive power of this kingdom protects the trade of its subjects in foreign countries, facilitates the recovery of their debts, and if justice be delayed or denied the king by the intervention of his ambassadors demands and obtains redress." But the occasional protection thus afforded has only to be named, in comparison with the continual protection on which the enjoyment of property depends, to show how little it can weigh in determining the law to be applied. It is moreover a protection, not against the justice of the country to which the proprietor sends his ships or his merchandize, but against the possible failure of that justice, and therefore presupposes its course as the rule.

Again, the doctrine that the law of the alienor should regulate the alienation of his movables appears to have been supported by a feeling thus expressed by Lord Kames: "The will of a proprietor or of a creditor is a good title jure gentium, that ought. to be effectual everywhere" (On Equity, b. 3, c. 8, s. 4). But Lord Kames, although he thus mentions proprietors as distinct from creditors, scarcely applies his view to more than the assignment of debts. And by the jus gentium he meant very much what the Roman prætor meant, a selection of elements common to different national laws, so that the reason he gives does not follow the track which is followed in common by all doctrines of