It is also true that in Steam Engine Co.v.Hubbard,101 U.S. 188, 192, Mr. Justice Clifford referred to those cases by way of argument. But in that case, as well as in Chase v. Curtis, 113 U. S. 452, the only point adjudged was that such statutes were so far penal that they must be construed strictly, and in both cases jurisdiction was assumed by the Circuit Court of the United States, and not doubted by this court, which could hardly have been if the statute had been deemed penal within the maxim of international law. In Flash v. Conn., 109 U.S. 371, the liability sought to be enforced under the statute of New York was the liability of a stockholder arising upon contract, and no question was presented as to the nature of the liability of officers.

But in Hornor v. Henning, 93 U. S. 228, this court declined to consider a similar liability of officers of a corporation in the District of Columbia as a penalty. See also Neal v. Moultrie, 12 Georgia, 104; Cady v. Sandford, 53 Vermont, 632, 639, 640; Nickerson v. Wheeler, 118 Mass. 295, 298; Post v. Toledo, etc., Railroad, 144 Mass. 341, 345; Wolverton v. Taylor, 132 Illinois, 197; Morawetz on Corporations (2d ed.), § 908.

In this view that the question is not one of local, but of international law, we fully concur. The test is not by what name the statute is called by the legislature or the courts of the States in which it is passed, but whether it appears to the tribunal which is called upon to enforce it to be, in its essential character and effect a punishment of an offence against the public, or a grant of a civil right to a private person.

In this country the question of international law must be determined in the first instance by the court, state or national, in which the suit is brought. If the suit is brought in a Circuit Court of the United States it is one of those questions of general jurisprudence which that court must decide for itself, uncontrolled by local decisions. Burgress v. Seligman, 107 U. S. 20, 33. Texas & Pacific Railway v. Cox, 145 U. S. 593, 605, above cited. If a suit on the original liability under the statute of one State is brought in a court of another State, the Constitution and laws of the United States have not authorized its decision upon such a question to be reviewed by this court. New York Ins. Co.v.Hendren, 92 U. S. 286; Roth v. Ehman, 107 U. S. 319. But if the original liability has passed into judgment in one State, the courts of another State, when asked to enforce it, are bound by the Constitution and laws of the United States to give full faith and credit to that judgment, and if they do not, their decision, as said at the outset of this opinion, may be reviewed and reversed by this court on writ of error.

The essential nature and real foundation of a cause of action, indeed, are not changed by recovering judgment upon it. This was directly adjudged in Wisconsin v. Pelican Ins. Co., above cited. The difference is only in the appellate jurisdiction of this court in the one case or in the other.

If a suit to enforce a judgment rendered in one State, and which has not changed the essential nature of the liability, is brought in the courts of another State, this court, in order to determine, on writ of error, whether the highest court of the latter State has given full faith and credit to the judgment, must determine for itself whether the original cause of action is penal in the international sense. The case, in this regard, is analogous to one arising under the clause of the Constitution which forbids a State to pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts, in which, if the highest court of a State decides nothing but the original construction and obligation of a contract, this court has no jurisdiction to review its decision, but if the state court gives effect to a subsequent law, which is impugned as impairing the obligation of a contract, this court has power, in order to determine whether any contract has been impaired, to decide for itself what the true construction of the contract is. New Orleans Waterworks v. Louisiana Sugar Co., 125 U. S. 18, 38. So if the state court, in an action to enforce the original liability under the law of another State, passes upon the nature of that liability and nothing else, this court cannot review its decision; but if the state court declines to give full faith and credit to a judgment of another State, because of its opinion as to the nature of the cause of action on which the judgment was recovered, this court, in determining whether full faith and credit have been given to that judgment, must decide for itself the nature of the original liability.

Whether the Court of Appeals of Maryland gave full faith and credit to the judgment recovered by this plaintiff in New York depends upon the true construction of the provision of the Constitution and of the act of Congress upon that subject.

The provision of the Constitution is as follows: "Full faith and credit shall be given in each State to the public acts, records and judicial proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may, by general laws, prescribe the manner in which such acts, records and proceedings shall be proved and the effect thereof." Art. 4, sec. 1.

This clause of the Constitution, like the less perfect provision on the subject in the articles of Confederation, as observed by Mr. Justice Story, "was intended to give the same conclusive effect to judgments of all the States, so as to promote uniformity, as well as certainty, in the rule among them," and had three distinct objects: First, to declare, and by its own force establish, that full

faith and credit should be given to the judgments of every other State; second, to authorize Congress to prescribe the manner of authenticating them; and third, to authorize Congress to prescribe their effect when so authenticated. Story on the Constitution, §§ 1307, 1308.

Congress, in the exercise of the power so conferred, besides prescribing the manner in which the records and judicial proceedings of any State may be authenticated, has defined the effect thereof by enacting that "the said records and judicial proceedings so authenticated shall have such faith and credit given to them in every court within the United States as they have by law or usage in the courts of the State from which they are taken." Rev. Stat. § 905, re-enacting Act of May 26, 1790, c. 11, 1 Stat. 122.

These provisions of the Constitution and laws of the United States are necessarily to be read in the light of some established principles, which they were not intended to overthrow. They give no effect to judgments of a court which had no jurisdiction of the subject matter or of the parties. D'Arcy v. Ketchum, 11 How. 165; Thompson v. Whitman, 18 Wall. 457. And they confer no new jurisdiction on the courts of any State, and therefore do not authorize them to take jurisdiction of a suit or prosecution of such a penal nature; that it cannot on settled rules of public and international law be entertained by the judiciary of any other State than that in which the penalty was incurred. Wisconsin v. Pelican Ins. Co., above cited.

