Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 2.djvu/743

 YaÔ FEDERAL BBPORTER. �•property right, and not a mere privilege or immunity ofcitîzenshîp. 94 U. S. 395. The right of citizens of Virginia to fish in the public waters of the state, therefore, is a property right vested in the citizen by reason of his local citizenship and as one of the common owners, and not a mere general privilege; and the title to the property being in the public — in the state — it was held that the state might exclude ail others than citizens, the common owners, from enjoying the right. The court further says: "The right thus granted is not a privilege or immunity of general but special citizenship. It does not 'belong of right to the citizens of ail froe governments,' but only to the citizens of Virginia, on account of the peouliar circumstances in which they are placed. They, and they alone, owned the property to be sold or used ; and they alone had the power to dispose of it as they saw fit. They owned it, not by virtue of citizenship merely, but of citizenship and domicile united — that is to say, by yirtue of a citizenship confined to that particular locality." Id. 396. �Citizens of other states having no property right which entitles them to fish against the will of the state, a fortiori, the alien, from whatever country he may come, has none whatever in the waters or the fisheries of the state, Like other privileges he enjoys as an alien by permission of the state, he can only enjoy so much as the state vouchsafes to yield to him as a special privilege. To him it is not a prop- erty right, but, in the strictest sense, a privilege or favor. To exclude the Ohinaman from fishing in the waters of the state, therefore, while the Germans, Italians, Englishmen, and Irish- men, who otherwise stand upon the same footing, are per- mitted to fish ad libitum, without priee, charge, let, or hinder- ance, is to prevent him from enjoying the same privileges as are "enjoyed by the citizens or subjects of the most favored nation;" and to punish him criminally for fishing in the waters of the state, while ail aliens of the Caucasian race are permitted to fish freely in the same waters with impunity and without restraint, and exempt from ail punishments, is to exclude him from enjoying the same immunities and exemp- tions "as are enjoyed by the citizens or subjects of the most ����