acter of law, or rather the opinions which have prevailed in regard to such territoriality. Every part of the world, every race, every nationality has its own law, and its own views of what ought to be law, which it has the province of making real within its own boundaries by penalty and other force. There are, thus, a vast number of separate States, within the jurisdiction of any one of which no other can intrude, unless justice in the relations of States has been invaded. Crimes committed abroad pertain to the province of a foreign lawgiver; crimes committed at home are to be judged by laws of domestic origin, whoever be the criminal, whether native born or foreign resident. Thus it would seem, that no question can arise concerning crimes committed abroad, or concerning the violation of law anywhere except within our own limits. Is a foreigner guilty of a forbidden action here? It must be an action against our law, not against the law of his birth-place or proper home. Is one of our citizens guilty of a crime.

abroad? He is in the same manner amenable to the law of the territory where the offense occurred. Suppose him to have been punished. Will you have him tried again for the same offense? Suppose him to have evaded foreign law, and now to be at home? Will you interfere to remedy the imperfection of foreign police, and remand him to a country whose relations to him were only local and temporary? Has he not a right of asylum, and, above all, on his own native soil?

Something like this will be urged in favor of adhering pretty strictly to the territorial application of law, and against what may be called the personal principle, that is, against the doctrine that the law of a State ought to control the actions of a subject during his foreign residence, on the ground of his close personal connection with his country. And when the many inconveniences which would arise from any other than the territorial principle-the want of evidence, the need of increased police, the danger of collision with foreign jurisdictions and the like, are taken into view, it must be confessed that the advocates of this side have a strong case.

This side is taken, with more or less strictness, by a considerable number of writers on international and on criminal law.

Thus Heffter in his work on criminal law lays it down that no single State has the vocation to attempt to realize justice all over the world. Its means for doing this are insufficient. It cannot require that its opinions as to what is just shall be accepted outside of its own limits. Only within its territory can its jurisdiction be exercised. It can, for instance, punish only where it can impose obligations, and this is the case only as far as its own subjects are concerned. Another writer on criminal law, Köstlin, expresses himself to the effect that the specific functions of States are essentially territorial, and that in the two-fold sense, that they have exclusive control within their own territory, and no control beyond it. In the punishment of an offense committed beyond its borders a State would encroach on the rights of another. A native-born person cannot be punished at home for a wrong done abroad, nor a foreigner be punished abroad for a wrong done at home. And to cite but one opinion more,-Mittermaier, a leading living jurist of Germany, lays it down that the State has no universal care over the interests of justice. All that can be required of it is extradition of foreigners under certain circumstances, and punishment of "inlanders." These citations are from Mohl, whom we shall use freely without further acknowledgment.

Grotius stands at the head of the line of writers on the law of nations. His well known opinions were wholly opposed to such narrow limits of state action. He goes to the dangerous extent of allowing the heads of nations to interfere in foreign affairs for the purpose of punishing injustice. In regard to the surrendry of fugitive criminals his doctrine is, that "since States have the right of punishing offenses which affect their honor or security, no foreign State ought to protect a fugitive who has been guilty of such an offense. But as it is not usual or convenient to allow any foreign power to enter the territory of a State with an armed force in order to seize an offender, the State in which he has taken refuge should either punish or surrender him, or at least compel him to leave the country." This, it seems, he regards as an obligation which cannot be neglected without injury to other nations. Few would agree with Grotius in this, and Mr. Wildman protests energetically against

putting extradition on the ground of right. Most other writers. on international law.take similar views. Heffter, in his " Völkerrecht," takes the same ground which we have quoted him as advocating in his "criminal law." Oppenheim goes so far as to say that all a State's office is self-protection, and of course advocates the strictest territoriality of penal law. Story takes much the same ground, that the punishing power is confined within the limits of the State and to offenses there committed. The late Sir G. Cornewall Lewis has written a book "on foreign jurisdiction and the extradition of criminals," in order to make this point good. Wheaton and Phillimore, however, widen the sphere of the State by embracing subjects wherever they commit crimes within its jurisdiction. The former considers the judicial power of every independent State to extend to all acts forbidden by its laws, whether taking place at home or abroad, and remarks that the principle of law, which considers "criminal offenses to be altogether local, and to be justifiable only by the courts of that country where the offense is committed," is peculiar to the jurisprudence of Great Britain and the United States. Phillimore says that the strict rule of international law undoubtedly is, that a State can only punish for offenses committed within the limits of its territory: this is at least, he adds, "the natural and just consequence of the territorial principle." It is, however, he goes on to say, a pretty general maxim of European law that offenses against their own country, committed by citizens in a foreign land, are punishable by their own country, when they return within its own confines. But the law of the foreign country can punish them also, especially if their offense has been of a private character. In case of a public character, a double offense is committed; one against the State of which the offender is a subject, another against the general law of the land within which the offense is devised and perpetuated. Whether his own State will punish him the second time for the same offense is not a question of international but rather of public law.*

