Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 5.djvu/587

 HIATT V. GBISWOLD. 575 �authorities oited for the defendant abundantly show this. But this is not the question here. There is no question about what these parties intended. They ail intended that on so much of the paper William Dickinson should receive 12 par cent, interest, and contracted so that the defendant might become liable to pay it. This, in New York, would be con- trary to the law there, and would involve certain penal conse- quences, and in Massachusetts would involve other and dif- ferent consequences. The law of neither state had any force in the other, or outside of its own territory. A wrong was done, in the eye of the law, by William Dickinson in reseiv- ing this interest. The question is, in which jurisdiction did he commit the oÔence, and by which law muet it be redressed ? He is not shown to have done anything in New York. AU he did was done in Massachusetts. He closed the contract there ; ail he has reeeived has been paid there. If the notes had been written with interest merely, and the question had been whether this meant the Massachusetts rate of 6 per cent., or the New York rate of 7, there would have been no fair question but that, when the place of payment was in New York, the New York rate of 7 was intended, and would have been lawful. But here there is nô question about what was meant; it is about what was done, and what has been done has been done in Massachusetts. This distinction is clôarly reoognized in the authorities. �In Andrews X. Pond, 13 Pet. 65, Mr. Chief Justice Taney said, with reference to this question: "The question is not which law is to govem in executing the contract, but which is to decide the fate of a security taken upon an usurious agreement which neither will execute? Unquestionably, it must be the law of the state where the agreement was made, and the instrument taken to secure its performance. A con- tract of this kind oannot stand on the same principles with a bona fide agreement made in one place to be executed in another. In the last-named cases the agreements were per- mitted by the lex loci contractus, and will even be enforced there if the party is found within its jurisdiction. But the same rule cannot be applied to contracts forbidden by its ����