foreigner and native, and the Judges are left free, and give sentence according to their conscience; though it should be erroneous, that would be no ground of reprisals. Upon doubtful questions different men think and judge differently; and all that a friend can desire, is, that justice should be impartially administered to him, as it is to the subjects of that prince in whose Courts the matter is tried (w).

Where a matter is doubtful, the sentence of a competent tribunal is always presumed to be just (x). But where Courts are not equally open to foreigners and natives; or where unfair distinctions are established to the prejudice of foreigners; or justice is not indifferently administered; or a sentence manifestly unjust is pronounced in a matter that is not doubtful; recourse must be had to the sovereign, and if justice be denied, or affectedly delayed by him, the law of nations admits of reprisals (y). Even where a matter admits of no doubt, a subject is bound to submit to an unjust sentence of a Court of the last resort: but the rights of a foreigner may be enforced by reprisals, if justice be denied by the sovereign (z). So where the matter of complaint is an injury committed or supported by a sovereign; or a demand upon a prince or state, for which satisfaction is refused (a).

(w) Ans. to Pruss. Mem., 1 Coll. Jur. 138.

(x) Grot. iii. 2, v.; Barbey. note, Puff. viii. 6, xiii.; Vatt. ii. 84, 350. (y) Grot. iii. 2, v. ; Vatt. ii. § 84, 350; Barbey. note, Puff. viii. 6, xiii. (z) Grot. iii. 2, v.

(a) Grot. iii. 2, ii.

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CHAPTER VI.

OF OFFENCES AGAINST THE LAW OF NATIONS.

THE principal offences against the law of nations that are cognizable by judicial tribunals are first, offences against ambassadors, which have been considered in a former chapter. Secondly. Violation of safe conducts.

Thirdly. Libels against sovereign princes and eminent persons in foreign states.

Fourthly. Piracy.

A safe conduct is either express or implied. Express safe conducts are given only in time of war. All foreigners, who are in the territories of any state in time of peace, are there under an implied safe conduct. During the continuance of safe conduct, either express or implied, a foreigner is under the protection of the sovereign; and if any violation of his rights, either in person or property be not punished by the sovereign, it becomes just ground of war (a). The statute 31 Henry 6, c. 4, enacts, that if any of the King's subjects attempt or offend upon the sea, or in any port within the King's obeisance against any stranger in amity, league, or truce, or under safe conduct; and especially by attacking his person, or spoiling him, or robbing him of his goods, the Lord Chancellor, with any of the justices of either the King's Bench or Common Pleas, may cause full restitution and amends to be made to the party injured. The law of the United States provides, that if any person shall violate any safe conduct or passport, granted under the authority of the United States, he shall on convic

(a) Bla. Comm. iv. 68.

tion be imprisoned not exceeding three years, and fined at the discretion of the court (b).

Thirdly. Upon the ground that malicious and scurrilous reflections upon those that are possessed of rank and influence in foreign states, may tend to involve this country in disputes and warfare, it has been held, that publications tending to degrade and defame persons in considerable stations of power and dignity in foreign countries may be treated as libels (c). Thus, an information was filed by the command of the Crown for a libel on a French ambassador, then residing at the British court, consisting principally of angry reflections on his public conduct, charging him with ignorance in his official capacity, and with having used stratagem to supplant and depreciate the defendant at the Court of Versailles, and the defendant was convicted (d). Lord George Gordon was found guilty upon an information for having published some severe reflections upon the Queen of France, in which she was represented as the leader of a faction; upon which Mr. Justice Ashurst observed, in passing sentence, that the object of the publication being to rekindle animosities between England and France by the personal abuse of the sovereign of one of them, it was highly necessary to repress offences of so dangerous a nature; and that such libels might be supposed to have been published with the connivance of the state, unless the authors were subjected to punishment (e). So, a defendant was found guilty upon an information charging him with having published the following libel: "The Emperor of Russia is rendering himself obnoxious to his subjects by various acts of tyranny, and ridiculous in the eyes of Europe by his inconsistency. He has lately passed an edict to prohibit the exportation of deals and other naval stores. In consequence of this ill-judged law

(b) Kent Comm. i. 170.

