Opinion of the Court. Westlake's International Law (1st ed.), § 388: Piggott on Foreign Judgments, 209, 210. Lord Kames, in his Principles of Equity, cited and approved by Mr. Justice Story in his Commentaries on the Conflict of Laws, after having said, "The proper place for punishment is where the crime is committed, and no society takes concern in any crime but what is hurtful to itself;" and recognizing the duty to enforce foreign judgments or decrees for civil debts or damages; adds, "But this includes not a decree decerning for a penalty; because no court reckons itself bound to punish, or to concur in punishing, any delict committed extra territorium." 2 Kames on Equity (3d ed.) 326, 366; Story's Conflict of Laws, 600, 622. It is true that if the prosecution in the courts of one country for a violation of its municipal law is in rem, to obtain a forfeiture of specific property within its jurisdiction, a judgment of forfeiture, rendered after due notice, and vesting the title of the property in the State, will be recognized and upheld in the courts of any other country in which the title to the property is brought in issue. Rose v. Himely, 4 Cranch, 241: Hudson v. Guestier, 4 Cranch, 293; Bradstreet v. Neptune Ins. Co., 3 Sumner, 600, 605; Pigott on Foreign Judgments. 264. But the recognition of a vested title in property is quite different from the enforcement of a claim for a pecuniary penalty. In the one case, a complete title in the property has been acquired by the foreign judgment; in the other, further judicial action is sought to compel the payment by the defendant to the plaintiff of money in which the plaintiff has not as vet acquired any specific right. The application of the rule to the courts of the several States and of the United States is not affected by the provisions of the Constitution and of the act of Congress, by which the judgments of the courts of any State are to have such faith and credit given to them in every court within the United States as they have by law or usage in the State in which they were rendered. Constitution, art. 4, sect. 1; Act of May 26, 1790, c. 11, 1 Stat. 122; Rev. Stat. § 905. Those provisions establish a rule of evidence, rather than of Opinion of the Court. jurisdiction. While they make the record of a judgment, rendered after due notice in one State, conclusive evidence in the courts of another State, or of the United States, of the matter adjudged, they do not affect the jurisdiction, either of the court in which the judgment is rendered, or of the court in which it is offered in evidence. Judgments recovered in one State of the Union, when proved in the courts of another government, whether state or national, within the United States, differ from judgments recovered in a foreign country in no other respect than in not being reëxaminable on their merits, nor impeachable for fraud in obtaining them, if rendered by a court having jurisdiction of the cause and of the parties. Hanley v. Donoghue, 116 U. S. 1, 4. In the words of Mr. Justice Story, cited and approved by Mr. Justice Bradley speaking for this court, "The Constitution did not mean to confer any new power upon the States, but simply to regulate the effect of their acknowledged jurisdiction over persons and things within their territory. It did not make the judgments of other States domestic judgments to all intents and purposes, but only gave a general validity, faith and credit to them as evidence. No execution can issue upon such judgments without a new suit in the tribunals of other States. And they enjoy not the right of priority or lien which they have in the State where they are pronounced, but that only which the lex fori gives to them by its own laws in their character of foreign judgments." Story's Conflict of Laws, & 609; Thompson v. Whitman, 18 Wall. 457, 462, 463. A judgment recovered in one State, as was said by Mr. Justice Wayne, delivering an earlier judgment of this court, "does not carry with it, into another State, the efficacy of a judgment upon property or persons, to be enforced by execution. To give it the force of a judgment in another State, it must be made a judgment there; and can only be executed in the latter as its laws may permit." McElmoyle v. Cohen, 13 Pet. 312, 325. The essential nature and real foundation of a cause of action are not changed by recovering judgment upon it; and the Opinion of the Court. technical rules, which regard the original claim as merged in the judgment, and the judgment as implying a promise by the defendant to pay it, do not preclude a court, to which a judgment is presented for affirmative action, (while it cannot go behind the judgment for the purpose of examining into the validity of the claim,) from ascertaining whether the claim is really one of such a nature that the court is authorized to enforce it. Louisiana v. New Orleans, 109 U. S. 285, 288, 291; Louisiana v. St. Martin's Parish, 111 U. S. 716; Chase v. Curtis, 113 U. S. 452, 464; Boynton v. Ball, 121 U. S. 457, 466. The only cases cited in the learned argument for the plaintiff, which tend to support the view that the courts of one State will maintain an action upon a judgment rendered in another State for a penalty incurred by a violation of her municipal laws, are Spencer v. Brockway, 1 Ohio, 259, in which an action was sustained in Ohio upon a judgment rendered in Connecticut upon a forfeited recognizance to answer for a violation of the penal laws of that State; Healy v. Root, 11 Pick. 389, in which an action