nt judgment that where a treaty creates a
privilege for aliens in express terms it cannot be limited by the
operations of domestic law without a serious breach of the good faith
which governs the intercourse of nations. So long as such a conventional
engagement in favor of the citizens in another State exists, the law
governing natives in like cases is manifestly inapplicable.

I need hardly enlarge on the point that the Government of the United
States concludes its treaties with foreign States for the equal
protection of all classes of American citizens. It can make absolutely
no discrimination between them, whatever be their origin or creed. So
that they abide by the laws at home or abroad it must give them due
protection and expect like protection for them. Any unfriendly or
discriminatory act against them on the part of a foreign power with
which we are at peace would call for our earnest remonstrance, whether a
treaty existed or not. The friendliness of our relations with foreign
nations is emphasized by the treaties we have concluded with them. We
have been moved to enter into such international compacts by
considerations of mutual benefit and reciprocity, by the same
considerations, in short, which have animated the Russian Government
from the time of the noble and tolerant declarations of the Empress
Catherine in 1784 to those of the ukase of 1860. We have looked to the
spirit rather than to the letter of those engagements, and believed that
they should be interpreted in the broadest way; and it is therefore a
source of unfeigned regret to us when a Government, to which we are
allied by so many historical ties as to that of Russia, shows a
disposition in its dealings with us to take advantage of technicalities,
to appeal to the rigid letter and not the reciprocal motive of its
international engagements in justification of the expulsion from its
territories of peaceable American citizens resorting thither under the
good faith of treaties and accused of no wrong-doing or of no violation
of the commercial code of the land, but of the simple adherence to the
faith of their fathers....

I can readily conceive that statutes bristling with difficulties remain
unrepealed in the volumes of the law of Russia as well as of other
nations. Even we ourselves have our obsolete "blue laws," and their
literal enforcement, if such a thing were possible, might to-day subject
a Russian of freethinking proclivities, in Maryland or