Statement of the Case.

true that the Hamburg-American Packet Company has its principal business office in this country located in the city and county of New York. The actual facts are that the said company has its docks, where all its steamers land and take and discharge cargo, situated in the State of New Jersey. There also is the office of the company for the transaction of the matters immediately connected with all its actual industrial operations in this country. Said company advertises that it has an office in the city of New York, which is the office of the firm of Kunhardt & Co., is rented by Kunhardt & Co., and entirely under their control. It is in fact the office of

Kunhardt & Co., agents for the Hamburg-American Packet Company; and in said office of Kunhardt & Co., and by Kunhardt & Co. as agents, the usual monetary and financial transactions of said Hamburg-American Packet Company are conducted. All the actual physical business of said HamburgAmerican Packet Company within the United States, however, is conducted within the State of New Jersey, as aforesaid. It is not true that Kunhardt & Co. have, jointly with said Hamburg-American Packet Company, infringed the letters patent set forth in the bill of complaint. All operations of loading and unloading the cargo from the said HamburgAmerican Packet Company's vessels in this country are performed in New Jersey as aforesaid, under the immediate direction and control of a superintendent especially employed and appointed by the Hamburg-American Packet Company for that purpose and whose salary or compensation is paid by said company, and with the direction and details of whose supervision of said loading and unloading the firm of Kunhardt & Co. have no concern and exercise no control."

On January 7, 1889, the company moved to dismiss the bill for want of jurisdiction.

On January 11, 1889, the motion to amend and the motion to dismiss were heard together; and the court denied the motion to dismiss, "but without prejudice to any subsequent demurrer, plea, answer or motion to dismiss, because of lack of jurisdiction;" gave the plaintiff leave to amend the bill, as prayed for, nunc pro tunc as of the time when it was filed;

Statement of the Case.

and gave the defendants leave to answer, plead or demur to the bill, as amended, on or before the first Monday of March. On February 2, 1889, the plaintiff filed a bill so amended.

On February 16, 1889, the company served on the plaintiff notice of hearing upon the bill and demurrer.

On February 21, 1889, the company moved for leave to amend its general appearance into a special appearance for the specific and only purpose of moving to set aside the service of the subpoena upon it through its alleged agent Henry R. Kunhardt, Sr., and to dismiss the bill as against it for want of jurisdiction; and also moved to set aside the service and to dismiss the bill as against it, "because of lack of jurisdiction of this court over the person of said defendant."

An affidavit of Richard John Cortis, filed in support of this motion, stated that for several years he had been well acquainted with the details of the organization and residence and general business of the company; that its principal offices and place of business were and always had been at the city of Hamburg in the Empire of Germany, and the residences of all its directors and stockholders were within the territorial limits of that empire; and that it had never had an office in the city of New York, or at any place within the Southern District of New York.

On April 5, 1889, the court ordered that this motion be granted, unless the plaintiff should, within five days, file a stipulation to withdraw the amended bill as to the company, and to go to trial as to the company upon the original bill. 38 Fed. Rep. 273. No such stipulation having been filed, on April 11, 1889, the court ordered that the appearance be amended as moved for; that the service of the subpoena upon the company be set aside and quashed; and that the bill be dismissed as against the company.

From that order the plaintiff, on May 23, 1889, took an appeal, which was entered in this court on October 8, 1889, argued on March 13, 1893, and dismissed on March 27, 1893, for want of jurisdiction, because that order, not disposing of the case as to all the defendants, was not a final decree, from which an appeal would lie. 148 U. S. 262.

VOL. CL-42

Opinion of the Court.

On May 1, 1893, an application was made to this court for leave to file the present petition, praying for a writ of mandamus to the Judges of the Circuit Court to take jurisdiction and proceed against the company in the suit aforesaid, and to strike from the record the order of April 11, 1889, and to make such disposition of the suit as ought to have been made had that order not been made; and for such other relief in the premises as might be just.

On May 10, 1893, this court gave leave to file the petition, and granted a rule to show cause, returnable at this term. On October 17 a return was filed, setting forth the foregoing proceedings of the Circuit Court, and stating that the order of April 11, 1889, was made upon the following grounds:

1st. That it was made to appear, and the Circuit Court found, that the company had originally made a general, instead of a special, appearance in the suit, because of a justifiable mistake on its part as to the nature of the suit, caused by the plaintiff's own allegations in the original bill.

