Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

“ But this claim was met by the supreme court by a reference to the statement of motives for the Civil Code, which reads that if it was proper to give effect to rights acquired under prior legislation, no consideration of justice required that the subsequent exercise of them 'as well as their duration and the proceedings for enforcing them should be exempted from the provisions of the Code;' and by the interpretation of the fourth transitory provision (following art. 1976) . ”

“ The appellant alleged that she was born on August 4, 1875, and was a natural child of Damian Morell; that he left her mother and married in 1880; in 1889 removed to Mallorca, and died on December 29, 1899. On demurrer the bill was dismissed by the district court, following the authority of the foregoing decision of the supreme court. (We may assume that, as the plaintiff retained her domicil in Porto Rico, and as a considerable part of the estate consisted of land in the same place, the possible bearing on the case of the removal of Morell to Spain need not be considered.) ”

“ The construction adopted in Porto Rico at least does no violence to the words of the statute; it concerns local affairs under a system with which the court of the Island is called on constantly to deal, and we are not prepared, as against the weight properly attributed to the local decision, to say that it is wrong. Gray v. Taylor, Jan. 20, 1913. How the first case should have been dealt with if it had appeared in the record that the plaintiff came of age before the Code went into effect we are not called upon to consider. ”