from policy and interest. Mr. Wheaton gives several examples of the forced application of this doctrine. On the commencement,' he says, 'of hostilities between France and Great Britain, in 1793, the former power sequestrated the debts and other property belonging to the subjects of her enemy, which decree was retaliated by a countervailing measure on the part of the British government. By the additional articles to the treaty of peace between the two powers, concluded at Paris in April, 1814, the sequestrations were removed on both sides, and commissaries were appointed to liquidate the claims of British subjects for the value of their property unduly confiscated by the French authorities, and also for the total or partial loss of the debts due to them, or other property unduly retained under sequestration subsequent to 1792. The engagement, thus extorted from France, may be considered as a severe application of the rights of conquest to a fallen enemy, rather than a measure of even-handed justice, since it does not appear that French property, seized in the ports of Great Britain and at sea, in anticipation of hostilities, and subsequently condemned as droits of admiralty, were restored to the original owners under this treaty, on the return of peace between the two countries.'1

§ 20. The same author says: 'On the rupture between Great Britain and Denmark in 1807, the Danish ships, and other property, which had been seized in the British ports, and on the high seas, before the actual declaration of hostilities, were condemned as droits of admiralty by the retrospective operation of the declaration. The Danish government issued an ordinance retaliating this seizure, by sequestrating all debts due from Danish to British subjects, and causing them to be paid into the Danish royal treasury. The English court of king's bench determined that this ordinance was not a legal defence to a suit in England for such a debt, not being conformable to the usage of nations; the textwriters having condemned the practice, and no instance having occurred of the exercise of the right, except the ordinance in question, for upwards of a century. The soundness of this judgment may well be questioned. It has been justly observed that between debts contracted under the faith of laws, and property acquired on the faith of the same laws, reason 1 Wheaton, Elem. Int. Law, pt. iv. ch. i. § 12.

draws no distinction; and the right of the sovereign to confiscate debts is precisely the same with the right to confiscate other property found within the country on the breaking out of the war. Both require some special act expressing the sovereign will, and both depend, not on any inflexible rule of international law, but on political considerations, by which the judgment of the sovereign may be guided.' In another place, Mr. Wheaton said, in reference to this transaction, 'It is difficult to show a reasonable distinction between debts contracted under the public faith in time of peace, and property found in the enemy's territory on the breaking out of the war, or taken at sea before the declaration of hostilities.' The amount of Danish property condemned by the British government in 1807, as droits of admiralty, was computed at one million two hundred and sixty-five thousand pounds, while the debts due to British subjects, sequestrated by Denmark, amounted to only from two hundred thousand pounds to three hundred thousand pounds.'

1 Wheaton, suprà.

The history of the well-known Silesian loan is as follows:A loan of 80,000l. had been advanced by subjects of Great Britain to the Emperor Charles VI. on the security of the Duchies of Silesia. This territory was, in course of time, transferred to Prussia by virtue of the treaties of Breslau and of Dresden, in consideration of which cession Prussia was to discharge the debt. The King of Prussia, however, attached the debt by way of retortion, which, by the terms of the treaty, he had no power to do. The Duke of Newcastle, the minister of the day, took the opinion of the law officers of the Crown, who reported that the King of Prussia had pledged his royal word to pay the Silesian debt, and ought to be compelled to make good his engagement. The Duke of Newcastle thereupon enforced the obligation to pay the debt in the following letter :

'The Duke of Newcastle to Mr. Mitchell, the King of Prussia's Secretary of Embassy.

'Whitehall, February 8, 1753'SIR,-I lost no time in laying before the King the memorial which you delivered to me, on November 23 last, with the papers that accompanied it.

'His Majesty found the contents of it so extraordinary, that he would not return an answer to it, or take any resolution upon it, till he had caused both the memorial and the Exposition des Motifs, &c., which you put into my hands soon after, by way of justification of what had passed at Berlin, to be maturely considered, and till His Majesty should thereby be enabled to set the proceedings of the Court of Admiralty here, in their true light, to the end that His Prussian Majesty and the whole world, might be rightly informed of the regularity of their conduct; in which they appear to have followed the only method which has ever been practised by nations, where disputes of this nature could happen, and strictly to have conformed themselves to the law of nations, universally allowed to be the rule in such cases, when there is nothing stipulated to the contrary, by particular treaties, between the parties concerned.

