The difficulty attending these questions is far greater, when complicated with the fact that the courts of the United States exercise in each State a kind of imperium in imperio, so far as citizens of other States are concerned. If a New York merchant has a claim against a Boston merchant, which he might sue in New York, but cannot sue in the State courts of Massachusetts, and cannot, in fact, sue in New York, because he can neither make service on the person of the defendant there, nor on his property, if both person and property are in Massachusetts, he can, generally speaking, bring suit upon that claim in the Circuit Court of the United States sitting in Boston, and there make such service on the person, or such attachment of the property, as the laws of Massachusetts would permit a citizen of Massachusetts to make. If, therefore, the Boston creditors of the Boston insolvent began by attachment, and this was dissolved by the debtor passing into insolvency, the New York creditor might bring his suit in the Circuit Court in Boston, and on that writ attach the property, and thus secure his own debt, and deprive the Boston creditors of all the assets to which they could look. This was manifestly unjust; and in 1848, a statute of the United States was passed, putting attachments in the courts of the United States on the same footing with those made on process issuing from the State courts, (b) * We cannot certainly know the whole effect of this statute, until that shall have been determined by sufficient adjudication. We see nothing in it, however, to prevent process by summons to the debtor, and a judgment to be obtained against him, and an execution to be satisfied on his property. We should say, however, that the execution could not reach his property, certainly if his property had in the mean time been distributed among his creditors, and probably not if it had passed into the hands of the assignees. And possibly the property would be protected, if the first step towards legal insolvency had been taken, by that principle of relation of which we shall have to say more presently.1

(a) Marsh v. Putman, 3 Gray, 551.

(b) Chapter 18 of the statutes of the

30th Congress, approved March 14,1848.

1 The statute referred to has been incorporated in U. S. Rev. Stat. § 933, which provides that " an attachment of property upon process instituted in any court of the United States, to satisfy such judgment as may be recovered by the plaintiff therein, except in the cases mentioned in the preceding nine sections, shall be dissolved when any contingency occurs by which, according to the laws of the State where said court is held, such attachment would be dissolved upon like process instituted in the courts of said State: Provided, that nothing herein contained shall interfere with any priority

While it is certain that Congress may pass a bankrupt law, there is nothing in the Constitution which takes this power from the States. It would seem, therefore, that the United States and the several States have a concurrent power to enact a bankrupt law or an insolvent law. But as the Constitution gives to Congress the power to enact "uniform laws " on the subject of bankruptcies, it is a fair inference, that every national statute of bankruptcy is intended to execute this power and introduce a uniform system, (e) *If, therefore, while such a law existed, a State statute should pass precisely the same, it would be useless; and, if it differed at all from the national law, it would just so far defeat the purpose of that law, and the purpose of the Constitution in permitting Congress to pass such a law. It follows, therefore, that the several States may pass laws on this subject when there is no national law. But as soon as a national law is passed, it wholly supersedes and suspends every State law. (f)l Such is the latest, and, we, think, the best doctrine. But as it only supersedes and suspends, and does not repeal, we thence infer that the State laws, so suspended, would revive if the national law were repealed.

(e) "It is not the mere existence of the power, but its exercise, which is incompatible with the exercise of the same power by the States. It is not the right to establish these uniform laws, but the actual establishment, which is inconsistent with the partial acts of the States. It has been said that Congress has exercised this power, and by doing so has extinguished the power of the States, which cannot be revived by repealing the law of Congress. We do not think so. If the right of the States to pass a bankrupt law is not taken away by the mere grant of that power to Congress, it cannot be extinguished; it can only be suspended by the enactment of a general bankrupt law. The repeal of that law cannot, it is true, confer that power upon the States; but it removes a disability to its exercise which was created by the act of Congress." Marshall, C. J., in Sturges v. Crownin shield, 4 Wheat. 191.

(f) "So far as the State insolvent laws may prevent or even impede the operation of the bankrupt law, they must yield to it, in order that it may fully accomplish its object of establishing a uniform system of bankruptcy throughout the United States; but while the State laws thus yield, they are not entirely abrogated. They exist and operate with full vigor until the bankrupt law attaches upon the person and property of the bankrupt, and that is not until it is judicially ascertained that the petitioner is a person entitled to the benefits of the bankrupt law, by being declared a bankrupt of the United States in the payment of debts." The preceding nine sections relate to actions against defaulting or delinquent contractors and employe's of the Post Office Department. By virtue of § 933, it has been held that a State 'insolvent law which provides for the dissolution of attachments in a certain event, effects a dissolution of Federal attachments on the happening of that event. Mather v. Nesbit, 13 Fed. Rep. 872; Lafollye p. Carriere, 24 Fed. Rep. 346. U. S. Rev. Stats. § 915 gives the plaintiff in a Federal court the same rights as to attachments that he would be entitled to in the State courts. This statute was construed in Gumbel v. Pitkin. 124 U. S. 131.