2d. That it appeared by the affidavits and other proceedings set forth in the record that the company is a corporation organized and existing under the laws of the Kingdom of Hanover, Empire of Germany, and is not, and was not at the time of the service of the subpoena upon Henry R. Kunhardt, Sr., an inhabitant of the Southern District of New York.

3d. That, upon the facts as presented to the Circuit Court, and shown by the record, it did not appear that said Kunhardt was at any time the general agent of the company, or such an agent that service upon him of the subpoena in the suit was sufficient to confer jurisdiction over the company.

Mr. Charles M. Demond for petitioner.

Mr. Walter D. Edmonds opposing.

MR. JUSTICE GRAY, after stating the case, delivered the opinion of the court.

By the Constitution of the United States, art. 3, sect. 2, the judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity,

Opinion of the Court.

arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority; to controversies to which the United States shall be a party; to controversies between citizens of different States; between citizens of the same State claiming lands under grants of different States; and between citizens of a State and foreign States, citizens or subjects.

By the act of March 3, 1887, c. 373, § 1, as corrected by the act of August 13, 1888, c. 866, "the Circuit Courts of the United States shall have original cognizance, concurrent with the courts of the several States, of all suits of a civil nature, at common law or in equity, where the matter in dispute exceeds, exclusive of interest and costs, the sum or value of two thousand dollars, and arising under the Constitution or laws of the United States, or treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority, or in which controversy the United States are plaintiffs or petitioners, or in which there shall be a controversy between citizens of different States," "or a controversy between citizens of the same State claiming lands under grants of different States, or a controversy between citizens of a State and foreign States, citizens or subjects." 24 Stat. 552; 25 Stat. 434.

The intention of Congress is manifest, at least as to cases of which the courts of the several States have concurrent jurisdiction, and which involve a certain amount or value, to vest in the Circuit Courts of the United States full and effectual jurisdiction, as contemplated by the Constitution, over each of the classes of controversies above mentioned; and (what particularly concerns the case at bar) Congress, following the very words of the Constitution, has here vested in those courts jurisdiction of controversies "between citizens of a State and foreign States, citizens or subjects."

The question then arises how far the jurisdiction thus conferred over this last class of controversies, and especially over a suit by a citizen of a State against a foreign citizen or subject, is affected by the subsequent provisions of the same section, by which, after other regulations of the jurisdiction of the Circuit Courts and District Courts of the United States,

Opinion of the Court.

it is enacted that "no civil suit shall be brought before either of said courts against any person by any original process or proceeding in any other district than that whereof he is an inhabitant; but, where the jurisdiction is founded only on the fact that the action is between citizens of different States, suit shall be brought only in the district of the residence of either the plaintiff or the defendant."

Of these two provisions, the latter relates only to suits between citizens of different States of the Union, and is therefore manifestly inapplicable to a suit brought by a citizen of one of these States against an alien. And the former of the two provisions cannot reasonably be construed to apply to such a suit.

The words of that provision, as it now stands upon the statute book, are that "no civil suit shall be brought before either of said courts against any person by any original process or proceeding in any other district than that whereof he is an inhabitant." These words evidently look to those persons, and those persons only, who are inhabitants of some district within the United States. Their object is to distribute among the particular districts the general jurisdiction fully and clearly granted in the earlier part of the same section; and not to wholly annul or defeat that jurisdiction over any case comprehended in the grant. To construe the provision as applicable to all suits between a citizen and an alien would leave the courts of the United States open to aliens against citizens, and close them to citizens against aliens. Such a construction is not required by the language of the provision, and would be inconsistent with the general intent of the section as a whole.

This view is confirmed by a consideration of the earlier statutes upon this subject, which, although repealed, may properly be referred to in aid of the construction of existing laws. Ex parte Crow Dog, 109 U. S. 556, 561; Viterbo v. Friedlander, 120 U. S. 707, 725, 726. The corresponding provision, as originally enacted in the Judiciary Act of September 24, 1789, c. 20, § 11, continued in force for the greater part of a century, and retained in the Revised Statutes,