A distinction is made in practically all countries between domiciled and non-domiciled aliens, with reference to the legal burdens that may be imposed and the civil and political rights that may be enjoyed.

An alien becomes domiciled in a particular place when he takes up residence there with an intention to remain for an indefinite time (animo manendi). When so domiciled, all matters other than political, which relate to his personal status, are regulated by the lex domicilii. Thus the local law governs his power to enter into contracts, regulates succession to personal property, and the validity of wills with reference thereto, and, in the United States, England, and many of her dependencies, determines the validity of marriages. In France, and some other countries, however, this fast subject is held regulated by the individual's national law wherever he may be domiciled. Thus, while the marriage in the United States of a Frenchman domiciled in the United States held valid by the United States law if its provisions governing marriages are satisfied, it would not be held valid in France, un-the requirements of the French law were also satisfied.

Domicile is immediately fixed when residence is taken up with the intent to remain for an indefinite length of time. Thus, for example, in 1781 when the English captured from the Dutch the island of St Eustatius, a native-born English citizen who had arrived at the island but a few hours before with the intention of there for an indefinite length of time, was held to be domiciled there and his property subject to the same liabilities as those el the other residents of the place. The same doctrine was applied by the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of The Venus.6 In this case with reference to the status of such a domiciled alien in time of war the court said: "The next question is, what are the consequences to which this acquired domicile may legally expose the person entitled to it, in the event of a war taking place between the government under which he resides and that to which he owes a permanent allegiance? A neutral in his situation, if he should engage in open hostilities with the other belligerent, would be considered and treated as an enemy. A citizen of the other belligerent could not be so considered, because he could not, by any act of hostility, render himself, strictly speaking, an enemy, in the strict sense of the word, yet he is deemed such with reference to the seizure of so much of his property concerned in the trade of the enemy, as is connected with his residence. It is found adhering to the enemy. He is himself adhering to the enemy, although not criminally so, unless he engages in acts of hostility against his native country, or, probably refuses, when required by his country, to return. The same rule as to property engaged in the commerce of the enemy applies to neutrals; and for the same reason. The converse of this rule inevitably applies to the subject of a belligerent State domiciled in a neutral country; he is deemed a neutral by both belligerents, with reference to the trade which he carries on with the adverse belligerent, and with all the rest of the world.

"But this national character which a man acquires by residence, may be thrown off at pleasure, by a return to his native country, or even by turning his back on the country in which he resided, on his way to another. To use the language of Sir W. Scott, it is an adventitious character gained by residence and which ceases by non-residence. It no longer adheres to the party from the moment he puts himself in motion, bona fide, to quit the country sine animo revertendi."