§ 21. As remarked in a preceding paragraph, it is not, in all cases, easy to determine from what circumstances, and at what period, war shall be said to have commenced, so as to

'This examination, and the full knowledge of the facts resulting from it, will show so clearly the irregularity of the proceedings of those persons, to whom this affair was referred at Berlin, that it is not doubted, from His Prussian Majesty's justice and discernment, but that he will be convinced thereof, and will revoke the detention of the sums assigned upon Silesia, the payment of which His Prussian Majesty engaged to the Empress Queen to take upon himself, and of which the reimbursement was an express article in the treaty, by which the cession of that Duchy was made.

'I, therefore, have the King's orders to send you the Report made to His Majesty, upon the papers above mentioned, by Sir George Lee, Judge of the Prerogative Court, Dr. Paul, His Majesty's Advocate-General in the Courts of Civil Law; Sir Dudley Rider and Mr. Murray, His Majesty's Attorney and Solicitor-General. This report is founded upon the principles of the laws of nations, received and acknowledged by authorities of the greatest weight in all countries; so that His Majesty does not doubt but that it will have the effect desired . .

'Sixthly―That even though reprisals might be justified by the known and general rules of the law of nations, it appears from the Report, and indeed from considerations which must occur to everybody, that sums due to the king's subjects by the Empress Queen, and assigned by her upon Silesia, of which sums His Prussian Majesty took upon himself the payment, both by the Treaty of Breslau and that of Dresden, in consideration of the cession of that country, and which, by virtue of that very cession, ought to have been fully and absolutely discharged in the year 1745, that is to say, one year before any of the facts complained of did happen, could not, either in justice or reason, or according to what is the constant practice between all the most respectable Powers, be seized or stopped by way of reprisals . . . .

'It is material to observe upon this subject, that this debt on Silesia was contracted by the late Emperor Charles VI., who engaged not only to fulfil the conditions expressed in the contract, but even to give the creditors such further security as they might afterwards reasonably ask. This condition has been very ill performed by a transfer of the debt, which has put it in the power of a third person to seize and confiscate it.

'You will not be surprised, Sir, that in an affair that has so greatly alarmed the whole nation, who are entitled to that protection that His Majesty cannot dispense with himself from granting, the King has taken time to have things examined to the bottom, and that His Majesty finds himself obliged by the facts to adhere to the justice and legality of what has been done in his courts, and not to admit the irregular proceedings which have been carried on elsewhere.

'The King is fully persuaded that what has passed at Berlin, has been occasioned solely by the ill-grounded information which His Prussian Majesty has received of these affairs, and does not at all doubt but that when His Prussian Majesty shall see them in their true light, his natural disposition to justice and equity will induce him immediately to rectify the steps, which have been occasioned by those informations, and to complete the payment of the debt, charged on the Duchy of Silesia, according to his engagement for that purpose. 'HOLLES NEWCASTLE.'

I am, &c., &c.,

fix the character of a public enemy on the State with which it is waged. Where a public declaration or manifesto pre

The following is an extract from the seventh proposition of the abovementioned report :—

'The King of Prussia has engaged his royal word to pay the Silesia debt to private men. It is negotiable, and many parts have been assigned to the subjects of other Powers. It will not be easy to find an instance where a prince has thought fit to make reprisals upon a debt, due from himself to private men. There is a confidence that this will not be done. A private man lends money to a prince upon the faith of an engagement of honour, because a prince cannot be compelled, like other men, in an adverse way by a court of justice. So scrupulously did England, France, and Spain adhere to this public faith, that even during the war they suffered no enquiry to be made, whether any part of the public debts was due to subjects of the enemy, though it is certain many English had money in the French funds, and many French had money in ours. This loan to the late Emperor of Germany, Charles VI., in fanuary 1734-5, was not a State transaction, but a mere private contract with the lenders who advanced their money upon the Emperor's obliging himself, his heirs, and posterity, to repay the principal with interest, at the rate, in the manner, and at the times in the contract mentioned, without any delay, demur, deduction, or abatement whatsoever.'

The King of Prussia listened to the remonstrance of the British Government, and the debt was paid.

