agitation, has been consistently and strenuously upheld by the executive branch of our Government in its diplomacy. That policy was finally and emphatically enacted into express law in 1868 (Act of July 27; section 1999, Rev. Stats.), which provides:

Whereas the right of expatriation is a natural and inherent right of all people, indispensable to the enjoyment of the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and whereas, in the recognition of this principle, this Government has freely received emigrants from all nations, and invested them with the rights of citizenship; and whereas it is claimed that such American citizens, with their descendants, are subjects of foreign states, owing allegiance to the governments thereof; and whereas it is necessary to the maintenance of public peace that this claim of foreign allegiance should be promptly and finally disavowed: Therefore, any declaration, instruction, opinion, order, or decision of any officer of the United States which denies, restricts, impairs, or questions the right of expatriation is declared inconsistent with the fundamental principles of the Republic.

There are other reasons why such an arrangement, from an administrative point of view, would be undesirable, if not fraught with great danger, in that it would be vesting in one or more officials stationed in foreign countries, three thousand miles or more distant, the absolute power of determining who shall or who shall not be permitted to come to our shores.

While deprecating the suggestion of an international agreement it must be admitted that inasmuch as each country has full power to deal with immigration as its national policy may from time to time dictate, or as it deems most expedient, the whole subject cannot be effectively regulated without incurring the objections and suffering the disadvantages that an international agreement would entail. It has been claimed, and not without authority, that when the causes affecting emigration are political or result from religious oppression, and when the effects produced thereby are distinctly reflected into other countries, by a stream of migrants due directly thereto, the latter countries are not only justified, but have the right to remonstrate against the consequent effect upon them by reason of such oppression and the burdens imposed upon their institutions. This right, and the principles upon which it rests, were set forth by President Harrison in his third annual message to Congress (1891) as follows:

The banishment, whether by direct decree or by no less certain indirect methods, of so large a number of men and women is not a local question. A decree to leave one country is in the nature of things an order to enter another—some other. This consideration, as well as the suggestion of humanity, furnishes ample ground for the remonstrances which we have presented to Russia.

THE CASE OF JOHNSON V. BROWNE.

205 U. S. 309.

In Johnson v. Browne, 205 U. S. 309, decided on the 8th of April last, the Supreme Court of the United States has made an interesting application of the rule which prohibits the trial of an extradited person for an offense other than that for which he was delivered up. The respondent sued out a writ of habeas corpus to obtain his discharge from imprisonment for a crime of which he had been convicted in the Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. Prior to his conviction he was indicted on two charges: (1) Conspiring with two other persons to defraud the United States in violation of section 5440 of the Revised Statutes, and (2) knowingly attempting, alone, to enter certain articles at less than the legal rate of duty, in violation of section 5444, Revised Statutes. He was tried on the first charge, and having been convicted thereon he fled to Canada. His surrender was demanded by the United States under the extradition treaty of 1889, which is supplementary to the extradition clause of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842, on the charge of conspiracy on which he had been tried and convicted before his fiight. He was arrested, but the Canadian courts discharged him on the ground that the offense was not within the Treaty of 1889; and it clearly was not within the Treaty of 1842. The United States, however, made a new demand for extradition, under the Treaty of 1889, for the offense embraced in the indictment under section 5444, Revised Statutes. On this demand the fugitive was delivered up; but after he was brought back he was committed to prison to serve out the sentence imposed on his previous conviction under section 5440. It was from this detention that he sought to be released by habeas corpus. It had been decided by the Supreme Court in the case of United States v. Rauscher (119 U. S. 407) that, in spite of the fact that the WebsterAshburton Treaty of 1842 contained no prohibition of trial for an offense not included in the demand for extradition, a person delivered up thereunder could not be so tried till he had had an opportunity to return to the jurisdiction from which he was taken. The court maintained that such a prohibition, if not expressed, was to be implied from the principles governing the subject. This ruling would seem in spirit to preclude the detention of an extradited person such as was attempted in the case now under consideration. But there are certain clauses in the Treaty of 1889 on which the detention was sought to be justified. Article 2 of the treaty provides that a person surrendered by either of the high

contracting parties to the other shall not "be triable or tried, or be punished," for any political offense; while article 3, which forbids trial. for any other than the extradition offense, merely says that the person surrendered shall not "be triable or be tried" for an offense other than that for which he was extradited. On the strength of this difference in terms it was contended that, where only common and not political offenses were involved, a returned fugitive might be punished under a previous conviction not embraced in his extradition, although he could not be tried on a charge not included in the process. To this contention the Supreme Court refused to give its sanction. The court observed that, while the escape of criminals was to be greatly deprecated, yet it was most important that treaties should be construed in the highest good faith, and that it should not be sought by doubtful construction to obtain the extradition of a person for one offense and then punish him for another and different offense. The opinion of the court was delivered by Mr. Justice Peckham.

THE MEETING OF THE INTERNATIONAL LAW ASSOCIATION AT PORTLAND.

The twenty-fourth conference of the International Law Association was held at Portland, Maine, on August 29, 30, and 31.

