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Part II.

§ 105.

The exemp

tion of public

local juris

diction does

or neutral; as if, for example, such vessel be chartered to serve as an instrument of conspiracy against the safety of the State, and after having landed some of the persons concerned in these acts, still continues to hover near the coast, with the rest of the conspirators on board, and at last puts into port under pretext of distress.

2. That supposing such allegation of distress be founded in fact, it could not serve as a plea to exclude the jurisdiction of the local tribunals, taking cognizance of a charge of high treason against the persons found on board, after the vessel was compelled to put into port by stress of weather (c).

So also it has been determined by the Supreme Court ships from the of the United States, that the exemption of foreign public ships, coming into the waters of a neutral State, from not extend to the local jurisdiction, does not extend to their prize ships, or goods captured by armaments fitted out in its ports, in violation of its neutrality, and of the laws enacted to enforce that neutrality.

their prizo

goods taken

in violation of the neutrality of the country into which they are brought.

Such was their judgment in the case of the Spanish ship Santissima Trinidad, from which the cargo had been taken out, on the high seas, by armed vessels commissioned by the United Provinces of the Rio de la Plata, and fitted out in the ports of the United States in violation of their neutrality. The tacit permission, in virtue of which the ships of war of a friendly power are exempt from the jurisdiction of the country, cannot be so interpreted as to authorize them to violate the rights of sovereignty of the State, by committing acts of hostility against other nations, with an armament supplied in the ports, where they seek an asylum. In conformity with this principle, the Court ordered restitution of the goods claimed by the Spanish owners, as wrongfully taken from them (d).

(c) Sirey, Recueil général de Jurisprudence, tome xxxii. Partie i. p. 578. M. Dupin ainé has published his learned and eloquent pleading in this memorable

case, in his Collection des Requisitoires, tome i. p. 447.

(d) The Santissima Trinidad, 7 Wheaton, 352.

Chap. II.

§ 106. Jurisdiction of the State over its public and private

high seas.

3. Both the public and private vessels of every nation, on the high seas, and out of the territorial limits of any other State, are subject to the jurisdiction of the State to which they belong (e). Vattel says that the domain of a nation extends to all vessels on the its just possessions; and by its possessions we are not to understand its territory only, but all the rights (droits) it enjoys. And he also considers the vessels of a nation. on the high seas as portions of its territory. Grotius holds that sovereignty may be acquired over a portion of the sea, ratione personarum, ut si classis qui maritimus est exercitus, aliquo in loco maris se habeat. But, as one of his commentators, Rutherforth, has observed, though there can be no doubt about the jurisdiction of a nation over the persons who compose its fleets when they are out at sea, it does not follow that the nation has jurisdiction over any portion of the ocean itself. It is not a perma

nent property which it acquires, but a mere temporary right of occupancy in a place which is common to all mankind, to be successively used by all as they have occasion (ƒ)..

This jurisdiction which the nation has over its public and private vessels on the high seas, is exclusive only so far as respects offences against its own municipal laws. Piracy and other offences against the law of nations, being crimes not against any particular State, but against all mankind, may be punished in the competent tribunal of any country where the offender may be found, or into which he may be carried, although committed on board a foreign vessel on the high seas (g).

Though these offences may be tried in the competent court of any nation having, by lawful means, the custody of the offenders, yet the right of visitation and search does not exist in time of peace. This right cannot be

(e) R. v. Anderson, L. R. 1 C. C. R. 161; R. v. Dudley, 14 Q. B. D. 273.

(f) Vattel, liv. i. ch. 19, § 216, liv. ii. ch. 7, 80. Grotius, de Jur. Bel. ac

Pac. lib. ii. cap. iii. § 13. Rutherforth's
Inst. vol. ii. b. 2, ch. 9, §§ 8, 19.
(g) Sir L. Jenkins's Works, vol. i.

p. 714.

Fart II. employed for the purpose of executing upon foreign vessels and persons on the high seas the prohibition of a traffic, which is neither piratical nor contrary to the law of nations (such, for example, as the slave trade), unless the visitation and search be expressly permitted by international compact (h).

$107. Impressment of seamen by England.

