variations from it. There may be circumstances at particular times and places such that the application of the rule calls for action regarding foreign citizens quite unlike the action ordinarily taken for the benefit of native citizens, but it is always action which would be equally required in case a native citizen were placed under the same circumstances of exigency. It is plain that no other rule is practicable. Upon any other basis every country would be obliged to have two systems of law and administration and police regulations, and the existence of great numbers of foreigners in a country would be an intolerable burden. The standard to which the rule appeals is a standard of right, and not necessarily of actual performance. The foreigner is entitled to have the protection and redress which the citizen is entitled to have, and the fact that the citizen may not have insisted upon his rights, and may be content with lax administration which fails to secure them to him, furnishes no reason why the foreigner should not insist upon them and no excuse for denying them to him. It is a practical standard and has regard always to the possibilities of government under existing conditions. The rights of the foreigner vary as the rights of the citizen vary between ordinary and peaceful times and times of disturbance and tumult; between settled and ordinary communities and frontier regions and mining camps.

The diplomatic history of this country presents a long and painful series of outrages on foreigners by mob violence. These have uniformly been the subject of diplomatic claims and long-continued discussion, and ultimately of the payment of indemnity. An examination of these discussions will show that in every case the indemnity was in fact paid because the United States had not done in the particular case what it would have done for its own citizens if our laws had been administered as our citizens were entitled to have them administered. Of course, no government can guarantee all the inhabitants of its terrritory against injury inflicted by individual crime, and no government can guarantee the certain punishment of erime; but every citizen is entitled to have police protection. accorded to him commensurate with the exigency under which he may be placed. If he is able to give notice to the government of

intended violence against him he is entitled to have due measures taken for its prevention, and he is entitled always to have such vigorous prosecution and punishment of those who are guilty of criminal violation of his rights that it will be apparent to all the world that he cannot be misused with impunity and that he will have the benefit of the deterrent effect of punishment.

It is a distressing fact that in one important respect the Govern ment of the United States fails to comply with its international obligation in giving the same degree of protection and opportunity for redress of wrong to foreigners that it gives to its own citizens. The difficulties which beset aliens in a strange land are ordinarily local difficulties. The government and the people of the foreign country are usually quite ready, in a broad and abstract way, to accord to foreigners the fullest toleration, equality before the law, and protection. But the people of the particular community with whom the alien comes in contact too often fail of understanding and sympathy. They misunderstand and resent the foreign customs with which they are unfamiliar. They are aroused to anger by the competition to which the foreigner subjects them. Immediate contact is too apt at first to breed dislike and intolerance towards what Bret Harte describes as the "defective moral quality of being a foreigner." Our Constitution recognizes this natural and often inevitable prejudice by giving to our national courts jurisdiction over all civil suits between aliens and citizens of the United States. We fail to recognize the same conditions, however, in respect of the security of the persons and property of aliens. The Revised Statutes of the United States aim to protect citizens of the United States against local prejudice and injury by providing in section

5508:

If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any citizen in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same; or if two or more persons go in disguise on the highway, or on the premises of another, with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege so secured, they shall be fined not more than five thousand dollars and imprisoned not more than ten years; and shall, moreover, be thereafter ineligible to any office, or place of honor, profit, or trust created by the Constitution or laws of the United States.

This provision, however, does not apply to aliens, and no similar provision applies to them. Accordingly, defenseless Chinamen were mobbed at Denver in 1880, and at Rock Springs, Wyoming, in 1885; Italians were lynched in New Orleans in 1891, and again at Rouse, Colorado, in 1895; and Mexicans were lynched at Yreka, California, in 1895; and Italians at Tallulah, Louisiana, in 1899, and again at Erwin, Mississippi, in 1901. Our Government was practically defenseless against claims for indemnity because of our failure to extend over these aliens the same protection that we extend over our own citizens, and the final result of long diplomatic correspondence in each case was the payment of indemnity for the real reason that we had not performed our international duty. In these discussions our State Department from time to time undertook to shelter itself behind the distribution of power in our constitutional system, and the fact that there was no law of the United States providing for any redress except at the hands of the State officials in the very locality where prejudice led to the injury. Yet when an American citizen was injured by a mob in Brazil in 1875, the dispatch of Secretary Fish to the American Minister at Rio said:

You represent that the facts as set forth in the memorial of the claimant are admitted by that Government, which, however, denies its accountability and says that the province where the injury to Mr. Smyth took place is alone answerable. Supposing, however, the case to be a proper one for the interposition of this Government, the reference of the claimant to the authorities of the province for redress will not be acquiesced in. Those authorities can not be officially known to this Government. It is the Imperial Government at Rio de Janeiro only which is accountable to this Government for any injury to the person or property of a citizen of the United States committed by the authorities of a province. It is with that Government alone that we hold diplomatic. intercourse. The same rule would be applicable to the case of a Brazilian subject who, in this country, might be wronged by the authorities of a State.

