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 fends 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 be the suspension of payments during the war when the want of money rendered that measure indispensable and when the state would have no other means less ruinous of providing for the urgent necessity of the war. But even that expedient, which may be excusable if the Government afterwards makes the payments which were postponed at the conclusion of peace, would always be disastrous, because it would undermine the base of the economic life of the state the public credit." Finally, without unnecessarily multiplying authorities on a point which is undisputed, we may quote from Hall the following passage: "Property belonging to an enemy which is found by a belligerent within his own jurisdiction, except property entering territorial waters after the commencement of war, may be said to enjoy a practical immunity from confiscation; but its different kinds are not protected by customs of equal authority, and although seizure would always now be looked upon with extreme disfavour, it would be unsafe to declare that it is not generally within the bare rights of war. "In one case a strictly obligatory usage of exemption has no doubt been established. Money lent by individuals to a state is not confiscated, and the interest payable upon it is not sequestrated. Whether this habit has been dictated by self-interest, or whether it was prompted by the consideration that money so lent was given upon the faith of an engagement of honor, because a prince can not be compelled like other men in an adverse way by a court of justice,' it is now so confirmed that in the absence of an expressed reservation of the right to sequestrate the sums placed in its hands on going to war a state in borrowing must be understood to waive its right, and to contract that it will hold itself indebted to the lender and will pay interest on the sum borrowed under all circumstances." Vattel, Law of Nations, book iii. ch. v. sec. 78 (Phila. ed. 1858), 323; See, also, Pomeroy, Int. Law, 260, § 213; Pillet, Les Lois actuelles de la Pradier-Fodéré narrates, on the authority of M. Michel Chevalier (Revue into the question of retaliation. Napoleon said: "The matter is very delicate; I do not wish to set an example; but, if the English do it, I must use reprisals." The Count Mollien doubted both the accuracy of Napoleon's information and the policy of retaliation, and sent him a memoir of Hamilton on the subject of the confiscation of debts. Napoleon did not recur to the subject. (Traité de Droit Int. Pub. VI. 750.) War does not extinguish debts due from the citizens of one belligerent to those of another; it merely suspends the remedy for their recovery. Private debts. The State of Georgia v. Brailsford, 3 Dall. 1. "Every nation at war with another is justifiable, by the general and strict law of nations, to seize and confiscate all moreable property of its enemy, (of any kind or nature whatsoever), wherever found, whether within its territory or not.” Chace, J., in Ware r. Hylton (1796), 3 Dall. 199, 226, citing Bynkershoek, Q. J. P., lib. 1, c. 7, pp. 175, 177; Lee on Capt., e. 8, pp. 111, 118; 2 Burl. p. 207, s. 12, p. 219, s. 2, p. 221, s. 11; Vatt. lib. 4, s. 22; Sir Thomas Parker's Rep. p. 267 (11 William 3d). Marshall was of counsel in this ease, and, as counsel for the defendant in error, supported the confiscation under the Virginia statutes. The relaxation by the commercial nations of Europe of the strict. war right to confiscate debts is founded on custom only, and as such is not binding on any nation which has not adopted such custom, e. g., on the State of Virginia during the Revolutionary war. Chace, J., in Ware r. Hylton (1796), 3 Dall. 199, 227. Iredell, J., seemed to incline to the same opinion, though he refrained from deciding it. "By every nation, whatever is its form of government, the confiscation of debts has long been considered disreputable." Wilson, J., in Ware r. Hylton (1796), 3 Dall. 199, 281. "The confiscation of debts is at once unjust and impolitic; it destroys confidence, violates good faith, and injures the interests of commerce; it is also unproductive, and in most cases impracticable. . . In the war that broke out between France and Spain in the year 1684, His Catholic Majesty endeavored to seize the effects of the subjects of France in his Kingdom; but the attempt proved abortive, for not one Spanish agent or factor violated his trust, or betrayed his French principal or correspondent. .. Confiscation of debtis considered a disreputable thing among civilized nations of the present day; and indeed nothing is more strongly evincive of this truth, than that it has gone into general desuetude, and whenever put into practice, provision is made by the treaty, which terminates the war, for the mutual and complete restoration of contracts and payment of debts." Paterson, J., in Ware r. Hylton (1796), 3 Dall. 199, 254, 255, A. D. 1796. "The war of the Revolution has been sometimes appealed to as countenancing the sequestration of debts and the confiscation of property. This was denied by Mr. Hamilton, in his argument on the 10th article of the British treaty of 1794. He said, in