A

IX.

FTER an era of comparative tranquility the Chartist movement appeared. The Reform Bill of 1832 was really a class movement, and the vague discontent among the mass of the people soon concentrated in the movement for further reform, to which Daniel O'Connell gave the name "Chartism." The principal points of the "charter" were manhood suffrage, annual parliaments, vote by ballot, abolition of the property qualification for members of Parliament, payment of members, and division of the country into equal electoral districts. The movement was backed by much enthusiasm and intelligence, accompanied, as usual, by an undercurrent. of feeling in favor of violent measures. connection with any considerable external complications this agitation might have attained serious proportions. But the government, profiting by past experience, met the emergency, upon the whole, with good sense and discretion. Reasonable reforms were conceded, and in so far as its claims were visionary and unreasonable, Chartism died from public exposure.

In

The judicial history of Chartism may be said to begin with the trial of Frost in 1839. Vincent's imprisonment at Newport in that year was the occasion of an attempted rescue which certainly approached armed rebellion. On November 4, 1839, a force of nearly ten thousand workingmen, most of them armed in some way, marched to Newport, apparently without any definite design. But eventually, some five thousand men, under the leadership of Frost, attacked an inn occupied by a small detachment of troops. The mob was dispersed with a loss of thirty lives, and Frost and two others were brought to trial for treason (4 St. Tr., N. S. 85).

Frost was a respectable trader of Newport, who had been a local magistrate, but had been deprived of his commission in consequence of his intemperate participation in the Chartist movement. His trial is in every way interesting. Chief Justice Tindal presided with a dignity and fairness worthy of the best traditions of the English bench. Attorney-General Campbell, Solicitor-General Wilde, and Sergeant Taulford prosecuted for the crown. Sir Frederick Pollock and Sir Fitzroy Kelly defended Frost. The indictment contained the usual counts charging levying war against Her Majesty, with intent to depose her and to compel her to change her measures. In spite of the very able and impassioned defense the prisoners were convicted. The jury undoubtedly took the view that there was sufficient ground to suppose an ulterior purpose of setting in motion a great rebellious movement. In consequence, however, of an irregularity in the delivery of the list of crown witnesses, the death penalty was commuted to transportation for life.

In the Chartist prosecutions from 1839 to 1843, the law relating to seditious conspiracy and unlawful assembly was formulated. upon modern lines by such judges as Patterson and Rolfe. Whenever a body of persons meet together in such a manner and under such circumstances as reasonably to excite terror and alarm in the neighborhood the assembly is unlawful. The most instructive trials are those of Stephens (3 St. Tr., N. S. 1149), Feargus O'Conor (4 ib. 935), and Cooper (4 ib. 1249).

As long as there were no foreign complications Chartism aroused no serious fears in England. But the condition of affairs in

peers (Lyndhurst and Brougham dissenting) held that the whole judgment was vitiated, and O'Connell was discharged (5 St. Tr., N. S. 1).

Animated by the continental revolutions of 1848 a young and enthusiastic Irish element broke away from O'Connell's peace policy and openly advocated revolution. The plan was to excite the passions of the people to such a pitch that the government would be forced to arrest the leaders of the movement, when the people would rise to rescue them. In consequence of John Mitchell's fulminations in the United Irishman, the government passed the Treason Felony Act of 1848, making all written inducement to insurrection or resistance to the low felony, punishable with transportation. Mitchell, O'Doherty, Martin and others were tried under this act and sentenced to various terms of transportation (6 St. Tr., N. S. 599 et. seq.). O'Brien, Meagher, and other leaders, soon came into open conflict with the authorities, and were forthwith tried and convicted of high treason (7 St. Tr., N. S. 1). Absorbingly interesting as these trials are in almost every other respect, they present no conspicuous legal problems. The prisoners had been taken in open rebellion, and although Whiteside made an impassioned argument on the theory that the uprising was for personal, rather than for general public purposes, there could be no doubt of their guilt. They were perfectly. frank in their statements. When O'Brien was asked if he had anything to say why sentence of death should not be passed upon him, he replied: "My lords, it is not my intention to enter into any vindication of my conduct, however much I might have desired to avail myself of this opportunity of doing so. I am perfectly satisfied

with the consciousness that I have performed my duty to my country; that I have done only that which, in my opinion, it was the duty of every Irishman to have done; I am prepared now to abide the consequences of having done my duty to my native land. Proceed with your sentence."

