Argument for Appellees. which can be supposed to operate upon the capacity of French citizens to inherit lands in the United States, must be found in article 7 of the Consular Convention concluded between this country and France, on the 23d day of February, 1853.1 But the operation prescribed for this article, (so far as the same becomes material in the present controversy,) is limited, by the terms of the article, to "the States of the Union." By this language, the members of the Union become distinguished, at once, from the republic they compose. And that neither the District of Columbia, nor a Territory of the United States, falls within the definition of a State, as that term is employed in the Constitution, or in the Acts of Congress, has long been familiar to all. Hepburn v. Ellzey, 2 Cranch, 445; New Orleans v. Winter, 1 Wheat. 94; Barney v. Baltimore, 6 Wall. 287; Jost v. Jost, 1 Mackey, 487. Between the United States, as an integral government, country, or nation, and the several States constituting our Union, a distinction is admitted and maintained throughout our convention with France. If the parties to the convention have actually limited the operation of this article to the States of the Union, it cannot be necessary to investigate their reasons for establishing that restriction. The concessions, on the part of the United States, expressed in this article of the convention are: (1) The adoption, as part of the supreme law of the land, of certain existing state laws, so long as they may remain in operation; and (2) the engagement of the President, to recommend to those States, by whose laws aliens are not permitted to hold real estate, the passage of enabling enactments. They are not the obligations that would be assumed by the United States, when entering into treaty engagements affecting either the Territories, respecting which Congress may make all needful rules and regulations, or the District of Columbia, over which Congress may, in all cases whatsoever, exercise exclusive legislation. They are the stipulations of the United States in relation to subjects over which the laws of the several States are recog 1 This article will be found in the opinion of the court, post, 268. Argument for Appellees. nized as supreme. And these stipulations cease to be applicable or operative, where the legislative power of the Union becomes, under the Constitution, paramount and peculiar. That such was the contemporaneous construction placed by the United States upon this article of the treaty, is shown from the Circular Letter addressed by Secretary Marcy,1 October 19, 1853, to the governors of the several States, and the omission of the President to recommend to Congress any legislation on the subject. The laws of the several States, as those laws existed at the date of the convention, may be supposed to have been susceptible, in general, of easy ascertainment and comparison. Before proceeding, in the next branch of the argument, to examine the local law on the subject, certain positions taken by the appellants may be noticed here. An ingenious interpretation is sought to be given to the treaty, by so transposing its terms, as to require the word " it," where first occurring in the 1st clause of the 7th article, to refer and apply to the whole of the next following clause in the same article. But as the language of the article remains free from ambiguity, when read in the order in which the two clauses are actually found to occur, they cannot be dislocated or inverted for the purpose of creating a meaning for that language. Doe V. Considine, 6 Wall. 458. To his Excellency the Governor of 1 DEPARTMENT OF STATE. WASHINGTON. October 19, 1853. Sir: I have the honor to transmit to your Excellency a copy of the Consular Convention of the 23rd February last between the United States and France, and to invite your Excellency's attention to the second paragraph of the seventh article. Pursuant to the stipulation therein contained, the President engages to recommend to those States of the Union, by whose laws aliens are not permitted to hold real estate, the passage of such laws as may be necessary for the purpose of conferring that right. In accordance with the stipulation adverted to, the President directs me to communicate to your Excellency his recommendation that if, pursuant to existing laws, French subjects shall not be allowed to hold real estate in that right may by law be conferred upon them. I have the honor to be, etc., W. L. MARCY. Argument for Appellees. It is insisted that upon the construction placed by the appellees upon this article of the treaty, the citizens of France were left without benefit from the compact. But if France received no advantage from the article, she at least yielded nothing by adopting it. Under the provisions of the Code Napoleon, the citizen of another country had been exempted from the droit d'aubaine, in France, only when by treaty between the two nations, the French citizen had been thus relieved in the foreign country. By the law of July 14, 1819, however, these provisions were abolished, and the capacity of aliens to acquire, hold and transmit real and personal estate was rendered-as it still remains that of French citizens. The privileges conferred by the 7th article of the treaty upon citizens of the United States were, therefore, no greater than those which were conceded under the general law of France, at