reply to those who represent the confiscation or sequestration of debts as our best means of retaliation and coercion, as our most powerful, and sometimes as our only means of defense. So degrading an idea will be rejected with disdain by every man who feels a true and well-informed national pride; by every man who recollects and glories, that in a state of still greater immaturity we achieved independence without the aid of this dishonorable expedient. The Federal Government never resorted to it; and a few only of the State governments stained themselves with it. It may, perhaps, be said that the Federal Government had no power on the subject: but the reverse of this is truly the case. The Federal Government alone had power. The State governments had none, though some of them undertook to exercise it. This position is founded on the solid ground that the confiscation or sequestration of the debts of an enemy is a high act of reprisal and war, necessarily and exclusively incident to the power of making war, which was always in the Federal Government.' (Hamilton's Works, vol. VII. p. 329, Camillus No. XVIII.)" Lawrence's Wheaton (ed. 1863), 610. "It is an interesting fact that, prior to his appointment as Chief Justice, Marshall had appeared only once before the Supreme Court, and on that occasion he was unsuccessful. This appearance was in the case of Ware v. Hylton, 3 Dallas, 199, which was a suit brought by a British creditor to compel the payment by a citizen of Virginia of a pre-Revolutionary debt, in conformity with the stipulations of the treaty of peace. During the Revolutionary war various States, among which was Virginia, passed acts of sequestration and confiscation, by which it was provided that, if the American debtor should pay into the State treasury the debt due to his British creditor, such payment should constitute an effectual plea in bar to a subsequent action for the recovery of the debt. When the representatives of the United States and Great Britain met at Paris to negotiate for peace, the question of the confiscated debts became a subject of controversy, especially in connection with that of the claims of the loyalists for the confiscation of their estates. Franklin and Jay, though they did not advocate the policy of confiscating debts, hesitated, chiefly on the ground of a want of authority in the existing National Government, to override the acts of the States. But when John Adams arrived on the scene, he delivered one of those dramatic strokes of which he was a master, and ended the discussion by suddenly declaring, in the presence of the British plenipotentiaries, that, so far as he was concerned, he had no notion of cheating anybody;' that the question of paying debts and the question of compensating the loyalists were two; and that, while he was opposed to compensating the loyalists, he would agree to a stipulation to secure the payment of debts. It was therefore provided, in the fourth article of the treaty, that creditors on either side should meet with no lawful impediment to the recovery in full sterling money of bona fide debts contracted prior to the war. This stipulation is remarkable, not only as the embodiment of an enlightened policy, but also as perhaps the strongest assertion to be found in the acts of that time of the power and authority of the National Government. Indeed, when the British creditors, after the establishment of peace, sought to proceed in the State courts, they found the treaty unavailing, since those tribunals held themselves still to be bound by the local statutes. In order to remove this difficulty, as well as to provide a rule for the future, there was inserted in the Constitution of the United States the clause declaring that treaties then made, or which should be made, under the authority of the United States, should be the supreme law of the land, binding on the judges in every State, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding. On the strength of this provision, the question of the debts was raised again, and was finally brought before the Supreme Court, in the case of Warer. Hylton. Marshall appeared for the State of Virginia, to oppose the collection of the debt. He based his contention on two grounds: First, that by the law of nations the confiscation of private debts was justifiable; second, that, as the debt had by the law of Virginia been extinguished by its payment into the State treasury, and had thus ceased to be due, the stipulation of the treaty was inapplicable, since there could be no creditor without a debtor. "It is not strange that this argument was unsuccessful. While it doubtless was the best that the cause admitted of, it may serve to illustrate the right of the suitor to have his case, no matter how weak it may be, fully and fairly presented for adjudication. On the question of the right of confiscation the judges differed, one holding that such a right existed, while another denied it, two doubted. and the fifth was silent. But, as to the operation of the treaty, all but one agreed that it restored to the original creditor his right to sue, without regard to the validity or the invalidity of the Virginia statute H. 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