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commencement of the next session of Congress, in December, 1854. That those persons paid no rent for the house, occupying it only as a courtesy from the testator; but they paid the gas bills, and furnished their own supplies. That the defendant's testator returned to Washington with his family at the commencement of the next session of Congress, when he resumed possession of the house, and occupied it until the end of that session, when he broke up finally, and sent his furniture away. That the said note was protested for non-payment on the 25th day of August, 1854; and that notice thereof to the defendant's testator was left at the said house in Washington; and that on the said 25th day of August he and his family were at the White Sulphur Springs.

The court, on motion of the plaintiff, instructed the jury that the notice of demand, non-payment and protest was sufficient to charge the defendant's testator as endorser; to which the defendant excepted. After verdict for the plaintiff, the defendant moved for a new trial; which the court refused, and gave judgment on the verdict. The defendant again excepted, and obtained a supersedeas to the judgment.

Joynes, for the appellant.

J. Alfred Jones, for the appellee.

DANIEL, J. The note upon which the suit was brought was dated at Washington and made payable at a banking house in that city; and we must look to the law of that place for the rule by which to ascertain the true nature of the contract entered into by the endorser. No proof of that law having been given on the trial, the first question presenting itself is, whether said law is one of which the Circuit court was bound to take notice judicially.

As a general rule, no court takes judicial notice of a

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foreign law; and this rule has very properly, I think, January been recognized as determining the question of how far the courts of any one of the States formerly composing the United States were bound to take notice of the laws of any other one of those States. The relation of the United States to each other, in regard to all matters not surrendered to the General government by the Constitution, were those of foreign States in close friendship, each being sovereign and independent; and the courts have very generally held that therefore the laws of one State were to be proved in the courts of another only as other foreign laws. 1 Greenl. on Ev., § 489.

In section 490 of the same work, however, the author states that, because of the reciprocal relations between the National government and the several States, the courts of the United States take judicial notice of all the public laws of the respective States, whenever they are called upon to consider and apply them; and in like manner the courts of the several States take judicial notice of all public acts of Congress, including those which relate exclusively to the District of Columbia, without any formal proof. I have been unable to find. any case in which the latter member of the foregoing proposition, so far as it relates to the District of Columbia, has been in terms judicially announced by the Supreme Court of any one of the States, though it seems. to me that it must be as the author has stated it.

By the 8th section of the 1st article of the Constitution of the United States, the Congress was clothed with exclusive legislation over the District which should become the seat of the government of the United States; and by the 6th article it is declared that the Constitution, and the laws of the United States made in pursuance thereof, shall be the supreme law of the land, and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby; anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwith

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standing. The District of Columbia having become, by the cession of Maryland and Virginia and the acceptance of Congress, the seat of the government of the United States, it is difficult to conceive on what grounds it is to be said that a public act of Congress in relation to said District, passed in the exercise of its exclusive legislation over said District, is not a law of which the courts of the States were bound to take notice judicially. It is by comity only that contracts made in one State are enforced by the courts of another State according to the laws of the former; and no State is bound to enforce a contract made in another State which is contrary to its general policy and laws. But it is obvious that a State court, in enforcing a contract made in the District of Columbia according to the lex loci contractus, cannot proceed upon any notion of comity; in as much as if it did it would have a right to disregard such law if found in conflict with the law of the State; and this right it could not exercise without violating the Constitution, the lex loci contractus in such case being a law of Congress, which, if to be noticed at all, is to be observed as a supreme law, and binding upon the court, though it should be in conflict with the laws of the State. In other words, if in enforcing a contract made in the District. of Columbia a State court is bound to notice, at all, the laws of the place, regulating such contracts in the District of Columbia, it must treat them as it does any other public acts of Congress passed in pursuance of the Constitution, which it is required to administer, to-wit, as supreme public laws of the land-laws which the court is presumed to know and is bound to notice without requiring them to be first proved.

The act of Congress to which reference is had above is an act passed the 27th February, 1801, by which it is declared that the laws of the State of Virginia, as they now exist, shall be and continue in force in that part of

the District of Columbia which was ceded by the said State to the United States, and by them accepted for the permanent seat of government; and that the laws of the State of Maryland, as they now exist, shall be and continue in force in that part of said District which was ceded by that State to the United States, and by them accepted as aforesaid. Brightley's Digest, 251. At the time of the passage of this act the statute 3 and 4 Anne, ch. 9, in relation to promissory notes, was, as is conceded, and as is seen from the reports of several decisions of the Supreme Court of Maryland, cited at the bar, a law of that State; and by that statute all notes in writing payable to any person or persons, his, her, or their order, are assignable or indorsable over in the same manner as inland bills of exchange are or may be; and all persons to whom such notes are indorsed or assigned may have their actions thereon against the maker or any of the persons that indorsed the same in like manner as in cases of inland bills of exchange. By this law, thus made the law of the city of Washington, the indorsers, if duly protested and notified by protest, were liable on the note on which the suit was brought, in like manner as they would have been on a regularly protested inland bill of exchange; and by the 10th and 11th sections of ch. 144, Code 1849, an action of debt is given when any note or writing by which there is a promise, or undertaking, or obligation to pay money, if the same be signed by the party who is to be charged thereby, or his agent. And it is further declared that upon any such note which on its face is payable at a particular bank or a particular office thereof for discount and deposit, or the place of business of a savings institution or savings bank, and upon any bill of exchange, whether such note or bill be payable in or out of this State, if the same be protested, an action of debt may be maintained and judgment given jointly against VOL. XVI.-22

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all liable by virtue thereof, whether drawers, indorsers, or acceptors, or against one or any intermediate number of them, for the principal and charges of protest, with interest thereon from the date of such protest.

If the steps in relation to the protest and notice have been regular, there would thus, as I conceive, be nothing wanting to maintain the action. The protest is in regular form, and the only question remaining to be considered is as to the sufficiency of the notice.

None of the cases cited by counsel comprehend in their decisions all the points in respect to notice arising out of the proofs in this; though several of them bear a close resemblance to it in some important features. Thus, in the case of P. Chouteau v. Daniel Webster, 6 Metc. R. 1, in which the notice was held sufficient to charge the indorser, when the note on which the suit was brought, which was payable at New York, fell due, the indorser, Mr. W., was at Washington, attending to his duties at a session of Congress, as a senator from Massachusetts. His general domicil and place of business was in Boston, where he at all times had an agent who had the charge and management of his business affairs in his absence; though the holder of the note had no notice that he had such agent, nor had the indorser requested that notice should be sent to him at Boston. Notice of the non-payment of the note was seasonably put into the post-office at New York, directed to the indorser at Washington, where letters addressed by mail to members of the senate during the session of Congress were taken from the post-office by officers charged with that duty, and delivered to the members in their places when the senate was actually in session, and on other days were delivered by those officers at the members' lodg ings. In that case, as has been seen, the senate was in session, and Mr. Webster was in Washington at the time the notice was sent. In this case Congress had adjourned