CORRIE'S CASE. 495

merce, as they are mere municipal rules of law for winding up and
adjusting cases of interrupted and broken commerce; they are
forced upon debtors, without any alternative, as the only means of
escaping imprisonment, and are highly penal in many of their
provisions; they cannot, therefore, be considered as in all respects
voluntary, and must be, from their very nature, entirely local in
their operation.

Hence, it has always been held here, that the bankrupt and in-
solvent laws of the other states of our Union, as well as of other
countries, could not be allowed to operate, in any way whatever,
upon the property of the debtor found here, and particularly in
contravention of any rule in relation to immoveable property lying
within this state, or to the prejudice of any citizen of this state ;
as they clearly would, if they were allowed to vest any right in the
assignees or trustees of such bankrupt or insolvent debtors, or
were permitted to give an exclusive right to have such property
removed any where beyond the jurisdiction of the state, there to
be distributed among all his creditors, including those resident
here, which would be, in effect, to restrain our own citizen credi-
tors from touching their absent insolvent debtor's property found
here, upon which he had been credited, and to direct them to fol-
low it into a distant and foreign country, there to seek satisfaction
according to laws with which, it could not be presumed, they were
at all acquainted, (t)

Therefore, in discharge of this duty to its own citizens, Mary-
land, by one of its earliest legislative enactments, not now in force,
declared, that where the goods of a debtor sued were not sufficient
to pay all his debts within the province, they should be sold at an
outcry, and distributed equally among all the creditors inhabiting
within the province, except that the mere and proper debts of the
Lord Proprietary should be first satisfied, and then fees and duties
to public officers, and charges; and that debts due for wine and
hot-waters be not satisfied till all other debts were paid, (u) and
by other and still existing acts of assembly, it has provided, that
all citizen or country creditors, as they were called, should have
made or secured to them a full satisfaction of their claims out of
their foreign bankrupt or insolvent debtor's property found here,
before it should be removed beyond the jurisdiction of the state, (w)

(t) Holmes v. Remsen, 20 John. Rep. 229.—(u) 1638, ch. 2, s. 11; 2 Boz. His.
Mary. 147.—(w) 1704, ch. 29; 1753, ch. 36; 1786, ch. 49, s. 3; Burk v. McClain, 1
H. & McH. 236; Ward v. Morris, 4 H. & McH. 337.