(c) Russell on Crimes, i. 232.

(d) R. v. D'Eon, 1 Black. Rep. 510.
(e) Russell on Crimes, 233.

a hundred sail of vessels are likely to return to this country without freight."

In a case, which occurred shortly afterwards, where the defendant was charged by an information with a libel on Napoleon Buonaparte; Lord Ellenborough in his address to the jury said: "I lay it down as law, that any publication which tends to degrade, revile, and defame persons in considerable situations of power and dignity in foreign countries may be taken to be and treated as a libel; and particularly, when it has a tendency to interrupt the pacific relations between the two countries" (ƒ).

Fourthly. Of piracy. A pirate is a rover and a robber upon the sea, and an enemy of the human race (g). The marine ordinance of Louis 14 defines pirates to be sea rovers, who have no commission from any sovereign prince (h). Bynkershoek defines them to be those, who commit depredations on the high seas without the authority of any sovereign (i). This definition is borrowed from the maxim of the civil law: hostes sunt, qui notis aut quibus nos vellum publica dicerninus; cæteri latrones aut prædones sunt (j): modified by the practice of reprisals which was unknown to the Romans (k). As every man by the usage of European nations is justiciable in the place where the crime is committed; pirates, being reputed out of all laws and privileges, are to be tried in what ports soever they are taken (1). Any pirate may be tried in any country to which he is brought or in which he is found; being an enemy of all mankind he is subject to the jurisdiction of any sovereign within whose power he is brought (m). But

(f) Russell on Crimes, 233.

(g) 3 Inst. 113; Val. Ord. iii. 9, iii.
(h) Val. Ord. iii. 9, iv.

(i) Bynk. Q. J. P. i. xvii.

(j) Grot. iii. 3, ii.

(k) Bynk. Q. J. P. i. xxiv.

(1) Life of Sir L. Jenkins, ii. 714. (m) Bynk. Q. J. P. i. xvii. p. 223.

the law distinguishes between a pirate, who is a highwayman, and sets up for robbing, either having no commission at all, or else two or three, and a lawful man of war, who exceeds his commission. Such excesses, abstracted from the damages and affronts they give, are solely against the prince who gives the commission, and consequently punishable by him only as transgressions of his rule and aberrations from his service (n).

Nor is there any distinction in this respect between public and private commissioned vessels; the latter are ships of the sovereign as long as they sail under his commission unrevoked (0).

Nor is there any distinction as to commissions given by piratical states. A Bristol merchantman taken by an Algerine man of war was driven by stress of weather upon the coast of Ireland, and there seized, together with some Turks and renegadoes on board it. Sir Leoline Jenkins was consulted and gave his opinion, that as to the Moors and Turks, that were so by birth, found on board this ship; since the government of Algiers had been owned as well by several treaties of peace and declarations of war, as by the establishment of trade and even of consuls and residents amongst them by so many princes and states, and particularly by the King of England, they could not be proceeded against as pirates or sea-rovers acting without commission, but were to have the privileges of enemies in an open war. That the Spanish renegade was to be treated as a prisoner of war, and could not be proceeded against as a pirate. But as for the English renegade, an indictment of high treason would lie against him for levying war against the King, and adhering to his enemies (p).

So by the law of France and America, a French or American subject levying war against his country or attacking vessels thereof by colour of a commission from a foreign prince is liable

(n) Life of Sir L. Jenkins, ii. 714; Bynk. i. xvii.

(0) Ibid.

(p) Life of Sir L. Jenkins, ii. 791; Grot. iii. 3, ii.; Bynk. Q. J. P. i. xvii.; Helena, 4 Rob. 3.