We conceive the second marriage acquires no force by the celebration of it having been in South Carolina. We have been at some loss to determine in what sense we are to understand the phrase in the case, that the parties married in South Carolina,'according to the laws of that State.' We suppose it was meant to say thereby merely that the ceremony was duly celebrated with the formalities, and by the persons, and with the witnesses, there requisite to constitute a marriage. It would be great injustice to our sister State to assume that by her laws her own citizens can marry a second time, a former marriage not being dissolved by death or divorce; or that she makes it lawful for citizens of other States, who have married at home, and by their domestic laws cannot marry a second time, to leave their own State and go into South Carolina expressly to evade their own laws, and, without acquiring a domicil in South Carolina, contract a marriage there. We cannot suppose that South Carolina allows of polygamy, either by her own citizens or those of any other country. Therefore we might cut the case short at that point, upon the presumption that, the contrary not expressly appearing, the law of South Carolina does not tolerate this marriage more than our own law does. Indeed, we believe that in truth she does not so much, as we have been informed that she grants no divorcee. But if it were otherwise, we should still hold the marriage void. We do not undertake at present to say what might be the effect of a marriage of a person, in the situation of this plaintiff, contracted in another State in which she had become bona fide domiciled. . . . The case before us is not one of a domicil out of North Carolina, but it is stated that the parties were domiciled here, and went to South Carolina in fraud of our law. Now if the law of South Carolina allow of such a marriage, and although it be true that generally marriages are to be judged by the lex loci contractus, yet every country must so far respect its own laws, and their operation on its own citizens, as not to allow them to be evaded by acts in another country purposely to defraud them. It cannot allow such acts abroad, under the pretence that they were lawful there, to defeat its own laws at home, in their operation upon persons within her own territory. If a person contract marriage here, and, living the other party, he goes to Turkey, and marries half a dozen wives, contrary to the laws of this State, it would be impossible that we could give up our whole policy regulating marriages and inheritances, and allow all those women and children to come in here, as wives and heirs, with the only true wife and heirs according to our law. And it would be yet more clear, if two persons were to go from this country to Turkey, merely for the sake of getting married at a place in which polygamy is lawful, and: then coming back to the place where it is not lawful. . . . Certainly every country should be disposed to respect the laws of another country; but not more than its own. That ought not to be expected. If a Turk with two wives were to come here, we would administer to them the justice due to the relations contracted by them at home. But an American marries at home, where plurality of wives is excluded, and then, contrary to his engagement with that wife, takes another, where a plurality of wives is tolerated, and the first wife claims the benefit of the law of her own country from the courts of her own country, while the second wife claims from the same courts the immunities and rights conceded to her in the law of her original country. These claims are incompatible, and one only can be granted; and it is easy to see that the obligations arising out of the first contract are to be sustained by the country in which they were assumed; and that our courts must hold the second marriage void in our law, which denied the capacity to contract it. For the same reason we must obey the positive injunction of our statute, which applies to this case." - In Dickson v. Dickson, 1 Yerg. 110, which was a petition for dower, it appeared that the plaintiff had formerly been married in Kentucky, and had been there divorced, she being the offending party. She afterwards removed to Tennessee and was married again, her former husband living. It further appeared, that, by the law of Kentucky, a divorce obtained in that State does not release the offending party from the pains and penalties of bigamy, if he or she afterwards marry. Under these circumstances the question arose whether the second marriage should be held valid by the courts of Tennessee. And it was held that it should. Catron, J., said: "Mary May was legally divorced from her husband, Benjamin May, by the Union Circuit in Kentucky; being a court of competent jurisdiction over the subquestion of domicil. That is, an Englishman going abroad, and there marrying his wife's sister, might, on his return, be held not to have legally married; while two Americans contracting such a marriage here, where it is certainly lawful, would be held to be husband and wife in England. We should have said, however, that both here and in England, the law of the place of the marriage would prevail in such a case over the law of the domicil, were it not for the case of Brook v. Brook, recently decided there, and mentioned on page * 598. (y) But if a married man, a citizen of one of our * States, journeyed into a Mormon territory, and there married again, he certainly would not be held on his return to be the lawful husband of two wives.

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as incestuous; (w)l although a question * might be made whether it would be held incestuous, so far as to avoid the marriage, if within the degrees prohibited by the law of the State in which the question arose, or only if it be between kindred who are too near to marry by the law of the civilized world. (x) Thus, if it be the law in England that a man shall not marry the sister of his deceased wife, the validity of such a marriage contracted abroad might be determined in England by a reference to the ject-matter and the parties - the decree dissolving the marriage is conclusive on all the world. The statute of Kentucky provides, that the offending party (the petitioner in this case) shall not be released from the marriage contract, but shall be subject to all the pains and penalties of bigamy. It is impossible, in the nature of things, that all the relations of wife shall exist when she has no husband; who, as soon as the decree dissolving the marriage was pronounced, was an unmarried and single man, freed from all connections and relations to his former wife; and equally so was the petitioner freed from all marriage ties and relations to Benjamin May, in reference to whom she stood like unto every man in the community. Therefore, he has no right to complain of the second marriage. Who has? Not the commonwealth of Kentucky, whose penal laws cannot extend beyond her own territorial jurisdiction, and cannot be executed or noticed in this State, where the second marriage took place, and the violation of said laws was effected. Had Mary May married a second time in Kentucky, such second marriage would not be void because she continued the wife of Benjamin May, but because such second marriage in that State would have been in violation of a high penal law against bigamy; and it being a well-settled principle of law that any contract which violates the penal laws of the country where made shall be void. The inquiry with this court is not, however, nor cannot be, whether the laws of Kentucky have been violated by this second marriage,- but have our own laws been violated? The act of 1820, ch. 18, against bigamy, declares it felony for any person to marry having a former husband or wife living. Mary May had no husband living, and is not guilty of bigamy by our statute; nor has she violated the sanction of any penal law of this State." See further, on the proposition stated in the text, Scrimshire v. Scrimshire, 2 Hagg. Consist. R. 395; Herbert v. Herbert, id. 263, 3 Phillim. 58; Swift v. Kelly, 3 Knapp, 267; Munro v. Saunders, 6 Bligh, 468; State v. Patterson, 2 Ired. 346; Fornshill v. Murray, 1 Bland, Ch. 479; Dumaresly v. Fishly, 8 A. K. Marsh. 368; Wall v. Williamson, 8 Ala. 48; Lacon v. Higgins, 8 Stark. 178; Morgan v. McGhee, 6 Humph. 13.