Whether or not inhabitants of territories ceded by one nation to another necessarily have, according to the principles of International Law, the option of becoming citizens of the annexing State, or retaining their old citizenship, is a point upon which International Law writers do not seem to be fully agreed. Rivier, for instance, in his recent work, "Principes du Droit des Gens," declares that they have not - that unless expressly provided otherwise, they become, nolens volens, the subjects of the power to which their territory is united. Other text-book writers, Westlake and Halleck, for instance, claim that the treaty of cession being silent upon this point, an option exists.1 Halleck declares: "The transfer of territory establishes its inhabitants in such a .position toward the new sovereignty that they may elect to become, or not to become, its subjects. Their obligations to the former government are canceled, and they may, or may not, become the subjects of the new government, according to their own choice. If they remain in the territory after this transfer, they are deemed to have elected to become its subjects, and thus have consented to the transfer of their allegiance to the new sovereignty. If they leave, sine animo revertendi, they are deemed to have elected to continue aliens to the new sovereignty. The status of the inhabitants of the conquered and transferred territory is thus determined by their own acts. This rule is the most just, reasonable, and convenient which could be adopted.

1 This right of option as regards citizenship is not to be confounded with the right, by some alleged to exist, of the inhabitants to decide whether or not they will consent to a transfer of sovereignty over their territory to another power. Such a right has never been accepted by International Law writers, nor recognized by the United States in any of the annexations by it of new territories.

It is reasonable on the part of the conqueror, who is entitled to know who become his subjects and who prefer to continue aliens; it is very convenient for those who wish to become the subjects of the new State, and is not unjust toward those who determine not to become its subjects. According to this rule, domicile, as understood and defined in public law, determines the question of transfer of allegiance, or rather, is the rule of evidence by which that question is to be decided."

That, in, the absence of treaty stipulations to the contrary, the citizenship of the inhabitants of ceded territory is to be determined by the rule thus stated, is generally admitted By American International Law writers, and has been rnore than once declared "by the United States Supreme Court. In American Insurance Co. v. Canter, the court say: "The same act which transferred their territory transfers the allegiance of those who remain in it;" and in Boyd v. Thayer2 it was declared that "the nationality of the inhabitants of territory acquired by conquest or cession becomes that of the government under whose dominion they pass, subject to the right of election on their part to retain their former nationality by removal or otherwise as may be provided."