XX. PROPERTY PROTECTED. $96. A chargé d'affaires of Russia had a large party at his house, and a transparent painting at his window, at which a mob which had collected took offense; the defendant fired two pistols at the window, his intention being to destroy the painting without doing injury to the person of the minister or of any one. The defendant was indicted for an assault upon the chargé d'affaires and for infracting the laws of nations by offering violence to the person of the said minister. It was held that the law of nations identifies the property of a foreign minister, attached to his person or in his use, with his person. To insult them is an attack on the minister and his sovereign, and it appears to have been the intention of the act of Congress to punish offenses of this kind. But it was said that to constitute such an offense against a foreign minister the defendant must have known that the house on which the attack was made was the domicile of a minister; otherwise it is only an offense against the municipal laws of the state. U. S. v. Hand, 2 Wash. C. C., 435. The persons and personal effects of foreign ministers, of their fa milies and attachés, are exempt from seizure, arrest, or molestation, both by the law of nations and by act of Congress. A hotel-keeper, therefore, cannot prevent an attaché from removing his personal effects from the premises; and any attempt to do so would be punished by the courts. 5 Op., 69, Toucey, 1849. It is not within the constitutional power of the President of the United States to deliver over to the minister of the Netherlands certain jewels, detained in the custom-house of New York, which are shown to have been stolen from the Princess of Orange, on whose behalf the minister of the Netherlands makes claim. Mr. Livingston, Sec. of State, to Mr. Huygens, Aug. 5, 1831. MSS. Notes, For. If, however, the question comes up in the way of libel or other procedure in the Federal courts, the President will direct such action as will best conduce to the delivery of the jewels to their rightful owners. Same to same, Jan. 13, 1832; ibid. A municipal law, giving a landlord a "real right" (droit reél) over personal property belonging to the diplomatic agent of a foreign sovereign, entitling the creditor to seize such goods of such diplomatic agent in his own house, does not abrogate the law of nations so far as it gives inviolability to such house. Mr. Legaré, Sec. of State, to Mr. Wheaton, June 9, 1843. MSS. Inst., Prussia, "Immunity from local jurisdiction extends to the diplomatic agent's dwelling-house and goods, and the archives of the legation. These cannot be entered and searched, or detained under process of local law, or by the local authorities." Printed Pers. Inst., Dip. Agents, 1885. XXI. FREE TRANSIT AND COMMUNICATION WITH, secured. § 97. A diplomatic agent, traveling on his way to the country to which he is accredited, through a third country, pursuing for this purpose a natural and proper route, is entitled to the same privilege as when traveling through the country to which he is accredited. It may be that such country is in a state of war with the third power. This does not destroy his right of transit; but if a convenient route is pointed out to him which will not embarrass an occupying army, he must take this route, and cannot be permitted to insist on carving out a route of his own. Whart. Com. Am. Law, § 168. The line of transit may be prescribed by the nation through whose territory the minister may pass at its option. Field's Code Int. Law, § 136. See 2 Phil. Int. Law, 186-189. "I heartily reprobate the outrage on the British Government in violating (by a privateer) the seals of its accredited minister to the United States, and am desirous of taking such notice of it as the respect we owe, not only to the Government of Great Britain but to ourselves, demand; I pray you, therefore, to refer the business to the attorney of the District, in the absence of the Attorney-General, with instructions to prosecute the persons he may find guilty of any breach of the law of nations or the land." Mr. J. Adams, President, to Mr. Pickering, Sec. of State, July 20, 1799; 8 John A belligerent has no right to stop the passage of a minister from a neutral state to the other belligerent, unless the mission of such minister be one hostile to the first belligerent. Mr. J. Q. Adams, Sec. of State, to Mr. Brown, Dec. 23, 1823. MSS. Inst., Ministers. "Some looseness of practice has crept in, with reference to passports of this kind (to bearers of dispatches), of an injurious tendency. Originally given to those actually charged with dispatches, they have been retained for ordinary use after the