Every State has an incontestable right to the service of all its members in the national defence, but it can give effect to this right only by lawful means. Its right to reclaim the military service of its citizens can be exercised only within its own territory, or in some place not subject to the jurisdiction of any other nation. The ocean is such a place, and any State may unquestionably there exercise, on board its own vessels, its right of compelling the military or naval services of its subjects. But whether it may exercise the same right in respect to the vessels of other nations, is a question of more difficulty.

In respect to public commissioned vessels belonging to the State, their entire immunity from every species and purpose of search is generally conceded. As to private vessels belonging to the subjects of a foreign nation, the right to search them on the high seas, for deserters and other persons liable to military and naval service, has been uniformly asserted by Great Britain, and as constantly denied by the United States. This litigation between the two nations, who by the identity of their origin and language are the most deeply interested in the question, formed one of the principal objects of the late war between them. It is to be hoped that the sources of this controversy may be dried up by the substitution of a registry of seamen, and a system of voluntary enlistment with limited service, for the odious practice of impressment which has hitherto prevailed in the British navy, and which can never be extended, even to the private ships of a foreign nation, without

(h) The Louis, 2 Dods. Ad. 238; The Marianna Flora, 9 Wheaton, 39; The

Antelope, 10 Wheaton, 122; et vide infra, § 120 et seq.

provoking hostilities on the part of any maritime State Chap. II. capable of resisting such a pretension (¿).

on this point.

§ 108. The subject was incidentally passed in review, though Discussions not directly treated of, in the negotiations which terminated in the treaty of Washington, 1842, between the United States and Great Britain. In a letter addressed by the American negotiator to the British plenipotentiary on the 8th August, 1842, it was stated that no cause had produced, to so great an extent, and for so long a period, disturbing and irritating influences on the political relations of the United States and England, as the impressment of seamen by the British cruisers from American merchant vessels.

From the commencement of the French revolution to the breaking out of the war between the two countries in 1812, hardly a year elapsed without loud complaint and earnest remonstrance. A deep feeling of opposition to the right claimed, and to the practice exercised under it, and not unfrequently exercised without the least regard to what justice and humanity would have dictated, even if the right itself had been admitted, took possession of the public mind of America; and this feeling, it was well-known, co-operated with other causes to produce the state of hostilities which ensued.

At different periods, both before and since the war, negotiations had taken place between the two governments, with the hope of finding some means of quieting these complaints. Sometimes the effectual abolition of the practice had been requested and treated of; at other times, its temporary suspension; and, at other times, again, the limitation of its exercise and some security against its enormous abuses.

A common destiny had attended these efforts: they had all failed. The question stood at that moment where it stood fifty years ago. The nearest approach to a settlement was a convention, proposed in 1803, and

(i) Edinburgh Review, vol. xi. art. 1. Mr. Canning's Letter to Mr. Monroe,

September 23, 1807. American State
Papers, vol. vi. p. 103.

Part II. which had come to the point of signature, when it was broken off in consequence of the British Government insisting that the "Narrow Seas" should be expressly excepted out of the sphere over which the contemplated stipulations against impressment should extend. The American minister, Mr. King, regarded this exception as quite inadmissible, and chose rather to abandon the negotiation than to acquiesce in the doctrine which it proposed to establish.

England asserted the right of impressing British subjects. She asserted this as a legal exercise of the prerogative of the crown; which prerogative was alleged to be founded on the English law of the perpetual and indissoluble allegiance of the subject, and his obligation, under all circumstances, and for his whole life, to render military service to the Crown whenever required.

This statement, made in the words of eminent British jurists, showed at once that the English claim was far broader than the basis on which it was raised. The law relied on was English law; the obligations insisted on were obligations between the crown of England and its subjects. This law and these obligations, it was admitted, might be such as England chose they should be. But then they must be confined to the parties. Impressment of seamen, out of and beyond the English territory, and from on board the ships of other nations, was an interference with the rights of other nations; it went, therefore, further than English prerogative could legally extend; and was nothing but an attempt to enforce the peculiar law of England beyond the dominions and jurisdiction of the crown. The claim asserted an extraterritorial authority for the law of British prerogative, and assumed to exercise this extra-territorial authority, to the manifest injury of the citizens and subjects of other States, on board their own vessels, on the high

seas.

Every merchant vessel on those seas was rightfully considered as part of the territory of the country to which it belonged. The entry, therefore, into such vessel, by

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