fact. The inference seems necessary that in respect to the situation before April 7, 1897, both the Treasury and the Board of General Appraisers contemplated, in reaching their opposite conclusions, an actual French law or ordinance. The question, then, not only involves the existence of a foreign law, but after that law was presented as a fact in existence, its meaning and construction were involved-the judicial weighing of its terms and effect. The error here is not like those errors of fact construed in the Treasury practice, comprising mistakes as to circumstances, dates, values, computations, etc., which lead to false results. The question is one of mixed fact and law. The statute requires that the mistake shall arise solely on errors of fact, and, as in my conception of the proper principles to be applied, not permitting here the mitigations of a court of equity, your authority to refund on the ground of mistake is to be restricted to mistakes of fact alone. I am constrained to say that the mistake here did not constitute an error of fact within the meaning of the act of 1875, and I therefore answer your second question in the negative. This renders it unnecessary to answer your third question.

Very respectfully,

The SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY.

P. C. KNOX.

AMERICAN ARTIST-CITIZEN OF PORTO RICO-DUTIES.

A native Porto Rican, an artist by profession, although temporarily living in France on the 11th day of April, 1899, is, under section 7 of the act of April 12, 1900 (31 Stat., 79), a citizen of Porto Rico, and, as such, is an American artist, whose paintings upon importation into the United States are entitled to the privileges provided in paragraph 703 of the tariff act of July 24, 1897 (30 Stat., 203).

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE,

May 13, 1902.

SIR: I have received your letter of April 28, asking my opinion upon the question whether Mr. Molinas, who is an artist by profession, is an "American artist" within the meaning of section 703 of the tariff act of July 24, 1897, and inclosing a letter from the Hon. Federico Degetau,

resident commissioner from Porto Rico, stating that Mr. Molinas had shipped to him certain paintings.

The section reads as follows:

"703. Works of art, the production of American artists residing temporarily abroad, or other works of art, including pictorial paintings on glass, imported expressly for presentation to a national institution, or to any State or municipal corporation, or incorporated religious society, college, or other public institution, except stained or painted window glass, or stained or painted glass windows; but such exemption shall be subject to such regulations as the Secretary of the Treasury may prescribe."

Mr. Molinas, as I understand from Mr. Degetau, is a native Porto Rican, temporarily living in Biarritz, France, who was there and not in Porto Rico on the 11th day of April, 1899, the date mentioned in section 7 of the Foraker Act, which section reads as follows:

"SEC. 7. That all inhabitants continuing to reside therein who were Spanish subjects on the eleventh day of April, eighteen hundred and ninety-nine, and then resided in Porto Rico, and their children born subsequent thereto, shall be deemed and held to be citizens of Porto Rico, and as such entitled to the protection of the United States, except such as shall have elected to preserve their allegiance to the Crown of Spain on or before the eleventh day of April, nineteen hundred, in accordance with the provisions of the treaty of peace between the United States and Spain entered into on the eleventh day of April, eighteen hundred and ninety-nine; and they, together with such citizens of the United States as may reside in Porto Rico, shall constitute a body politic under the name of The People of Porto Rico, with governmental powers as hereinafter conferred, and with power to sue and be sued as such."

It will be observed that paragraph 703 above quoted does not mention citizenship, but uses the phrase "American artists." It is clearly not inconceivable for a man to be an American artist within the meaning of such a statute and yet not a citizen of the United States. An American tribal Indian, or a native Alaskan, for example, who should

become an artist and go abroad might naturally be considered an American artist within the intent of the statute.

The word "reside" is used concerning a person who may remain a week in a place, or one who remains a year or two, or one who makes his home there; that is, one who is a permanent resident or inhabitant. Undoubtedly section 7 of the Foraker Act, in providing that citizens of the United States who "may reside" in Porto Rico shall constitute part of the body politic of Porto Rico, uses the word "reside" in the last sense. It would have been absurd to provide that every citizen of the United States visiting or temporarily sojourning in Porto Rico should be a citizen of Porto Rico, and it seems not unlikely that throughout section 7 the word "reside" has the same meaning. Section 9 of the act tends to show that it was not used to eliminate from "all inhabitants who were Spanish subjects" at the date of the treaty of Paris, a class of inhabitants who were temporarily absent on any date from Porto Rico, because it provides for the nationalization of all vessels owned by "the inhabitants of Porto Rico" on that date, "and which continued to be so owned up to the date of such nationalization," not excluding vessels owned by inhabitants temporarily absent on any date. And section 18 assumes that "native inhabitants" of Porto Rico will all be citizens of Porto Rico, since it provides that of the executive council, five (5) shall be "native inhabitants," without adding that they shall be citizens of Porto Rico, although, of course, it was not intended to have in the executive council persons who - should not be. This interpretation of section 7 is further supported by the consideration that the Foraker Act is to have a reasonable interpretation and is to be regarded as in pari materia with the treaty of Paris, so far as that treaty transferred Porto Rico and the allegiance and protection of persons there, from Spain to the United States. It would be unreasonable to suppose, unless we are forced to do so, that any of the persons who were intended by the treaty to remain in Porto Rico, and owe permanent allegiance and be entitled to protection to and from the United States, were intended to be omitted from the body politic called "The People of Porto Rico," and least of all would the native

