The general effect of the act of 1855 was well stated in Kelly v. Owen, 7 Wall., 498, as follows:

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As we construe this act, it confers the privileges of citizenship upon women married to citizens of the United States if they are of the class of persons for whose naturalization the previous acts of Congress provide. The terms married" or "who shall be married" do not refer, in our judgment, to the time when the ceremony of marriage is celebrated, but to a state of marriage. They mean that whenever a woman who under previous acts might be naturalized is in a state of marriage to a citizen, whether his citizenship existed at the passage of the act or subsequently, or before or after the marriage, she becomes, by that fact, a citizen also. His citizenship, whenever it exists, confers under the act citizenship upon her. The construction which would restrict the act to women whose husbands at the time of marriage are citizens would exclude far the greater number, for whose benefit, as we think, the act was intended. Its object, in our opinion, was to allow her citizenship to follow that of her husband without the necessity of any application for naturalization on her part, and if this was the object there is no reason for the restriction suggested.

To the same effect see Kane v. McCarthy (1869, 63 N. C., 299) and Luhrs v. Eimer (1880, 80 N. Y., 171).

A native citizen (woman) marries a foreign citizen-A resident foreigner. In the one case found upon this point (Comitis v. Parkerson, 1893, 56 Fed., 556) the husband had taken up a permanent residence in the United States and had established here a business. In holding that by marriage to such an alien the wife did not lose her American citizenship, the court said:

The question may be generalized thus: Does a woman who was a citizen of the United States, who never intended to leave it and never did leave it, become expatriated and become an alien by marriage with a man who had been a subject of Italy, but who, previous to his marriage, had settled in Louisiana and had forever severed himself from Italy?

The present case is supported by a dictum in Kreitz v. Behrensmeyer, supra, to this effect:

The citizenship of a woman thus acquired [by marriage with a citizen husband] is not lost by the subsequent death of her husband and her afterwards intermarrying with an alien.

These cases should be considered in connection with Pequignot v. Detroit, infra, from which it may be distinguished on its facts (and was so distinguished by the court), though the spirit of the two is opposed.

A nonresident foreigner.-Since the courts in the early cases held that the status of an alien woman was not changed by her marriage to an American citizen, they should hold, to be consistent, that the status of an American woman was not changed by her marriage to a foreigner. Such a conclusion was reached in Shanks v. Dupont, 1830, 3 Pet., 242. The question arose in two earlier cases, Sewell v. Lee, 1812, 9 Mass., 363, and Barzizas v. Hopkins, 1824, 2 Randolph, 276. In the first, however, the court expressly refused to decide the question since the defendant had by his plea admitted a capacity to sue, and in the second the decision might have been placed on another ground. (See also Beck v. McGillis, 1850, 9 Barb., 35, and Jennes v. Landes, 1897, 84 Fed., 13.)

In the most recent case in which the question seems to have been up (Ruckgaber v. Moore, 1900, 104 Fed., 947), the court declared that a woman marrying an alien becomes a foreign citizen, provided there"be that withdrawal from her native country, or equivalent act,

expressive of her election to renounce her former citizenship as a consequence of her marriage."

A naturalized American citizen (woman) marries a foreign citizen.-But one case has been found on this point in which the facts were that an alien of French parentage by her marriage with an American citizen had been deemed, under the act of 1855, to have been naturalized as a citizen. From this husband she was divorced and later married her second husband, an alien Frenchman, who had never even declared his intention to become a citizen. The court held that she was an alien and incompetent to sue in the Federal courts. As already stated, while the court in Comitis v. Parkerson, supra, distinguished the two cases by stating that

In that case [Pequignot v. Detroit] the facts characterizing the residence of the husband and wife may have made it what the public writers term temporary residence," whereas the intent of the plaintiff and her husband was to remain in the United States always,

yet the spirit of the two cases is opposed, and it may be doubted if both can stand.

It may be stated in conclusion that, if the courts take the position announced in Comitis v. Parkerson, and also follow the holdings in such cases as Ware v. Wisner, supra; Halsey v. Beer, supra (to the effect that an alien woman nonresident marrying a nonresident American citizen becomes thereby an American citizen), and if foreign countries assume the same position we shall have in every case of naturalization by marriage, for which naturalization the statutes of England, France, Germany, and America provide, a case of dual allegiance, because under the rule announced in Halsey v. Beer, the King of Italy might insist that the native-born citizen wife of Augustine Comitis became a subject, by that marriage, of Italy, and it must be deemed immaterial, under the decision of Halsey v. Beer, that the husband in the Comitis case was a permanent resident of America. From the standpoint of comity and the avoidance of conditions of dual allegiance, the decision in Pequignot v. Detroit, seems the sounder.

(3) NATURALIZATION BY NATURALIZATION OF THE FATHER.

Since the statute of 1795 it has been uniformly held that a minor child was naturalized by the naturalization of the father. (Matter of Morrison, 1861, 22 How. Pr., 99; People v. McNally, 1880, 59 How. Pr., 500; State v. Mims, 1879, 26 Minn., 183; Prentice v. Miller, 1890, 82 Cal., 570; Dorsey v. Brigham, 1898, 177 Ill., 250; and see Haynes v. Ray, 1880, 54 Iowa, 109.)

