Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 1.djvu/683

LA VIN V. EJUGRANT INDUSÏBIAL SAVINGS BANK. 675 �because, whatever hardship may attend their application in particular instances, the principle of personal liberty embodied in them — the preservation of private rights against infringe- ment, except with the consent of the owner, or "by due pro- cess of lav?" — is of paramount importance and vital to the welfare of the community. The present case seems to me to be fairly within the letter of the spirit of the constitutional guaranty. �For these reasons it must be held that the proceeding taken under the laws of Nevsr York, which are set up as jus- tifying the defendant's refusai to pay to the plaintiff the amount of his deposits, is void as to him, because it -would deprive him of his property without "due process of law." �It is also olaimed that, if the New York letters are void, the payment to the administrator may be jûstified under the Ehode Island letters, on the principle that though a foreign administrator cannot sue here without obtaining ancillary letters, yet a payment to him is a good payment and dis- charges the debt. Parsons v. Lyman, 20 N. Y. 103. �But it is clear that the Ehode Island letters bave no greater validity than the New York letters. The Ehode Island statute undertakes to do directly what the New York statute aims to accomplish by the more indirect method of declaring a judi- cial decision conclusive against a person not a party to it. In Ehode Island the court does not go through the form of decid- ing that the person is dead, but, conceding that he is only absent, distributes his estate "as if he were dead," without any notice or process upon him whatever. �I do not see how any respectable argument can be made that this is not depriving him of his property without due process of law, or how it can be necessary or reasonably proper for the proper government of the persons and the property within the jurisdiction of the state. That the state may make a law for takiug care of abandoned estates, with proper provisions for notice to the absent or unknown owners, will notbe denied, but this is not such a law. Moreover, this property was not in Ehode Island, nor sabject to its jurisdic- tion. It was in this state. The fact that the pass-book hap- ��� �