William R. Day

“ Is the income from the stock, bonds, and mortgages, held by the Pennsylvania Company, derived from property owned in the United States? A learned argument is made to the effect that the stock certificates, bonds, and mortgages are not property, that they are but evidences of the ownership of interests which are property; that the property, in a legal sense, represented by the securities, would exist if the physical evidences thereof were destroyed. ”

“ We have no doubt that the securities, herein involved, are property. Are they property within the United States? It is insisted that the maxim 'mobilia sequuntur personam' applies in this instance, and that the situs of the property was at the domicile of the owner in France. But this court has frequently declared that the maxim, a fiction at most, must yield to the facts and circumstances of cases which require it, and that notes, bonds and mortgages may acquire a situs at a place other than the domicile of the owner, and be there reached by the taxing authority. ”

“ Hooker, 177 Mass. 335, 337 [58 N. E. 1078, 83 Am. St. Rep. 279] .'
The Court of Appeals of New York, recognizing the same principle, treated such instruments as property in People ex. rel. Jefferson v. ”