The mayor of the city, a grandson of Justice Nathan Clifford of the Supreme Court of the United States, and who bears his name, made an address of welcome, as did also Charles F. Libby, of the local bar, the President of the Cumberland Bar Association, Sir William Kennedy, one of the Lords Justices of Appeal, president of the conference, making the response.

The International Law Association follows the European practice for such bodies in having officers of its conferences distinct from the regular officers of the association, and also in supplementing the office of president by that of honorary president. Chief Justice Simeon E. Baldwin, of Connecticut, had been appointed by the council to the latter position, and the regular proceedings were opened by his inaugural address. After alluding to the fact that the former meeting of the association in this country had taken place in the year of the first Hague conference of peace, and that the present one was being held while the second of those conferences was in session, he observed that while the institution of The Hague Tribunal had proved that a court of nations could be and was a reality, it was not to be forgotten that another movement of hardly less international importance had also proceeded from the four conferences

at The Hague in 1893, 1894, 1900, and 1904 for the advancement of private international law. England and the United States had not been represented there. It had been thought that their trend of legal thought was so out of harmony with that of Continental Europe that it would be useless for them to participate in these gatherings. But was this necessarily so? The great points of divergence were as to what should be the criterion of personal status, and what the rule of succession to landed property. But, attached as they were to the criterion of domicil, England and the United States could not shut their eyes to the fact that ten or more European powers had now agreed that nationality was a better one. These two nations had originally adopted domicil as the test because Europe had. Europe had changed her conviction, and it was far from impossible that they might yet change theirs. Of the old arguments against the substitution of nationality, several had lost much of their force through the changed conditions of our modern society. So in regard to landed property, England and the United States were, in their attitude, largely affected by the lingering principles of feudalism. Was it worth while to cling forever to the incidents of an outworn theory of government? Had not the whole economic tendencies of our times gone towards a mobilization of the soil?

Dr. W. Evans Darby, of London, the secretary of the English Peace Society, then read a review of the main international incidents since the preceding conference, which was held in Berlin last fall. There had been no activity on the part of The Hague Court, no striking cases of arbitration before any other international tribunal, and no new arbitration treaties of importance. But this really was a sign of progress. It showed that there were no serious international disputes pressing for adjustment. Five left over from former years had been settled by peaceful means since his last report at Berlin, i. e., those between Beluchistan and Persia, Great Britain and Portugal, Japan and Russia (as to their respective limits on the island of Saghalin), Egypt and Turkey, and Bulgaria and Turkey. All these had come to a peaceful determination through the action of special commissions. Nineteen similar proceedings were pending unfinished. France and Great Britain had, on October 20, 1906, agreed on a convention regulating the government of the New Hebrides. One of its features is the establishment of a joint international court of three judges. Each power appoints one. and the third is to be a citizen of neither. Thirty-nine treaties of obligatory arbitration have been thus far signed, exclusive of the eleven negotiated by the United States but not ratified. The costs of the bureau of The

Hague Tribunal thus far had been, in florins: 1900, 42,499; 1901, 30,438; 1902, 28,764; 1903, 25,917; 1904, 24,574; 1905, 28,201; 1906, 26,012.

The annual average, therefore, was something like $12,000 a yeara small sum for the civilized world to spend, considering the results already accomplished. The bureau costs of the four cases thus far heard had in all amounted to about $1,200. This, of course, does not include the compensation of the judges who sat to decide them.

Among the papers subsequently submitted, the following may be specially mentioned: Dean Gregory, of the Iowa University Law School, commented on the exercise of the power of eminent domain as affecting lands held or desired for international uses. Without discussing the question whether the concessions for the Suez and Panama canals had or had not been obtained by force or extortion, he was inclined to think that the world could not be expected to submit to the defeat of a beneficent project of universal importance by the refusal of local sovereignties to grant the use of means that were absolutely essential. Dr. A. C. Schröder, of Zurich, urged the negotiation of treaties which would look towards a reduction of armaments by withdrawing the causes for taking up arms. He suggested as the bases of such a treaty between Great Britain and Germany, mutual pledges that each would strive to further liberal ideas of social equality and progress, to assist the other in suppressing "trusts" and corners, to promote intelligent emigration, without preferences, to cooperate in the transportation of goods by rail, not to make any sudden raise of tariffs, and to suffer no attempts by citizens of either on the security or sovereignty of the other. Dr. A. Hindenburg, of Copenhagen, legal adviser to the Crown of Denmark, deprecated the obstacles now existing in the way of getting testimony of foreign witnesses in court. In most of Europe their depositions will not be required by their own government without a preliminary inquiry before its own courts, and an order based upon it. Denmark and Norway follow what is in substance the American plan. They regard an application to take a deposition as presumptive proof that justice requires it to be taken. While their courts reserve the power to reject testimony that is plainly irrelevant to the case of the moving party, on such an application, in practice they exert it very seldom. The witness whose testimony is desired must, however, be cited before a court, and the judges conduct the examination. Dr. Ernö Wittman, of Budapest, deplored the tendencies of nations to tax everything within their power, without asking whether it has not already been taxed elsewhere, as heavily as it will bear.