dispatches have been delivered at their destination. This circumstance has sometimes given an unreal character to these passports, which tends to impair their value in the hands of those entitled to them, besides being objectionable in other respects." Mr. Everett, Sec. of State, to Mr. Mann, Dec. 13, 1852. MSS. Dom. Let. "With reference to the permission given to the foreign representatives to correspond with their consuls in the ports of the insurgent states by means of vessels-of-war entering their ports, I have to remark that circumstances have come to the knowledge of this Department which render it advisable that this permission shall hereafter be re stricted to the correspondence of the consuls of those powers only who, by the regulations of their respective Governments, are not allowed to engage in commerce. I will consequently thank you to request the commander of any British vessel, who may visit the ports adverted to, to abstain from carrying letters for consuls who may be engaged in trade." Mr. F. W. Seward, Acting Sec. of State, to Lord Lyons, Feb. 6, 1862. MSS. The French Government, while conceding, in 1854, to Mr. Soulé, United States minister to Spain, the right to pursue the direct route through France to Spain, declined to permit him, in consequence of his political antecedents, to make, on his way, a stay, "séjour," in Paris. Calvo droit int., 3d ed., vol. 1, 603. In Senate Executive Document No. 1, Thirty-third Congress, second session, is printed the correspondence between the United States minister at Paris, Mr. Mason, and Mr. Drouyn de L'Huys, the French minister of foreign affairs, relative to the refusal of the French Government to allow Mr. Soulé, the United States minister to Spain, to enter France. The circumstances are thus stated by Mr. Lawrence: "A question arose in 1854 between the United States and France as to the immunities of a minister passing through the territories of a third power, in the case of Mr. Soulé, minister at Madrid, who was stopped at Calais in October of that year on his return to his post from which he had been temporarily absent. The views of the French Government are given in a note from the minister of foreign affairs to the American minister in Paris with regard to the privilege of transit, which was not denied, as well as respecting the position in relation to that country which the envoy to Spain held, he being a native-born subject of France, and a naturalized citizen of the United States. While Mr. Soulé's quality of foreigner, deduced from his expatriation, is recognized as to all other matters, and no exception taken to his title to the Spanish mission, Mr. Drouyn de L'Huys refers to the rule of the law of nations which, he assumes, would have required a special agreement to have enabled him to represent, in his native land, the country of his adoption. 'You see, sir,' says he, that the Government of the Emperor has not wished, as you appear to think, to prevent an envoy of the United States crossing the French territory to go to his post to acquit himself of the commission with which he was charged by his Government; but between this simple passage and the sojourn of a foreigner whose antecedents have awakened, I regret to say, the attention of the authorities invested with the duty of securing the public order of the country, there exists a difference, which the minister of the interior had to appreciate. If Mr. Soulé was going immediately and direct to Madrid, the route of France was open to him; if he was about coming to Paris to sojourn there, that privilege was not accorded to him. It was, there 6 fore, necessary to consult him as to his intentions, and it was he who did not give the time for doing this. "Our laws are precise on the subject of foreigners. The minister of the interior causes the rigorous dispositions of them to be executed when the necessity for it is demonstrated to him, and he then uses a discretionary power which the Government of the Emperor has never allowed to be discussed. The quality of foreigners placed Mr. Soulé under the operation of the measure which has been applied to him. You will admit, sir, that in doing what we have done the Government of the United States, with which His Imperial Majesty's Government heartily desire to maintain relations of friendship and esteem, has in nowise been attacked in the person of one of its representatives. The minister of the United States is free, I repeat, to cross France. Mr. Soulé, who has no mission to fulfill near the Emperor, and who, conformably to a doctrine consecrated by the law of nations, would have need, in consequence of his origin, of a special agreement to represent, in the country