* Grotius, lib. 2, 21, §4. Wildman, 1, 59. Wheaton, part 11, chap. 2, § 13. Phillimore, 1, 355.

From the opinions of publicists we turn to the practice of nations. All Christian nations agree in these points, that every State has a right to prevent or to punish offenses against itself or its subjects, whether committed by subjects or by resident foreigners, and that it is authorized and bound to punish crimes committed within its borders against foreign States or their subjects. Yet even in regard to this last point, the views of States are not quite uniform. England punishes such crimes against foreign States rather as disturbances of international relations than as violations of right. But beyond this there is little agreement. First, on the question whether a subject can be punished for crimes committed abroad, England and our country take the negative side, not without some exceptions, indeed, but strictly enough to show that it is a principle of our criminal law. The United States go so far, it is believed, as to carry the same rule into the relations between the States of the Union. France adopts the same rule, but makes the important exceptions of subjecting to her own law certain foreign crimes of her subjects which touch the public welfare, and of allowing the use of her courts to injured private Frenchmen, when crimes (crimes,' not 'delits') have been committed against them out of the land by Frenchmen who have returned to France. At the opposite extreme from these stands another group of States, comprising the great majority of the German powers, Naples, Portugal, Russia, Norway, and a number of the Swiss cantons. These States punish every foreign crime of a subject, whether directed towards themselves or their subjects or foreigners. But in so doing they follow their own definition of crimes and offenses, and not those which prevail in the country where the offender resided. Thus when an action is made penal by foreign law and not by their own, they will naturally allow no complaint to be brought before their courts. Besides these extreme groups there are other less important States which make more or less of a compromise between the opposite views, mentioned above, and may here be passed over in silence.

Secondly, cases occur where foreigners in foreign territory commit wrongs against a State or its subjects, and afterwards

come within its boundaries. Here again great differences exist. Our English and American law is disinclined to notice these cases, but gives such persons, like other foreigners, a free right of asylum. A large number of States, among them Russia and many or most of those composing the Germanic body, go to the opposite extreme: they have no hesitation in punishing according to their own laws foreign offenders against themselves or their subjects, if they can catch them within their confines. France again takes no notice of wrongs done by foreigners abroad to individual Frenchmen, but makes such foreigners punishable for the same offenses for which Frenchmen residing abroad are called to account.

A third, and far less important case, is that of foreigners committing wrongs in a foreign land against foreign States or individuals. Most States take no notice of such crimes, as being beyond their province. A few, however, as Austria, Bavaria, Saxony, reach even this remote point of justice with their laws, either giving up the offender, if required, or banishing him, or, as is the case with Austria, punishing him, unless he is handed over to the operation of foreign justice.

When to what has been said we add that modern publicists place extradition on the basis of comity rather than of obligation, and that nations by their varying treaties concerning the delivery of fugitives from justice admit that they have reached no settled convictions in that matter, and cannot demand such delivery as a right, we shall have given an imperfect, it is true, but for our purposes sufficient, sketch of the views and practice which prevail in relation to the treatment of crimes committed beyond the limits of the injured party.

From this survey of one part of the subject, and of one in which nations might be expected to establish a common practice without great difficulty, it is evident that there is no one ground either of theory or of positive law, upon which they stand. In the development of a law between independent sovereignties it is natural that this should happen, for each start from a state of comparative isolation, with conceptions of justice already formed, and with suspicions of attacks upon its independence. The friction and intercourse of ages afterwards