or done, by or before any such officer, when certified under his hand and seal of office, shall be as valid, and of like force and effect within the United States, to all intents and purposes, as if administered, sworn, affrmed, taken, had, or done, by or before any other (sic) person within the United States duly authorized and competent thereto.' "And it is finally provided that if any person shall wilfully and corruptly commit perjury, or by any means procure any person to commit perjury in any such oath, affirmation, affidavit, or deposition, within the intent and meaning of any act of Congress now or hereafter made, such offender may be charged, proceeded against, tried, convicted, and dealt with in any district of the United States, in the same manner, in all respects, as if such offense had been committed in the United States, before any officer duly authorized therein to administer or take such oath, affirmation, affidavit, or deposition, and shall be subject to the same punishment and disability therefor as are or shall be prescribed by any such act for such offense; and any document purporting to have affixed, impressed, or subscribed thereto or thereon the seal and signature of the officer administering or taking the same in testimony thereof, shall be admitted in evidence without proof of any such seal or signature being genuine or of the official character of such person; and if any person shall forge any such seal or signature, or shall tender in evidence any such document with a false or counterfeit seal or signature thereto, knowing the same to be false or counterfeit, he shall be deemed and taken to be guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction shall be imprisoned not exceeding three years nor less than one year, and fined in a sum not to exceed three thousand dollars, and may be charged, proceeded against, tried, convicted, and dealt with, therefor, in the district where he may be arrested or in custody.' "I am not aware that any case has ever arisen to require a judicial construction of this act, but, as it is generally understood," it is not confined in its operation to citizens of the United States, but applies as well to aliens committing the designated offenses; and it has sometimes been referred to as an instance of the assertion by the United States of a general international right to try and punish aliens for acts done in a foreign country. It is not difficult to show that such a view of the statute is not warranted either by its terms or by the scope or results of its operation. It is not even necessary to its justification, upon principles of international law, to adopt the reasoning of Attorney-General Williams (14 Op. 285), who, referring to the law in question, affirmed its international validity on the ground that according to international law, the domicile of an embassador, minister extraordinary, or consul is a part of the territory he represents for many pur a Wharton's Cr. Law, § 276; Williams, Attorney-General, 14 Op. 285. poses.' . . . But the international validity of the act of 1856 does not, in my judgment, rest solely, nor even in the main, on that ground. "It is to be observed that the act relates solely to certain officers, known to international law, who, upon the recognition and with the consent of the governments of foreign countries, discharge there the functions of official representatives of the Government of the United States. One of those functions is the performance of the official acts enumerated in the statute of 1856, namely, the taking of oaths, etc., and the performance of notarial acts, for use in the United States. And as these acts are performed under the laws of the United States, not only does the person who appears before a secretary of legation or a consular officer for any of the purposes enumerated in the act of 1856 submit himself to the laws of the United States to that extent, but if he swears falsely or does any other thing in contravention of the act, he violates a law to whose execution in its territory the foreign government has consented. The act contains, therefore, neither an assertion of a general right to punish aliens for acts done by them outside of the United States, nor even an assertion of such a right to punish them for acts so done against the Government of the United States, to say nothing of acts merely against its citizens." "The general rule that the laws of a nation have no binding force, except as to citizens, outside of the national territory, actual or constructive, was again laid down by the Supreme Court in 1824, in the case of the Apollon, 9 Wheaton, 362. In that