"Even here, where the thief, the libertine and the murderer have left their footprints in the dust-here on this spot where the shadows of death surround me, and from which I see my early grave in an unconsecrated soil is opened to receive me-even here, encircled by those terrors, the hope which beckoned me on to embark upon the perilous sea upon which I have been wrecked, still consoles, animates, enraptures me. Judged by the law of England, I know that this crime entails upon me the penalty of death; but the history of Ireland explains this crime, and justifies it. Judged by that history, I am no criminal; you [turning to McManus] are no criminal; you [turning to O'Donaghue] are no criminal; and we deserve no punishment. Judged by that history, the treason of which I stand convicted, loses all its guilt, has been sanctified as a duty, and will be ennobled as a sacrifice."

During the next few years following the Irish insurrection of 1848, Chartism and the Young Ireland movement crossed each other, and there were several State prosecutions for conspiracy and unlawful assembly in which the prisoners were often implicated in both. The principal cases were those of Fussell (6 St. Tr., N. S. 723); Jones (ib. 783); Dowling (7 ib. 381); Cuffey (ib. 467); O'Donnell (ib. 637), and Rankin (ib. 711.) The Fenian movement of 1866 was simply a repetition of Irish insurrection of 1848.

HE Russo-Japanese War has given rise

THE

to several interesting and important questions bearing upon the rights and privileges of neutrals in warfare which are wholly new and unprecedented in the history of International Law. In dealing with these questions it may be well to call attention to the fact that the discussion of such topics must necessarily be more or less tentative in its nature, inasmuch as we cannot appeal, in support of our views, to the authority of eminent publicists or jurists or to the force of precedents in international practice. In the absence of such guides we must fall back upon the general or fundamental principles of our science or seek for analogous cases in the history of International Law.

The first of these questions relates to the rights of war correspondents and the use of wireless telegraphy in neutral waters.

The head of our State Department must have been considerably surprised to receive the following note from Count Cassini, the Russian ambassador at Washington, on April 15, 1904. "I am instructed by my Government, in order that there may be no misunderstanding, to inform your Excellency that the Lieutenant of his Imperial Majesty in the Far East' has just made the following declaration:-In case neutral vessels, having on board correspondents who may communicate news to the enemy by means of improved apparatus not yet provided for by existing conventions, should be arrested off Kwan-tung, or within the zone of operations 1 Admiral Alexieff

of the Russian fleet, such correspondents shall be regarded as spies, and the vessels provided with such apparatus shall be seized as lawful prizes." It is believed that a similar, if not identical, note was communicated to the other Powers,3 which was thus in the nature of a general notification to the whole world. After a careful consideration of this announcement on the part of the Russian Government that it proposes to treat as spies any newspaper correspondents falling into its hands who have been engaged in the collection or transmission of news on the high seas by means of wireless telegraphy, our Government appears to have wisely decided to defer action or formal protest until a case

"For the text of this note see the London Times (weekly ed.) for April 22, 1904. Cf. N. Y. Times for April 16th. The two versions differ slightly in phraseology, but not in purport.

3 This is true, at least in the case of the British Government. The British note does not seem to have been given to the Press, but on April 22d, Earl Percy, Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, gave an account of Admiral Alexieff's order in the House of Commons which differed from the American version in a very important respect. He spoke of "correspondents who are communicating information to the enemy," instead of "who may communicate, etc." "There is,' as Lawrence (War and Neutrality in the Far East, p. 85) says in commenting upon this apparent discrepancy, "all the difference in the world between being in a position to do an act and actually doing it." In the latter case, i. e.. if the war correspondent on board the Haimun had actually communicated news to the Japanese. he would have been guilty of having performed an unneutral service for which he would have rendered himself liable by way of penalty to the loss of his ship and apparatus, although even in this case, he would not have been subject to the treatment of a spy. We have accepted the American version and assumed throughout our discussion that there is no question of unneutral service.