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Appendix.
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would have been ruinous to all engaged in it. The Chinese Minister is said to have surrendered his prisoner "without prejudice," as lawyers say, to his assumed rights; but he appears to have claimed a right which is not acknowledged by any civilized country, and which would be intolerable if it were exercised. It would be a somewhat similar proceeding if the Turkish Ambassador were to inveigle some of the leading members of the Armenian colony in London into the Embassy, in order to despatch them, gagged and bound, as an offering to his Imperial Majesty the Sultan, or if Lord Dufferin had in the same way made a private prisoner of Tynan, and had sent him to stand his trial at the Old Bailey. It is well recognised that the house of a foreign mission is regarded as a portion of the country from which the mission is sent, and that not only the Minister himself, but also the recognised members of his suite, enjoy an immunity from liability to the laws of the country to which the Ambassador is accredited; but this hardly entitles the Ambassador to exercise powers of imprisonment or of criminal jurisdiction, and the privileges of the Embassy as a place of refuge for persons unconnected with it are strictly limited to the ground on which it stands. Even if the Chinese Minister could not have been prevented from keeping Sun in custody, he would have been liberated by the police as soon as he was brought over the threshold to be conveyed elsewhere. It is fortunate that he did not suffer from any form
