in Washington, are evidence to show that the title of the property passed to the Confederate Government and vested in the United States a right of conquest. Gilmer v. United States, 14 Ct. Cl. 184. "The loan made by European capital is a direct engagement with the armed insurgents who have assumed to control, supply, and deliver cotton for the reimbursement of the money advanced, with interest. You will give notice to Earl Russell that this transaction necessarily brings to an end all concessions, of whatever form, that have been made by this Government for mitigating or alleviating the rigor of the blockade in regard to the shipment of cotton and tobacco. Nor will any title of any person, whether citizen of the United States or subject of a foreign power, to any cotton or merchandise, which title is derived from or through any pretended insurgent authority or other agency hostile to the United States, be respected by this Government." Mr. Seward, Sec. of State, to Mr. Adams, min. to England, April 10, 1863, As to blockade-running, see S. Ex. Doc. 11, 41 Cong. 1 sess. I. 719. Cotton was "made use of by the Confederacy in carrying on the war, both by accumulating it in large quantities for sale, when it could be passed through the lines, and by destroying it when in danger of being seized by the United States troops; in this way aiding a cotton famine in foreign countries, so as to stimulate and secure recognition of the Confederacy as a separate member of the family of nations. "Cotton was useful as collateral security for loans negotiated abroad by the Confederate States government, or, as in the present case, was sold by it for cash to meet current expenses, or to purchase arms and munitions of war. Its use for such purposes was publicly proclaimed by the Confederacy, and its sale interdicted except under regulations established by, or contract with, the Confederate government. Cotton was thus officially classed among war supplies, and, as such, was liable to be destroyed when found by the Federal troops or turned to any use which the exigencies of war might dictate. "The military importance of cotton to the Confederacy is shown by the fact that as early as February, 1861, an act passed by the provisional government of the Confederate States to raise money for the support of the government and to provide for the defense of the Confederate States of America' levied a duty on all cotton in the raw state exported from the Confederate States; and in May of the same year an act was passed prohibiting the export of cotton from the Confederate States, except through the ports of said States. "In the same year (1864) in which the claimants made their contract, the Confederate war department officially recognized cotton as being one of the chief munitions of war by advising that large amounts of Confederate bonds should be issued for the separate use of that department in purchasing cotton and steamers with which to obtain military supplies from abroad.” Mr. Bayard, Sec. of State, to Mr. de Muruaga, Spanish min., June 28, 1886, "The cotton within the Confederate States was publicly recited in their obligations and bonds as a security for their payment; its expor tation and sale controlled and regulated by statute, and it thus became officially and publicly classified among the war assets and supplies of that government, and its destruction was authorized, wherever found, whenever military exigencies rendered it advisable to avoid capture by United States forces." Mr. Bayard, Sec. of State, to Mr. de Muruaga, Spanish min., Dec. 3, 1886, Article VII. of the treaty of peace with Great Britain of September 3, 1783, provided for the withdrawal of the British forces from the United States "without causing any destruction, or carrying away any negroes or other property of the American inhabitants." When the British forces withdrew from New York, they sent away in advance 3,000 negroes, whom they claimed to have emancipated. Claims were put forward on behalf of the owners for compensation and were pressed against the British Government; but they were merged in the Jay treaty, and abandoned. The treaty of Ghent contained (Art. I.) a similar clause, and again many negroes were taken away by the British forces. Claims were put forward for compensation, and the question of liability was referred to the Emperor of Russia, who rendered, April 22, 1822, an award in favor of the United States. Under the convention of November 13, 1826, Great Britain paid the sum of $1,204,960 in satisfaction of the claims. See Moore, Int. Arbitrations, I. 350-390. During the war of 1812 an American privateer captured slaves on an English ship. Held, that, especially as the law prohibited the importation of slaves, they should not be deemed prize; that the court should not however assume the responsibility of declaring them pris oners of war; but that the question of their disposition should be left to the government, to be treated as a matter of state policy. Re Certain Slaves, 5 Hughes, C. C. 55. The British Government, in the argument submitted by it to the Emperor of Russia, as to whether its forces had, by carrying away slaves, violated the obligations of Article I. of the treaty of Ghent against carrying away American property, broadly asserted the right of emancipating slaves as a legitimate right of war. "This is utterly incomprehensible on the part of a nation whose subjects hold slaves by millions and who in this very treaty [of Ghent] recognized them as private property. No such right is acknowledged as a law of war, by writers who admit any limitation. The right of putting to death all prisoners in cold blood and without special cause might as well be pretended to be a law of war. You will present the argument against it, in all its force, and yet without prolixity." Mr. Adams, Sec. of State, to Mr. Middleton, min. to Russia, No. 6, Nov. 6, 1820, MS. Inst. United States Ministers, IX. 57. "The emancipation of an enemy's slaves is not among the acts of legiti- As to the proceedings before the Russian Emperor, and his decision, see "40. There exists no law or body of authoritative rules of action between hostile armies, except that branch of the law