here are respectable opinions on both sides. If the negative be
right, then General Oglethorpe having never become an alien, and having
devised his lands to his wife, who, on this supposition, also, was not
an alien, the devise has transferred the lands to her, and there is
nothing left for the treaty to operate on.

2. If the affirmative opinion be right, and the inhabitants of Great
Britain and America, born before the Revolution, are become aliens to
each other, it follows by the laws of both, that the lands which either
possessed, within the jurisdiction of the other, became the property of
the State in which they are. But a question arises, whether the transfer
of the property took place on the Declaration of Independence, or not
till an office, or an act of Assembly, had declared the transfer. If the
property passed to the State on the Declaration of Independence, then it
did not remain in General Oglethorpe, and, of course, at the time of his
death, he having nothing, there was nothing to pass to his heirs, and so
nothing for the treaty to operate on.

3. If the property does not pass till declared by an office found by
jury, or an act passed by the Assembly, the question then is, whether
an office had been found, or an act of Assembly been passed for that
purpose, before the peace. If there was, the lands had passed to the
State during his life, and nothing being left in him, there is nothing
for his heirs to claim under the treaty.

4. If the property had not been transferred to the State, before the
peace, either by the Declaration of Independence, or an office or an act
of Assembly, then it remained in General Oglethorpe at the epoch of the
peace and it will be insisted, no doubt, that, by the sixth article of
the treaty of peace between the United States and Great Britain, which
forbids future confiscations, General Oglethorpe acquired a capacity of
holding and of conveying his lands. He has conveyed them to his wife.
But, she being an alien, it will be decided by the laws of the land,
whether she took them for her own use, or for the use of the State. For
it is a general principle of our law, that conveyances to aliens pass
the lands to the State; and it may be urged, that though, by the treaty
of peace, General Oglethorpe could convey, yet that treaty did not mean
to give him a greater privilege of conveyance, than natives hold, to
wit, a privilege of transferring the property to persons incapable, by
la