case, Mr. Justice Story, speaking for the court, said: "The laws of no nation can justly extend beyond its own territories, except so far as regards its own citizens. They can have no force to control the sovereignty or rights of any other nation, within its own jurisdiction. And, however general and comprehensive the phrases used in our municipal laws may be, they must always be restricted, in construction, to places and persons upon whom the legislature have authority and jurisdiction.' "In a still later case heard before him in the circuit court of the United States at Boston," Mr. Justice Story again had occasion to consider and decide the question of jurisdiction over offenses committed outside of the national territory. In this case the defendant, the master of an American whale ship, was indicted for manslaughter, by shooting at and killing a man on board of another and foreign vessel in the Society Islands. It appeared that the shot was fired by the defendant from his own vessel, and took effect as above described. Taking the view that, although the shot was fired from a The statutes of the United States do provide for the punishment of consular officers who commit criminal acts abroad. (Mr. Day, Assist. Sec. of State, to Mr. Hinton, Nov. 17, 1897, 222 MS. Dom. Let. 480.) United States v. Davis (1837), 2 Sumner C. C. 482. the American vessel, the crime was, in contemplation of law, committed where the shot took effect,' the learned judge said: "Of offenses committed on the high seas on board of foreign vessels not being a piratical vessel, but belonging to persons under the acknowledged government of a foreign country, this court has no jurisdiction under the act of 1790, ch. 36, § 12. That was the doctrine of the Supreme Court in United States. Palmer, (3 Wheat. R. 610), and United States v. Klintock (5 Wheat. 144), and United States v. Holmes (5 Wheaton, 412); applied, it is true, to another class of cases; but in its scope embracing the present. We lay no stress on the fact that the deceased was a foreigner. Our judgment would be the same if he had been an American citizen. We decide the case wholly on the ground that the schooner was a foreign vessel, belonging to foreigners, and at the time under the ackknowledged jurisdiction of a foreign government.' "It would be useless to attempt to collect all the declarations and applications by the State courts of the principle that penal laws have no extraterritorial force; and I shall quote the language of only a few cases, to mark the uniform current." John B. Moore, Report on Extraterritorial Crime, 22–37, 51–57, 63-68; also, For. Rel. 1887, 770–781, 790–793, 798–801. Following the passages above quoted are citations of Gilbert v. Stedman (Conn. 1792), 1 Root 403; State v. Grady (1867), 34 Conn. 118; People v. Wright (New York, 1804), 2 Caine's Rep. 213; Charles v. People (1848), 1 Comstock, 180; People v. Noelke (1883), 94 N. Y. 137; Green v. State (1880), 66 Ala. 40; State v. Knight (North Carolina, 1799), Taylor's Rep. 65; State v. Carter (N. J., 1859), 3 Dutcher, 499; Johns v. State (1862), 19 Ind. 421; State v. Chapin (1856), 17 Ark. 561; Haven v. Foster (Mass.), 9 Pick. 112; State v. Moore (N. H.), 6 Foster 448; In re Carr, 28 Kan. 1. See also Simpson v. State (Ga.), 17 S. E. 984, 22 L. R. A. 248; State v. Morrow (S. C.), 18 S. E. 853; State v. Bailey, 50 Ohio St. 636, 31 Ohio L. J. 106, 36 N. E. 233; State v. Hall, 114 N. C. 909, 19 S. E. 602; Field v. Bennett, London Times, July 27 and Dec. 16, 1886; In re Trufort, London Times, July 27, 1887; Castrique v. Imrie, L. R. 4 H. L. 414; Godard v. Gray, L. R. 6 Q. B. 139. An examination is also made of the proceedings of the Institut de Droit International, as found in the Revue de Droit Int. IX. 461 et seq.; XI. 308 et seq.; Annuaire de l'Institut (1880), 50 et seq.; and of the following publicists: Fiore, Droit Int. Privé (Paris, 1885), I. 408; Fiore, Droit Pénal Int. (Paris, 1880), 94; Phillimore, IV. 707; Wheaton (Dana's ed.), 180; Hall, Int. Law (2nd ed.), 190; Story, Confl, of Laws (5th ed.), 984; Bar, Int. Law (Edinburgh, 1883), 626; Field, Int. Code, §§ 643, 644; Wharton, Confl. of Laws (2nd ed.), § 809; Woolsey, Int. Law, §§ 20a, 20b, 76, 77; Lewis, For. Juris. 29; Heffter, Int. Law, § 36; Heffter, Criminalrecht, §§ 25-27; M. Faustin Hélie, Traité de l'Instruction Criminelle, II. §§ 127, 128; Pradier-Fodéré, Traité de Droit Int. III. § 1840. See also Attorney-General r. Kwok-a-Sing (1873), L. R. 5 P. C. 179; Case of Carl Vogt, Moore on Extradition, I. 135. 66 See L'Affaire Cutting, by M. Albéric Rolin, Rev. de Droit Int. (1888), XX. 559; A Continental Review of the Cutting Case, Am. Law Rev. (MayJune, 1889), XXIII. 