But the taking of the preliminary steps looking toward naturalization (e. g., making of the declaratory oath) has no such effect. (Berry v. Hull, 1892, 6 N. Mex., 643, 660; In re Conway, 1863, 17 Wis., 526; In re Moses, 1897, 83 Fed., 995; and see ex parte Overington, 1812, 6 Binn., 371; unless the father dies before completing his naturalization. Schrimpf v. Settegast, 1873, 38 Tex., 96.)

Under the case of Campbell v. Gordon, 1809, 6 Cranch., 176, it must be considered immaterial that the child is a nonresident at the time of the parent's naturalization. An extreme case in this point is Young v. Peck, 1839, 21 Wend., 389, where the foreign-born child remained in her native country for fifty years, during which time she

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was married to and lived (until his death) with an alien husband. The court held she was a citizen, but the grounds of the decision are not clear. (Ludlam v. Ludlam, 1860, 31 Barb., 486, at 491, S. C. affirmed on appeal 26 N. Y., 356.) Obviously it must follow, in view of these decisions, that if the children are resident in America at the time of the father's naturalization they will be considered to be naturalized by that act, and such has been the holding of the courts. (West v. West, 1840, 8 Paige, Ch. 433; State . Penny, 1850, 10 Ark., 621; O'Connor v. State, 1860, 9 Fla., 215; North Noonday Mining Company . Orient Mining Company, 1880, 6 Sawy., 299; State v. Andriano, 1887, 92 Mo., 70, 76.)

It will thus be seen that there are two cases, Campbell v. Gordon and Young v. Peck, in which the question arose as to whether or not children born abroad and resident there at the time of the naturalization of their parents in America became by that act citizens of the United States. Both cases are peculiar on their facts. In Campbell v. Gordon the daughter came to America while she was yet a minor and before the passage of the act by virtue of which she was afterwards declared a citizen. The effect of the judgment was that the statute applied retrospectively. It must be said, however, either that the court considered that the act was intended to cover all aliens whose parents had been naturalized or who had come to America up to the date of the passage of the act, or that residence in America. at the time of the perents' naturalization is not necessary. Young. Peck, as already indicated, the ground of the decision is not clear. Following the argument of the chancellor, it is to be rested on the fact that the father's citizenship was due to the readjustment of allegiances at the end of the war, and that a citizenship so gained is sui generis.

This conclusion, however, that there can be any different kinds of citizenship is not in accord with the determinations made in other cases, for in Crane . Reeder (1872, 25 Mich., 303), that precise question was up before the court. It appeared there that the citizenship of the parent of the person in question was acquired by his continued residence in the United States after the treaty of 1797, in which it was provided, as is usual in such treaties, that all British subjects remaining within the United States beyond a certain time. should be deemed to have elected to become American citizens. The court held that citizenship acquired in this manner was in no way different from that acquired in any other way. That citizenship was citizenship, however obtained. With that point out of the case of Young . Peck we are forced to the position that residence in the United States at the time of the naturalization of the parent, or, indeed, during minority, is unnecessary, and that whenever the child comes into this country he is to be treated as a citizen. In all the cases cited subsequent to Young v. Peck in which the courts used language to the effect that the minor children must be resident here at the time of the naturalization of the father the fact was that the children had been so resident, and the statement of the court to that effect, therefore, was immaterial, a mere dictum.

This leaves us, therefore, with the following questions open for determination: First, must the child reside in America at the time of the father's naturalization, or is it sufficient that he come to America at any time before he reaches majority? And, secondly, is he to

be considered a citizen before he acquires a residence in the United States that is, does he become, as does the wife of one naturalizing himself in America, a citizen by virtue of such naturalization irrespective of the place in which he lives?

It is to clear the law on this point that the recommendations concerning a revision of the statute relating to naturalization by naturalization of the parent are made.

Illegitimate children.-It has been held that an illegitimate child becomes a citizen by the naturalization of his reputed father, who had before naturalization married his mother. (Dale v. Irwin, 1875, 78 Ill., 170; and see, as bearing on this point, Bloithe v. Ayres, 1892, 96 Cal., 532, and Guyer e. Smith, 1864, 22 Md., 239.)

(4) NATURALIZATION BY NATURALIZATION OF MOTHER.

The cases are sufficient to show that where a widow takes out her naturalization papers her minor children become thereby citizens. (Brown e. Shilling, 1856, 9 Md.. 74.) It is not clear, however, as to just what is the naturalizing power where a widow, having alien children by a former husband, marries an American citizen. In Kreitz. Behrensmeyer, supra, the court said:

And the children of such a woman (when naturalized by marrying a citizen), under the age of 21 years, become citizens by virtue of her citizenship.

While the cases on this subject are neither numerous nor express, it is, however, settled doctrine that the minor children of a widow are naturalized by the mother's marriage to an American citizen or to one who becomes an American citizen during the minority of the children in question. (See, on this point, U. S. v. Kellar, 1882, 13 Fed., 82; Gunn v. Hubbard, 1888, 97 Mo., 331; People v. Newell, 1885, 38 Hun, 78; Dale v. Irwin, 78 Ill., 170, 185; U. S. v. Rodgers, 1906, 144 Fed., 711.)