Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 10.djvu/915

TORRENS V. HAMMOND. 903 �Izens, and act upon the rights of citizens of other states, there arises a conflict of sovereign power, and a collision with the judicial powera granted to the United States, which renders the exercise of such a power incompatible with the rights of other states, and with the constitution of the United States." �The chief justice gives his assent to the first two propositions, but with regard to the third he says : �" When the two clauses in the constitution referred to in the first two prop- ositions are held to be no restriction, express or implied, upon the power of the state to pass banl^;rupt laws, I caunot see how such laws can be regarded as a violation of the constitution of the United States, upon the grounds stated in the third proposition. For banlcrupt laws, in the nature of things can have no force or operation beyond the limits of the state or nation by which they are passed, except by the comity of other states or nations ; and it is difflcult, therefore, to percoive how the bankrupt law of a state can be incompatible with the rights of other states, or come into collision with the judicial povvers granted to the general government. According to established principles of jurisprudence such laws have always been held valid and binding within the territorial limits of the state by which they are passed, although they may act upon eontracts made In another country, or upon the citizens of another nation; and they have never been considered on that account as an infringe. ment upon the rights of other nations or their citizens. But beyond the lim- its of the state they have no force except such as may be given to them by comity." �Although as to discharges under state insolvent lawa the views of Chief Justice Taney were never adopted by the supreme court, and such discharges have never been held valid in any court against non- resident creditors who had not made themselves parties to the pro- ceedings in the insolvent court, yet there certainly has been an in- creasing disposition to adopt the reasoning of the chief justice, and to refer the inefficacy of the state insolvent laws, as to debts due non-residents contracted after their enactment, to the general want of any extraterritorial force in all bankrupt laws, and not to the prohibition of the constitution of the United States against state laws impairing the obligation of eontracts. This appears in the reason- ing of Mr. Justice Clifford, in delivering the opinion of the supreme court in Baldwinr. Haie, 1 Wall. 223, 234. He says that, since the decision of the case of Ogden v. Saitiiders, whenever the question of the effect of state insolvent discharges has been before that court the answer has uniformly been that the question depended upon eitizen- ship; and in summing up the ground of the judgment he -was then announcing he states it to be that the "insolvent laws of one state cannot discharge the eontracts of citizens of other states, because ��� �