was sustained in Massachusetts upon a judgment rendered in Pennsylvania in a qui tam action on a penal statute for usury; and Indiana v. Helmer, 21 Iowa, 370, in which an action by the State of Indiana was sustained in the courts of Iowa upon a judgment rendered in Indiana in a prosecution for the maintenance of a bastard child. The decision in each of those cases appears to have been mainly based upon the supposed effect of the provisions of the Constitution and the act of Congress as to the faith and credit due to a judgment rendered in another State, which had not then received a full exposition from this court; and the other reasons assigned are not such as to induce us to accept those decisions as satisfactory precedents to guide our judgment in the present case. From the first organization of the courts of the United States, nearly a century ago, it has always been assumed that the original jurisdiction of this court over controversies between a State and citizens of another State, or of a foreign Opinion of the Court. country, does not extend to a suit by a State to recover penalties for a breach of her own municipal law. This is shown both by the nature of the cases in which relief has been granted or sought, and by acts of Congress and opinions of this court more directly bearing upon the question. The earliest controversy in this court, so far as appears by the reports of its decisions, in which a State was the plaintiff, is that of Georgia v. Brailsford. At February term, 1792, the State of Georgia filed in this court a bill in equity against Brailsford, Powell and Hopton. British merchants and copartners, alleging that on August 4. 1782, during the Revolutionary War, the State of Georgia enacted a law, confiscating to the State all the property within it (including debts due to British merchants or others residing in Great Britain) of persons who had been declared guilty or convicted, in one or other of the United States, of offences which induced a like confiscation of their property within the States of which they were citizens; and also sequestering, and directing to be collected for the benefit of the State, all debts due to merchants or others residing in Great Britain, and confiscating to the State all the property belonging and debts due to subjects of Great Britain; and that by the operation of this law all the debts due from citizens of Georgia to persons who had been subjected to the penalties of confisca tion in other States, and of British merchants and others residing in Great Britain, and of all other British subjects, were vested in the State of Georgia. The bill further alleged that one Spalding, a citizen of Georgia, was indebted to the defendants upon a bond, which by virtue of this law was transferred from the obligees and vested in the State; that Brailsford was a citizen of Great Britain, and resided there from 1767 till after the passing of the law, and that Hopton's and Powell's property (debts excepted) had been confiscated by acts of the legislature of South Carolina; that Brailsford, Hopton and Powell had brought an action and recovered judgment against Spalding upon this bond, and had taken out execution against him, in the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Georgia, and that the parties to that Opinion of the Court. action had confederated together to defraud the State. Upon the filing of the bill, this court, without expressing any opinion upon the merits of the case, granted a temporary injunction to stay the money in the hands of the marshal of the Circuit Court, until the title to the bond as between the State of Georgia and the defendants could be tried. 2 Dall. 402. At February term, 1793, upon a motion to dissolve that injunction, this court held that if the State of Georgia had the title in the debt (upon which no opinion was then expressed) she had an adequate remedy at law, by action upon the bond; but, in order that the money might be kept for the party to whom it belonged, ordered the injunction to be continued till the next term, and, if Georgia should not then have instituted her action at common law, to be dissolved. 2 Dall. 415. Such an action was brought accordingly, and was tried by a jury at the bar of this court at February term, 1794, when the court was of opinion, and so charged the jury, that the act of the State of Georgia did not vest the title in the debt in the State at the time of passing it, and that by the terms of the act the debt was not confiscated, but only sequestered, and the right of the obligees to recover it revived on the treaty of peace; and the jury returned a verdict for the defendants. 3 Dall. 1. It thus appears that in Georgia v. Brailsford the State did not sue for a penalty, or upon a judgment for a penalty, imposed by a municipal law, but to assert a title, claimed to have absolutely vested in her, not under an ordinary act of municipal legislation, but by an act of war, done by the State of Georgia as one of the United States (the Congress of which had not then been vested with the power of legislating to that effect) to assist them against their common enemy by confiscating the property of his subjects; and that the only point decided by this court, except as to matters of procedure, was that the title had not vested in the State of Georgia by the act in question. In Pennsylvania v. Wheeling Bridge, 13 How. 518, this court, upon a bill in equity by the State of Pennsylvania against a corporation of Virginia, ordered the taking down or |