329; L'Affaire Cutting, by Señor José M. Gamboa, of Mexico, Rev. de Droit Int. XXII. 234. IV. JURISDICTION OVER PORTS. 1. ENTRANCE OF FOREIGN VESSELS. § 203. It is consistent with the just principles, as it is with the interests, of the United States to receive the vessels of all countries into their ports, to whatever party belonging, and under whatever flag sailing, pirates excepted, requiring of them only the payment of the duties, and obedience to the laws while under their jurisdiction, without adverting to the question whether they had committed any violation of the allegiance or laws obligatory on them in the countries to which they belonged, either in assuming such flag, or in any other respect." Mr. Monroe, Sec. of State, to Chev. de Onis, Span. min., Jan. 19, 1816, Am. "You will state that this Government does not question the right of every nation to prescribe the conditions on which the vessels of other nations may be admitted into her ports. That, nevertheless, those conditions ought not to conflict with the received usages which regulate the commercial intercourse between civilized nations. That those usages are well known and long established, and no nation can disregard them without giving just cause of complaint to all other nations whose interests would be affected by their violation. "That the circumstance of an officer of a vessel having published, in his own country, matters offensive to a foreign government does not, according to those usages, furnish a sufficient cause for excluding such vessel from the ports of the latter. "That the steamers employed in transporting the mail from this country to Havana, being in the employment of Government, and placed by law, to a certain extent, under its control, partake, in some degree, of the character of public vessels." Mr. Conrad, Acting Sec. of State, to Mr. Barringer, Oct. 28, 1852, MS. Inst. "I have received your No. 77 of the 13th ultimo, in which you inclose a copy of a note from the Haitian minister of foreign affairs complaining of the presence of two American schooners at GrandGosier, a port of the Republic of Haiti not open to foreign com merce. "The general tenor of your reply, a copy of which you inclose, is approved. "If the presence of the vessels in question in a port not open to trade was not due to stress of weather or some other of the exceptional circumstances provided for in the treaty of 1864 between the United States and Haiti, and was therefore not privileged, the enforcement of the revenue laws of the latter Government would seem to be incumbent upon its authorities. "The Government of the United States and its representatives in Haiti can have no responsibility for unlawful acts of American vessels committed beyond its jurisdiction and within that of another sovereign power; our only concern is to see that any proceedings against such offenders are conducted in accordance with law and conformably with such treaty stipulations as may be in force." Mr. Blaine, Sec. of State, to Mr. Douglass, minister to Hayti, July 2, 1890, The correspondence of Mr. Douglass with the Haytian minister of foreign While it was permissible, under the law of nations, for China, during the French-Chinese war, to sink obstructions in Canton River for the purpose of preventing the access of French men-of-war to Canton, such obstructions can only be retained as long as needed for belligerent purposes. Their removal after peace is required, not merely by the treaties entered into by China making Canton an open port, but by the law of nations. See infra, § 1286. Unless closed by local law the ports of a friendly nation are considered as open to the public ships of all powers with whom it is at peace, and they are supposed to enter such ports, and to remain in them while allowed to remain, under the protection of the government of the place. The implied license under which such vessel enters a friendly port may reasonably be construed, and, it seems to the court, ought to be construed, as containing an exemption from the jurisdiction of the sovereign within whose territory she claims the rights of hospitality. The Exchange v. McFaddon, 7 Cranch, 116. The hospitality of the ports of the United States, when a neutral, is extended equally to the vessels of each belligerent when visiting for purposes of convenience, or when driven to take refuge from storms or a superior naval force. Mr. Clay, Sec. of State, to Mr. Tacon, Oct. 29, 1827, MS. Notes to For. "I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your notes of the 6th and 7th instant, in further reference to the approaching visit |