And President Harrison, in his message to Congress of December 9, 1891, relating to the lynching of Italians at New Orleans in that year, said.

Some suggestions growing out of this unhappy incident are worthy the attention of Congress. It would, I believe, be entirely competent for

Congress to make offenses against the treaty rights of foreigners domiciled in the United States cognizable in the federal courts. This has not, however, been done, and the federal officers and courts have no power in such cases to intervene either for the protection of a foreign citizen or for the punishment of his slayers. It seems to me to follow, in this state of the law, that the officers of the State charged with police and judicial powers in such cases must, in the consideration of international questions growing out of such incidents, be regarded in such sense as federal agents as to make this Government answerable for their acts in cases where it would be answerable if the United States had used its constitutional power to define and punish crimes against treaty rights.

It is to be hoped that our Government will never again attempt to shelter itself from responsibility for the enforcement of its treaty obligations to protect foreigners by alleging its own failure to enact the laws necessary to the discharge of those obligations.

The most frequent occasions of appeal by citizens for protection in other countries arise upon the assertion that justice has been denied them in the courts, and this appears, unfortunately, to be a frequent occurrence. The justification of such complaints does not rest upon any obligation of another country to furnish any better or different judicial relief or procedure to foreigners than is provided for the citizens of the country itself, but it results from the fact that in many countries the courts are not independent; the judges are removable at will; they are not superior, as they ought to be, to local prejudices and passions, and their organization does not afford to the foreigner the same degree of impartiality which is accorded to citizens of the country, or which is required by the common standard of justice obtaining throughout the civilized world. When justice is denied for such reasons there is a failure on the part of the Government to perform its international duty, and a right on the part of the Government whose citizen has failed to secure justice to demand reparation.

A large proportion of such complaints are, however, without just foundation. Citizens abroad are too apt to complain that justice has been denied them whenever they are beaten in a litigation, forgetting that, as a rule, they would complain just the same if they were beaten in a litigation in the courts of their own country. When a man goes into a foreign country to reside or to trade he

submits himself, his rights, and interests to the jurisdiction of the courts of that country. He will naturally be at a disadvantage in litigation against citizens of the country. He is less familiar than they with the laws, the ways of doing business, the habits of thought and action, the method of procedure, the local customs and prejudices, and often with the language in which the business is done and the proceedings carried on. It is not the duty of a foreign country in which such a litigant finds himself to make up to him for these disadvantages under which he labors. They are disadvantages inseparable from his prosecuting his business in a strange land. A large part of the dissatisfaction which aliens feel and express regarding their treatment by foreign tribunals results from these causes, which furnish no just ground for international complaint. It is very desirable that people who go into other countries shall realize that they are not entitled to have the laws and police regulations and methods of judicial procedure and customs of business made over to suit them, or to have any other or different treatment than that which is accorded to the citizens of the country into which they have gone; so long as the government of that country maintains, according to its own ideas and for the benefit of its own citizens, a system of law and administration which does not violate. the common standard of justice that is a part of international law; and so long as, in conformity with that standard, the same rights, the same protection, and the same means of redress for wrong are given to them as are given to the citizens of the country where they are. On the other hand, every one who goes into a foreign country is bound to obey its laws, and if he disobeys them he is not entitled to be protected against punishment under those laws. It follows, also, that one in a foreign country must submit to the inconvenience of proceedings that may be brought in accordance with law upon any bona fide charge that an offense has been committed, even though the charge may not be sustained. Nevertheless, no violation of law can deprive a citizen in a foreign country of the right to protection. from the government of his own country. There can be no crime which leaves a man without legal rights. One is always entitled to insist that he shall not be punished except in accordance with