and the privileges of public ministers are, therefore, to be determined, not by any municipal constitutions, but by the law of nature and nations, which is equally obligatory upon all sovereigns, and all states.[1] What these rights, powers, duties, and privileges are, are inquiries properly belonging to a treatise on the law of nations, and need not be discussed here.[2] But it is obvious, that every question, in which these rights, powers, duties, and privileges are involved, is so intimately connected with the public peace, and policy, and diplomacy of the nation, and touches the dignity and interest of the sovereigns of the ministers concerned so deeply, that it would be unsafe, that they should be submitted to any other, than the highest judicature of the nation.
- ↑ Ex parte Cabrera, 1 Wash. Cir. R. 232.
- ↑ Vattel discusses the subject of the rights, privileges, and immunities of foreign ambassadors very much at large, in B. 4, ch. 7, of his Treatise on the Law of Nations.
jects of his mission. A sovereign, committing the interests of his nation with a foreign power to the care of a person, whom he has selected for that purpose, cannot intend to subject his minister in any degree to that power; and, therefore, a consent to receive him implies a consent, that he shall possess those privileges, which his principal intended he should retain—privileges which are essential to the dignity of his sovereign, and to the duties he is bound to perform.
"In what cases a minister, by infracting the laws of the country, in which he resides, may subject himself to other punishment, than will be inflicted by his own sovereign, is an inquiry foreign to the present purpose. If his crimes be such, as to render him amenable to the local jurisdiction, it must be, because they forfeit the privileges annexed to his character; and the minister, by violating the conditions, under which he was received, as the representative of a foreign sovereign, has surrendered the immunities granted on those conditions; or, according to the true meaning of the original assent, has ceased to be entitled to them." See also 1 Black. Comm. 254, and Christian's note, (4); Vattel, B. 4, ch. 7, §§ 92, 99, 101; id. ch. 8, §§ 113, 114, 115, 116; id. ch. 9, §§ 117, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124; 1 Kent's Comm. Lect. 2.
vol. iii.66
