Tripolitan court of a Spanish consul on the trial of a Spaniard.
Our own country uniformly conceded to Barbary powers entire jurisdiction
over our resident citizens. The treaty with Morocco (1787) reads: 'When
a citizen of the United States kills or wounds a subject of Morocco, or
if a subject of Morocco kills or wounds a citizen of the United States,
the laws of the country are to be followed; equal justice, and the
presence of the consul, being alone stipulated for.' And in the treaty
with Algiers (1816), we merely require that the 'sentence of punishment
of an American citizen shall not be greater, or more severe, than it
would be against a Turk in the same predicament.'
With Tunis there was the same understanding. Again, in the treaty of
1836, with Morocco, no claim is made for jurisdiction by us over our
citizens; the presence of the consul at a trial being deemed a
sufficient guarantee for an equitable trial; showing, that up to that
date Morocco resisted the extraterritorial aggression to which the
Ottoman power had already yielded.
So far as appears from Marten's _Recueil des Traites_, the Sublime Porte
was the first to yield the point, suffering it to go by default,
however, of exempting resident foreigners from local jurisdiction,
rather than by a formal abdication of authority in a treaty. The
earliest admission that we have met with, strange to say, occurs in the
United States' treaty, negotiated with Turkey in 1830. 'If litigation
and disputes should arise between subjects of the Sublime Porte and
citizens of the United States, the parties shall not be heard, nor shall
judgment be pronounced, unless the American dragoman be present.
Citizens of the United States, committing an offence, shall not be
arrested and put to prison by the local authorities, but they shall be
tried by their minister or consul, and punished according to their
offence, following in this respect the _usage_ observed toward other
Franks.'
With Persia, in 1856, we stipulated only that the American consul shall
be present at the tribunal, when Americans are parties in a trial.
Our earliest treaty in Eastern Asia was negotiated in 1833, with Siam,
with which power we agreed, 'that merchants of the United States,
trading in the kingdom of Siam, shall respect and _follow_ the laws and
_customs_ of the country in _all_ points'--conceding not only
interterritoriality to the fullest extent; but making it the duty of
American trader
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