of nature and nations which is called the law and usages of war on land. "41. All municipal law of the ground on which the armies stand, or of the countries to which they belong, is silent and of no effect between armies in the field. "42. Slavery, complicating and confounding the ideas of property (that is, of a thing), and of personality (that is, of humanity), exists according to municipal or local law only. The law of nature and nations has never acknowledged it. The digest of the Roman law enacts the early dictum of the pagan jurist, that so far as the law of nature is concerned, all men are equal.' Fugitives escaping from a country in which they were slaves, villains, or serfs, into another country, have, for centuries past, been held free and acknowledged free by judicial decisions of European countries, even though the municipal law of the country in which the slave had taken refuge acknowledged slavery within its own dominions. "43. Therefore, in a war between the United States and a belligerent which admits of slavery, if a person held in bondage by that belligerent be captured by or come as a fugitive under the protection of the military forces of the United States, such person is immediately entitled to the rights and privileges of a freeman. To return such person into slavery would amount to enslaving a free person, and neither the United States nor any officer under their authority can enslave any human being. Moreover, a person so made free by the law of war is under the shield of the law of nations, and the former owner or state can have, by the law of postliminy, no belligerent lien or claim of service." "58. The law of nations knows of no distinction of color, and if an enemy of the United States should enslave and sell any captured persons of their army, it would be a case for the severest retaliation, if not redressed upon complaint. "The United States can not retaliate by enslavement; therefore death must be the retaliation for this crime against the law of nations." Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the The emancipation proclamation is decisive as to what was deemed the "seat of war" by the President, as it was a military measure against private property. Blanchard v. United States (1897), 32 Ct. Cl. 444. As to the proceedings of the Joint High Commission of 1871, refusing claims for emancipated slaves, see Moore, Int. Arbitrations, 1. 686. Public debts. (7) DEBTS. By the testimony of publicists and the practice of nations, the principle is established that the obligation of a state for the payment of its debts is not affected by war even though such debts be held by citizens or subjects of the enemy. It is true that in certain early writers, who reiterated the stern rules of the law of Rome, sweeping generalizations may be found in which the right is asserted on the part of enemies to seize all property and confiscate all debts. The same writers, upon the same authority, assert the lawfulness of treating all subjects of the belligerent as enemies, and as such of killing them, including women and children. These generalizations, even at the time when they were written, neither expressed nor purported to express the actual practice of nations, and it is superfluous to declare that the law of the present day is not to be found in them; for, with the change in the practice of nations, growing out of the advance in human thought, the law also has changed. With the law of the present day as to private debts, we are not now concerned; but, as to the law touching public debts, the current of opinion is unvarying. Vattel, writing in the last century, declared: "The state does not so much as touch the sums which it owes to the enemy: money lent to the public is everywhere exempt from confiscation and seizure." This principle, says Phillimore, "is one which now may happily be said to have no gainsayers.' The act of the King of Prussia, in 1752, in stopping, as an act of reprisal, the payment of interest due by him to English creditors on the Silesian loan is conspicuous not more by reason of its solitariness than by reason of the unanimity with which publicists have disapproved it. The payment of the interest was in fact resumed, but, while the question was still pending, the King of Prussia presented in justification of his course a memorial. To this memorial a famous answer was prepared for the British Government by Sir George Lee, judge of the prerogative court; Dr. Paul, the advocate-general; Sir Dudley Ryder, and Mr. Murray, afterward Lord Mansfield. In this answer there is the following passage: "It will not be easy to find an instance where a prince has thought fit to make reprisals upon a debt due from himself to a private man. There is a confidence that this will not be done. A private man lends money to a prince upon the faith of an engagement of honor, because a prince can not be compelled, like other men, by a court of justice. So scrupulously did England, France, and Spain adhere to this public faith, that even during the war they suffered no inquiry to be made whether any part of the public debt was due to the subjects of the enemy, though it is certain many English had money in the French funds, and many French had money in ours." It will be observed that Spain is here referred to as one of the powers by whose conduct the inviolability of the public faith in respect of debts was more than a century and a half ago established. Vattel described the British answer as "an excellent bit of the law of nations" (un excellent morceau de droit des gens), while Montesquieu pronounced it "an answer without a rejoinder" (une réponse sans réplique). It is commended by Twiss, by Calvo, and generally by other publicists. Says Pradier-Fodéré: "States can not confiscate to their profit that which they ought themselves to pay to subjects of the enemy, as by seizing the rents of the public debt. How, indeed, can it be admitted that a state may deprive of their due individuals who, under the guarantee of the law and the public faith, have confided to it their capital.” Fiore asserts the same principle in almost the same words, and adds: "All that we could excuse in case of extreme necessity would |