In 1840, Lord Howard de Walden, by order of the British Government of the day, thus addressed the Portuguese Government, with reference to the claims of the British Legion, and of the British auxiliary force in Portugal, the Duke of Wellington, and others :

'The undersigned has, therefore, been instructed to propose, to the Government of Her Most Faithful Majesty, a convention for the settlement of these claims, a draught of which he has the honour to enclose; and to declare to the Government of Her Most Faithful Majesty, that solely in the advent of the proposed convention being agreed to, without delay, will Her Majesty's Government be satisfied. There being no question involved in the consideration of the proposed convention, which requires any length of time for decision, the undersigned is instructed to declare that, unless he is able to return the proposed convention ratified within a fortnight, Her Majesty's Government will proceed to take such steps as may appear to them to be proper for the purpose of obtaining redress, after having so repeatedly and earnestly, though in vain, claimed it from the Government of Portugal.'

This energetic language had the desired effect: the Portuguese Government conceded the just claims of the parties, and paid interest as well as principal.

A corporation of Irishmen, existing in a foreign country and under the control of a foreign Government, must be considered as a foreign corporation, and is not therefore entitled to claim compensation for the loss of its property, under a treaty giving the right of doing so to British subjects.-Long v. Commissioners for claims on France, 2 Knapp, P. C. R., 51.

The payment of a moiety of the Russian-Dutch loan, is an instance of an obligation undertaken, by Great Britain, for a permanent equivalent, in consideration of Holland agreeing that Great Britain should retain

cedes hostilities, the war exists from the time it is declared. But such a precedent declaration is not, as has already been

certain Dutch colonies and dependencies, of which Great Britain was in possession at the conclusion of the war, in 1814. Great Britain took upon herself the obligation of a moiety of a certain loan, made by Holland to Russia, during the war. It was recited in the fifth article of the Convention of London (May 19, 1815), that it was understood and agreed between the high contracting parties (Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Russia), that the payment on the part of the King of the Netherlands and the King of Great Britain should cease and determine (such payments being payments of an annual interest, of five per cent., together with a sinking fund, of one per cent.), if the possession and sovereignty of the Belgic Provinces should at any time pass, or be severed, from the dominions of the King of the Netherlands, at any time before the complete liquidation of the same; and that it was also understood and agreed, between the high contracting parties, that the payments on the part of their Majesties, the King of the Netherlands and the King of Great Britain, as aforesaid, should not be interrupted in the event of a war breaking out between any of the three high contracting parties, the Government of His Majesty, the Emperor of all the Russians, being actually bound to his creditors by a similar agreement.

Upon the separation of the Belgic Provinces from the kingdom of Holland, in 1831, Great Britain entered into a new convention with Russia, conceiving that, though the event had happened, which, according to the letter of the convention of 1815, released Great Britain as well as Holland from the obligation of continuing to pay off her portion of the loan, Great Britain was still bound, according to the spirit of the convention, which was made on her part, in consideration of the general arrangements of the Congress at Vienna, to adhere to her engagements. A new convention between Russia and Great Britain was accordingly executed (London, November 10, 1831), whereby the King of Great Britain undertook to recommend to the British Parliament, to enable him to continue the payments stipulated in the convention of May 19, 1815, conformably to the manner, and until the liquidation of the sum therein specified. Notwithstanding that open war arose between Great Britain and Russia in 1854, Great Britain never faltered in her good faith in the matter of the understanding between herself and the other two Powers, as set out in the fifth article of the convention; and the interest and instalments of the loan have been regularly voted, without the slightest interruption, by the British Parliament, and paid by the British Government to the agents of the Russian Government. Further, when a motion was made by Lord Dudley Stuart in the House of Commons, in the month of August, 1854, during the war with Russia, that Great Britain should renounce her obligation to make any further payments of the loan, upon the ground that Russia had violated the general arrangements of the Congress of Vienna, the motion was rejected on this, amongst other grounds, that Great Britain, being at war with Russia, was bound, by a regard to national honour, to be more than ever jealous of affording the slightest grounds for the accusation that she wished to repudiate debts justly contracted, with the Power which was for the time her enemy.—Sir Travers Twiss, Law of Nations, vol. ii., 112.

In 1861, the British Government withdrew its legation from Mexico. This was, in the words of Earl Russell, 'forced upon Her Majesty's Government by continual disregard of the rights of British subjects, and of the obligations of international engagements, which rendered it im