of his birth, the country of his adoption. Mr. Soulé, a private individual, comes within the operation of the law common to all persons, which has been applied to him, and cannot pretend to any privilege.' Mr. Drouyn de L'Huys to Mr. Mason, Nov. 1, 1854, Senate Doc. No. 1, 33d Cong., 2d sess." Lawrence's Wheaton (ed. 1863), 422. A person coming into the United States as the diplomatic representative of a foreign state, with credentials from governing powers not recognized by this Government, is accorded diplomatic privileges merely of transit, and this of courtesy, not of right, and such privileges may be withdrawn whenever there shall be cause to believe that he is engaged in, or contemplates, any act not consonant with the laws, peace, and public honor of the United States. 8 Op., 471, Cushing, 1855. Such a person, being charged with unlawful recruiting, was saved from prosecution on condition of not becoming chargeable with any further offense and of departing from the country within a reasonable time. 8 Op., 473, Cushing, 1855. "The right to send dispatches of a minister secured by the law of nations certainly involves the right to designate the messenger and the inviolability of his person when executing the commission. But when a country is in a revolutionary state this absolute right ought to be exercised with due regard to the safety of the state where the minister resides, and temporary inconveniences which do not go to the defeat of the right itself may well be submitted to in such a time without a compromise of the dignity or honor of a. just and friendly nation." Mr. Seward, Sec. of State, to Mr. Burton, May 29, 1861. MSS. Inst., Colombia. That consuls are not entitled to use their official agencies for correspondence for the carrying of communications to an enemy of the place of their residence, see Mr. Seward, Sec. of State, to Mr. Adams, Oct. 22, 1861, infra, Ó 119. S. Mis. 162—VOL. I -42 657 A bag purporting to contain dispatches of a foreign Government, and sealed and authenticated by a consul of such Government, is regarded as invested with the seal of such Government, and is not open to examination by the authorities of the country to which the consul is accredited. Mr. Seward, Sec. of State, to Lord Lyons, Apr. 5, 1862. MSS. Notes, Gr. Brit. "On general principles, however, a Government may be said to have a clear right to send its communications to its diplomatic agents in foreign countries, and its legation in one country to those in another by means of couriers, which communications should be inviolable by the authorities of the country through which they may pass. If the courier should be, as he ought to be, provided with a passport attesting his official character, and the dispatches of which he is the bearer are in his luggage, his affirmation to that effect ought, it seems to me, to exempt the latter from search, unless its bulk or other circumstances afford reasonable ground for suspicion that the courier has abused his official position for the purpose of smuggling. "Formerly it was the practice of this Department, and of the legations of the United States abroad, to issue courier passports for the mere convenience of individuals, when either there were really no dispatches to send, or, if there were, they might as well have gone by post. The abuse to which this practice led, and the consequent disrepute into which it brought the Government in Europe, compelled its discontinuance many years since. The authorities of that quarter may probably be induced to withhold perhaps the customary courtesies from couriers of the United States from a recollection of their former excessive numbers. If, however, it should be understood that persons are not now employed in that capacity except upon occasions similar to those when they are employed by other Governments, we would have a right to expect for our couriers the same immunities which are accorded to those of any other Government." Mr. Seward, Sec. of State, to Mr. Dayton, June 21, 1862. MSS. Inst., France. The United States Government will regard the detention by one belligerent of its minister to the other belligerent as a grave violation of international law. Mr. Seward, Sec. of State, to Mr. Webb, Sept. 23, 1866. MSS. Inst., Brazil. Free transit to a public minister may be demanded through a blockading squadron. Mr. Seward, Sec. of State, to Mr. Webb, Aug. 17, 1868. MSS. Inst., Brazil. Safe conducts in such cases are granted by the law of nations. Mr. Fish, Sec. of State, to Mr. Kirk, June 17, 1869. MSS. Inst., Arg. Rep. "The question which arose between General Hovey and the minister for foreign affairs of Peru, relative to the right of that Government |