inhabitants, whose "civil rights and political status" were expressly turned over by the treaty to be determined by Congress, be omitted from that body politic.

The language of section 7 is easily accounted for without seeing an intention to exclude any of such inhabitants; or any inhabitants continuing to be such who were turned over by Spain to the United States. The inhabitants who were German, French, or Italian were excluded by confining section 7 to inhabitants who were Spanish subjects at the date of the treaty. Inhabitants at the date of the Foraker Act who were not inhabitants of Porto Rico, but inhabitants and subjects of Spain at the date of the treaty, were not among those turned over by the treaty to the allegiance and protection of the United States, and these are excluded by the phrase referring to the date of the treaty, "and then residing in Porto Rico." And the phrase “continuing to reside,” following "inhabitants" serves to omit those inhabitants who were not to remain in Porto Rico, but preferred to leave it; as, in the contrary case, Article IX of the treaty made provision for such of those who were to remain "who will remain"-que permanecieran-as, being natives of Spain, wished to avoid becoming Americans. (See agreement extending election period in the Philippines.)

If this view is correct, then the first part of section 7 has the same meaning as though it had been written thus: "That all present inhabitants continuing to be inhabitants who were Spanish subjects on the 11th day of April, 1899, and were then inhabitants of Porto Rico, and their children born subsequent thereto, shall be deemed and held to be citizens of Porto Rico."

But even in supposing that a native Porto Rican like Mr. Molinas, temporarily absent at the date of the treaty, has been unintentionally omitted from section 7, he is undoubtedly one of those turned over to the United States by Article IX of the treaty to belong to our nationality. He is also clearly a Porto Rican; that is to say, a permanent inhabitant of that island, which was also turned over by Spain to the United States. As his country became a domestic country and ceased to be a foreign country within the meaning. of the tariff act above referred to, and has now been fully

organized as a country of the United States by the Foraker Act, it seems to me that he has become an American, notwithstanding such supposed omission.

For these reasons I am of the opinion that his paintings are entitled to the privileges provided in paragraph 703 of the act referred to.

Respectfully,

The SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY.

P. C. KNOX.

WAR-REVENUE ACT-BILLS OF LADING.

Under the war-revenue act of June 13, 1898 (30 Stat., 459), a 1-cent stamp should be attached to all bills of lading for goods transported from places within the United States to Canada or Mexico. Such bills being in part domestic, given for transportation within the United States as well as for export, may be taxed upon the domestic part regardless of the ultimate destination of the goods. Opinion of January 2, 1900 (23 Opin., 3), affirmed.

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE,

May 15, 1902.

SIR: On December 19, 1899, at the request of certain railroads engaged in the transportation of goods from places in the United States to Canada and Mexico, you submitted to this Department the question whether, under the warrevenue act of June 13, 1898 (30 Stat., 459), a stamp tax of 10 cents was required to be attached to each bill of lading for goods so transported as a foreign bill of lading, or a stamp tax of 1 cent as an ordinary freight receipt on railroad bill of lading; and Attorney-General Griggs held, in his opinion of January 2, 1900, that a stamp tax of 1 cent only was required to be attached. (23 Opin., 3.)

Since the decision of the Supreme Court in Fairbank v. United States (181 U. S., 283), holding that the 10-cent stamp tax on foreign bills of lading was unconstitutional, the same railroads have requested you to submit the question whether a bill of lading given by a railroad for goods to be shipped by rail from a point in the United States to Canada or Mexico is not a foreign bill of lading, and therefore exempt from any stamp tax whatsoever.