the date of the treaty. "The ulterior right of establishing reciprocity," reserved in the third clause of the article, enabled the government of France to impose, at its discretion, upon citizens of the United States, such incapacities as might be laid, in our own country, upon citizens of France, under the laws of the States, Territories or District of Columbia. Hence, if, by reason of those laws, the citizens of France derived no advantage from the article, none could continue to accrue except by the sufferance of that country to citizens of the United States. Were it conceded that the words, "States of the Union," as employed in article 7 of the convention, properly embrace the District of Columbia, it would still be essential for the appellants, in order to entitle them to the protection of the article, to establish the existence within the district, both at the date of the convention and at the time of the death of their ancestor, of some law whereby French citizens or subjects, residing in France, had been rendered competent to take lands, by descent, from a citizen of the United States. By the common law, as the same was transplanted into Maryland, the alien was excluded from the acquisition of land Argument for Appellees. by descent. Buchanan v. Deshon, 1 Har. & G. 280, 289; Guyer's Lessee v. Smith, 22 Maryland, 239; S. C. 85 Am. Dec. 650. The act of Maryland of December 19, 1791, ratifying her cession to the United States, provides, in effect, in its 6th section, that "any foreigner" may, by deed or will, take and hold lands within the ceded territory, and such land may be conveyed by him, and be transmitted to and inherited by his heirs and relations, as if he and they were citizens of Maryland. It has long been settled, however, that these provisions do not remove the disability, arising from common law principles, of an alien to inherit lands lying in this District from a citizen thereof. Spratt v. Spratt, 1 Pet. 343; Spratt v. Spratt, 4 Pet. 393; Jost v. Jost, 1 Mackey, 493. Nor are the restrictions and disabilities removed by the act of March 3, 1887, 24 Stat. 476, c. 340. A later statute which does not expressly repeal, in whole or in part, any previous legislation upon the subject to which it relates, cannot be viewed as wholly superseding such legislation by substitution, revision or otherwise, unless the new statute either embraces, in itself, the entire field covered by former enactments, or manifests a plain intention to furnish, per se, a new and exclusive system upon the subject to which they refer. United States v. Tynen, 11 Wall. 88, 92; Henderson's Tobacco, 11 Wall. 652; Murdock v. Memphis, 20 Wall. 590, 617; King v. Cornell, 106 U. S. 395; Red Rock v. Henry, 106 U. S. 596; Cook County Nat. Bank v. United States, 107 U. S. 445; Pana v. Bowler, 107 U. S. 529. The basis, it is evident, of this proposition, is that repeals by implication are not to be favored; that they are founded upon the repugnance which arises between the new law and the old; and that the extent of such repugnance is the measure of such repeals. Arthur v. Homer, 96 U. S. 137; Ex parte Crow Dog, 109 U. S. 556; Chew Heong v. United States, 112 U. S. 536; United States v. Langston, 118 U. S. 389; Chicago Railway Co. v. United States, 127 U. S. 406. The act, in its title, is "An Act to restrict the ownership of Opinion of the Court. real estate in the Territories to American citizens, and so forth." It contains no repealing clause. The language of the first three sections is the language of prohibition. It is to the "violation of the provisions" in those sections that the penal clauses of the fourth section apply. And as titles by inheritance are excepted from its prohibitions, the act, as to such titles, is neither penal nor inhibitory. Titles by inheritance being thus exempted from the prohibitions of the section, to such titles the act is without application; and they are to be regulated by the laws in force at the time of the passage of the act. MR. JUSTICE FIELD, after stating the case, delivered the opinion of the court. The complainants are both citizens of France. The fact that one of them was born in Pekin, China, does not change his citizenship. His father was a Frenchman, and by the law of France a child of a Frenchman, though born in a foreign country, retains the citizenship of his father. In this case, also, his father was engaged, at the time of the son's birth, in the diplomatic service of France, being its minister plenipotentiary to China, and by public law the children of ambassadors and ministers accredited to another country retain the citizenship of their father. The question presented for solution, therefore, is whether the complainants, being citizens and residents of France, inherit an interest in the real estate in the District of Columbia of which their uncle, a citizen of the United States and a resident of the District, died seized. In more general terms the question is: can citizens of France take land in the District of Columbia by descent from citizens of the United States? The complainants contend that they inherit an estate in the property described, by force of the stipulation of article 7 of the convention between the United States and France, concluded February 23, 1853, and the provisions of the act of Congress of March 3, 1887, to restrict the ownership of real estate in the Territories to American citizens. Before consid |