Nor do these provisions put the judgments of other States upon the footing of domestic judgments, to be enforced by execution, but they leave the manner in which they may be enforced to the law of the State in which they are sued on, pleaded or offered in evidence. McElmoyle v. Cohen, 13 Pet. 312, 325. But when duly pleaded and proved in a court of that State they have the effect of being not merely prima facie evidence, but conclusive proof, of the rights thereby adjudicated; and a refusal to give them the force and effect in this respect which they had in the State in which they were rendered denies to the party a right secured to him by the Constitution and laws of the United States. Christmas v. Russell, 5 Wall. 290; Green v. Van Buskirk, 5 Wall. 307, and 7 Wall. 139; Insurance Co. v. Harris, 97 U. S. 331, 336; Crescent City Co. v. Butchees' Union, 120 U. S. 141, 146, 147; Carpenter v. Strange, 141 U. S. 87.

The judgment rendered by a court of the State of New York, now in question is not impugned for any want of jurdiction in that court. The statute under which that judgment was recovered was not, for the reasons already stated at length, a penal law in the international sense. The faith and credit, force and effect, which that judgment had by law and usage in New York,

was to be conclusive evidence of a direct civil liability from the individual defendant to the individual plaintiff for a certain sum of money and a debt of record, on which an action would lie, as on any other civil judgment inter partes. The Court of Appeals of Maryland, therefore, in deciding this case against the plaintiff upon the ground that the judgment was not one which it was bound in any manner to enforce, denied to the judgment the full faith, credit and effect to which it was entitled under the Constitution and laws of the United States.

COMMONWEALTH V. NORTHERN ELECTRIC LIGHT AND POWER COMPANY.*

SUPREME COURT OF PENNSYLVANIA, 1891.

(145 Pa. St. 105.)

What is a "Manufacturing" Corporation?

Williams, J.: This case presents a new and interesting question, viz.: Is a company that produces electricity, and sells it to customers for the generation of light, heat or power, a manufacturing company, within the meaning of the act of 1885, exempting the capital stock of manufacturing companies from taxation? This case was tried without a jury, and the facts upon which the judgment was based appear in the findings of the court below. One of these, which was based upon the opinion, and largely expressed in the words of an expert electrician, who was called as a witness, asserts that the electricity sold by the company was created by the process adopted by the company. The learned judge says: "The electricity which furnishes the light does not exist until the armature revolves. The revolution of the armature brings into being something that did not exist before,- that is, this electric energy, or energy in this electric form." In the same finding he describes the process by which this product is evolved or created as follows: "Coal is burned under the boilers producing heat. The heat generates steam in the boilers, which moves the engine. The engine supplies the power by which the armature is made to revolve. The revolution of the armature pro

*Com'w. v. Brush Electric Light Co., 145 Pa. St. 147 (1891). Emerson v. Com'w. 108 Pa. St. 111. People v. Wemple, 129 N. Y. 543. Beggo v. Edison Light and IIL Co. (Ala. 1892,)—So. Rep.-and note to Engle v. Sohn, 41 Ohio St. 691, 52 Am. Rep 103.

duces electric currents where they did not exist before. The electricity thus generated is carried over wires provided by the company, and delivered to its customers, where it is used to produce light. The process by which electricity is made to furnish light is found to consist of the movement of an electric current from one carbon point to another, which are made part of its circuit. In leaping from one point to another great heat is developed by the energy of the current. This heat liberates or evolves from the carbons a gas, which it burns. The light is thus found to be due partly to the passage of the electric current between the carbon points, and partly to the combustion of the gas furnished by the heated carbons." Notwithstanding these findings, which showed a creation, or "bringing into being where it did not exist before," of the electricity sold by the company, the learned judge held as matter of law that the process was not one of manufacture, because the product was not a material substance. Conceding that the thing sold was "brought into being," made,-"manufactured," in the common use of that word, -he denied that such making was in a legal sense a manufacture, because it did not appear affirmatively of what the mysterious product was made, and that it was material, as matter is now defined. This conclusion appears to have been drawn from the derivation and definition of the word "manufacture," and is forcibly presented in a learned opinion, in which lexicons and books of reference are largely drawn upon. It is very clear that the word originally meant "hand-made." It is equally clear, in the light of the definitions collated by the learned judge, that its meaning has expanded with the advance of the arts and sciences, until it has come to mean as a verb, the making of anything by human art or skill, (Burrill, Law Dict.,) and as a noun, anything made by art or skill (Rap. & L. Law Dict.). The mere appropriation of an article which is furnished by nature is not a manufacture. Thus the liberation of natural gas or oil from the earth, and its transportion to consumers, is not a manufrcture; but the production of illuminating gas is. Nassau Gas-Light Co. v. Brooklyn, 89 N. Y. 409; also, Emerson v. Com., 108 Pa. St. 111. The collection, storage, preparation for market, and transportation of ice is not a manufacture, but the production of ice by artificial means is. People v. Ice Co., 99 N. Y. 181, 1 N. E. Rep. 669. A telegraph company produces electricity by artificial means, but it uses it in its own business as a carrier of messages for the public; so does a telephone company. Both receive messages for carriage, and deliver them at the point of destination. They transport for their customers. This company whose character we are considering sells the electricity it makes, or "hrings into being," as a commodity. It provides the lamps or