NATURALIZATION self understood . . . when a man has been in this country five years and is unable to talk our language, in my opinion he is not fit to be admitted to citizenship." The action of Judge Gregory and his remarks just quoted, were widely commented upon at the time by the press, and at least one of the legal journals, and it was assumed by some of the critics that the judge had imposed a new requirement for citizenship. A few weeks later when the courts of the country resumed business after the summer recess, they found themselves with appar ently an additional requirement to impose on all who aspired to citizenship, as the result of an act of Congress passed early in the year, which was intended to exclude all aliens of an Anarchistic or Nihilistic type from enrolling themselves as citizens of the United States. In January, 1904, Judge Marr, sitting in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, the heart of the anthracite coal region, announced that every applicant for naturalization from the mining towns, where were thousands of Slavs, Lithuanians, Hungarians and Poles, would be required to prove to the court that he did not take part in the riots in the coal region which had made it neces sary to call out the state troops. These successive events all happening within a comparatively short space of time, have attracted attention to questions con nected with the naturalization of aliens, and raise the queries : What was the effect of the recent act of Congress? Was it declaratory of what was existing law or did it add a new condition of citizenship? And were or were not the respective positions of Judges Gregory and Marr correct, or did they exceed the powers conferred on them? To answer these questions it will be neces sary to look briefly at the history of legis lation upon this subject, the nature and extent of the powers exercised by our state courts in dealing with these questions, and lastly, the construction placed by various courts upon the several existing require
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ments enacted by Congress, to be demanded of those who aspire to enjoy citizenship with us. By the articles of confederation there was no provision made for naturalization, the subject was left entirely to the discre tion of the several confederated states. This had two obvious results: while any state could grant its own citizenship to an alien, that did not operate to give him the rights of a citizen in any other state, and unless he continued to -reside permanently within the boundaries of the state in which he had obtained citizenship he was likely to be involved in a maze of doubt and uncertainty, especially with regard to his power to hold and transmit property at a time when nearly every state placed restric tions of some description upon the right of aliens to hold or inherit. Furthermore, the policy of neighboring states was not uniform with regard to the facility or difficulty with which citizenship therein might be acquired, and this diversity tended to increase the distrust and suspicion with which neighboring states regarded one another. When the convention assembled to draft the Constitution, this subject was one which was early considered, and in the report of the committee of detail, presented by Mr. Rutledge on the 6th of August, 1787, we find the provision exactly as it appears in Section 8 of Article I of the Constitution, where among the enumerated powers of Congress is that "to establish a uniform rule of naturalization." So heartily were all the delegates in favor of it that this clause does not appear to have been the occasion of any discussion in the convention. By the ratification of the Constitution this power having been given to the general government, chapter 2 of the acts of the Second Session of the First Congress, passed on the 26th of March, 1790, made provision how it was to be exercised. This act differed from the present law in the following essen tial particulars: no preliminary declaration
