prohibitive if witnesses had to be conveyed to a foreign country; and, most serious objection of all, in the great majority of cases it would be impossible for an innocent man, so accused, to obtain the evidence which he might require for his defence.

From the passages just quoted, and many others of similar import, the following conclusions may be drawn:

The surrender of fugitive criminals is an international duty. It may not be so plainly a matter of right that the refusal to grant it should subject a nation to the penalty of war, but such refusal is so clearly injurious to the country which refuses, and to the whole world, that it is a serious violation of the moral obligations which exist between civilised communities.

In former times, the surrender was granted by a sovereign in virtue of his own prerogative; but the recent course of European legislation has been to restrain this prerogative, and to cast upon the legislature of a country the task of providing for the performance of this duty.

This provision should be guarded by the exclusion of political offenders, and the requirement of some evidence of guilt before the accused person is delivered up. It would be wise also to restrict the crimes for which surrender should be granted, according to the facility with which criminals could escape from one country to another; but to refuse to make provision at all, would be to inflict an injury upon the whole world, and especially upon the country so refusing.

The surrender, when so restricted, involves no interference with national independence, as the duty of punishing the crime could not be effectively and justly performed by any nation but that whose laws have been broken.

For the only substitute for extradition which has been proposed the extension of extra-territorial jurisdiction -is contrary to sound and well-established principles of law, is inconvenient in its enforcement, obstructs the course of justice by making the prosecution of crime difficult and expensive, and is unjust to the accused by making it almost impossible for an innocent man to produce the confutation of the charge; thus combining the gravest defects possible in a system of criminal jurisprudence.

CHAPTER II.

EARLY TREATIES AND CASES.

WITHOUT Some history of the practice of extradition, so far as it existed, in early times, this book would be incomplete; but the materials for such a history are very scanty, and the few instances produced by different writers in proof or disproof of the duty of rendition are in most cases of doubtful application. The historic origin of the practice is to be found in the relations of the different provinces of the Roman Empire. Under the Republic, a Roman citizen accused of a capital offence might, at any time before decision was pronounced, escape the sentence by going into voluntary exile; and certain of the allied cities. were specified by treaty as inviolable places of refuge.* Under the Empire these cities were absorbed into the imperial dominions, and lost their protective character. Few passages of Gibbon have been more often and more deservedly quoted than the splendid sentences in which he described the wide-reaching power of the imperial government:

“The division of Europe," he says, "into a number of

*Gibbon, Decline and Fall,' v. 296; Merivale, History of the Romans under the Empire,' iii. 496.

independent states, connected however with each other by the general resemblance of religion, language, and manners, is productive of the most beneficial consequences to the liberty of mankind. A modern tyrant, who should find no resistance either in his own breast or in his people, would soon experience a gentle restraint from the example of his equals, the dread of present censure, the advice of his allies, and the apprehension of his enemies. The object of his displeasure, escaping from the narrow limits of his dominions, would easily obtain, in a happier climate, a secure refuge, a new fortune adequate to his merit, the freedom of complaint, and perhaps the means of revenge. But the empire of the Romans filled the world, and when that empire fell into the hands of a single person, the world became a safe and dreary prison for his enemies. The slave of imperial despotism, whether he was compelled to drag his gilded chain in Rome and the senate, or to wear out a life of exile on the barren rock of Seriphus, or the frozen banks of the Danube, expected his fate in silent despair. To resist was fatal, and it was impossible to fly. On every side he was encompassed with a vast extent of sea and land, which he could never hope to traverse without being discovered, seized, and restored to his irritated master."

So far, however, as regarded claims of extradition made by the Romans upon independent nations, they seem to have been confined to enemies of the state. Thus, at the end of the war with Antiochus, King of Syria, the Romans

*Decline and Fall,' c. 3, ad fin.

stipulated by treaty for the delivery up of Hannibal and four Greeks who had been instrumental in promoting the war. Hannibal, however, then escaped.* He was afterwards demanded of the King of Bithynia, and the demand conceded; but he escaped the surrender by death.t

The Roman law, however, required the surrender of citizens who offered violence to foreign ambassadors on Roman territory. Under this law two Romans were surrendered to the Apolloniata in 266 B.C., and two others to the Carthaginians in 188 B.C.‡

In the early cases found in modern history, it was always for political offences that the surrender was claimed; indeed, at a time when the transactions of life. were comparatively simple, crime was so easily detected, and the criminal had so few means of escape, that there was no necessity for those provisions which the complicated civilisation of the world now renders

necessary.

A few treaties have been quoted by writers upon extradition, either as recognitions of the duty, or in disproval of the right. By a treaty concluded as early as 1174, between Henry II. of England and William of Scotland, it was agreed, that if any persons guilty of felony in England should fly into Scotland, they should be immediately seized, and either be tried in the King of Scot

Polyb., xxi. 14, xxii. 26. + Livy, xxxix. 51. Dig. 50, 5, 17. Rein. 'Criminalrecht der Römer,' p. 175-6. Quoted by Sir G. C. Lewis, ' On Foreign Jurisdiction,' p. 51.