handing him over to the Lord Mayor for execution. I can recall but one instance of an attempt on the part of a Minister to exercise constraint against a person unconnected with his mission. In 1642, Leitao, Portuguese Minister at the Hague, detained in his house a horse-dealer who had cheated him. The result was a riot, in which the hotel was plundered, and Wicquefort remarks upon the transaction that Leitao, who had given public lectures on the Law of Nations, ought to have known qu'il ne lui estoit pas permis de faire une prison de sa maison. Sun Yat Sen, while on British soil as a subditus temporarius, was under the protection of our Laws, and his confinement in the Chinese Legation was a high offence against the rights of the British Crown.
The second question, though not so simple, presents no serious difficulty. A refusal on the part of the Chinese Minister to release his prisoner would have been a sufficient ground for requesting him to leave the country. If this mode of proceeding would have been too dilatory for the exigencies of the case, it can hardly be doubted that the circumstances would have justified an entry upon the Legation premises by the London police. An Ambassador's hotel is said to be "extra-territorial," but this too compendious phrase means no more than that the hotel is for certain purposes inaccessible to the ordinary jurisdiction of the country in which it stands. The exemptions thus enjoyed are, however, strictly