This is an appeal from a decree of the circuit court of the district of Columbia, sitting for the county of Washington, dismissing a bill in equity, brought by the appellants against the appellees. The facts, so far as they are necessary to be stated upon the present occasion, are: that one James Moody, an inhabitant of Kentucky, died in that state, about the year 1802, intestate, without leaving any children; that in May or June 1833, the defendant, Northup, obtained letters of administration upon his estate, from the proper court of Jefferson county, in Kentucky; and afterwards, under and in virtue of those letters of administration, he received from the treasury of the United States the sum of $5215.56, for money due to the intestate, or his representatives, for military services rendered during the revolutionary war. The present bill was brought by the appellants, claiming to be the next of kin and heirs of the intestate, for their distributive shares of the said money, against Northup, as administrator; and the other defendants, who are made parties, are asserted to be adverse claimants, as next of kin and distributees. At the hearing of the cause in the court below, the same having been set down for argument upon the plea of Northup, denying the jurisdiction of the court; the bill was ordered to be dismissed for want of jurisdiction; and from that decree, the present appeal has been taken.
Under these circumstances, the question is broadly presented, whether an administrator, appointed and deriving his authority from another state, is liable to be sued here, in his official character, for assets lawfully received by him, under and in virtue of his original letters of administration. We are of opinion, both upon principle and authority, that he is not. Every grant of administration is strictly confined in its authority and operation to the limits of the territory of the government which grants it; and does not, de jure, extend to other countries. It cannot confer, as a matter of right, any authority to collect assets of the deceased, in any other state; and whatever operation is allowed to it beyond the original territory of the grant, is a mere matter of comity, which every nation is at liberty to yield or to withhold, according to its own policy and pleasure, with reference to its own institutions and the interests of its own citizens. On the other hand, the administrator is exclusively bound to account for all the assets which he receives, under and in virtue of his administration, to the proper tribunals of the government from which he derives his authority; and the tribunals of other states have no right to interfere with or to control the application of those assets, according to the lex loci. Hence, it has become an established doctrine, that an administrator, appointed in one state, cannot, in his official capacity, sue for any debts due to his intestate, in the courts of another state; and that he is not liable to be sued in that capacity, in the courts of the latter, by any creditor, for any debts due there by his intestate. The authorities to this effect are exceedingly numerous, both in England and America; but it seems to us unnecessary, in the present state of the law, to do more than to refer to the leading principle as recognised by this court, in Fenwick v. Sears, 1 Cranch 259; Dixon's Executors v. Ramsay's Executors, 3 Ibid. 319; and Kerr v. Moon, 9 Wheat. 565.