Page:Kidnapped in London.djvu/113

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Appendix.
109

defined by usage, and new exemptions cannot be deduced from a metaphor. The case of Gyllenburg, in 1717, showed that if a Minister is suspected of conspiring against the Government to which he is accredited he may be arrested and his cabinets may be ransacked. The case of the coachman of Mr. Gallatin, in 1827, establishes that, after courteous notice, the police may enter a Legation in order to take into custody one of its servants who has been guilty of an offence elsewhere. There is also a general agreement that, except possibly in Spain and in the South American Republics, the hotel is no longer an asylum for even political offenders. Still less can it be supposed that an illegal imprisonment in a Minister's residence will not be put an end to by such action of the local police as may be necessary.

It seems needless to inquire into the responsibility which would rest upon the Chinese authorities if Sun Yat Sen was, as he alleges, kidnapped in the open street, or would have rested upon them had they removed him through the streets, with a view to shipping him off to China. Acts of this kind find no defenders. What is admitted to have occurred is sufficiently serious, and was doubtless due to excess of zeal on the part of the subordinates of the Chinese Legation. International law has long been ably taught by Dr. Martin at the Tung-wen College of Peking, and the Imperial Government cannot be supposed to be indifferent to a strict conformity to the precepts of the