J9I2.] OF THE UNITED STATES. 379 



resident must be content in such cases to share the same redress that is 

 ofifered by the law to the citizen, and has no just cause of complaint or right 

 to ask the interposition of his country if the Courts are equally open to him 

 for the redress of his injuries."^"^ 



This case catised the greatest excitement in both coinitries, and 

 the Italian minister was withdrawn. The international obligations 

 of the United States were finally settled by an appropriation by 

 Congress as indemnity. This course had been adopted in the 

 Chinese riots at Denver, and has been followed in practically all of 

 the instances of damages to or killing of aliens by mob violence. 



The Act of Congress has always included a clause to the effect 

 that the indemnity is allowed out of considerations of humanity and 

 without reference to questions of liability. 



In 1899, a mob hanged five Italians at Tallulah, Louisiana. The 

 Italian government protested. The local grand jury failed to indict, 

 although the facts were notorious. The Federal government in- 

 demnified the families of the victims. The incident has interest as 

 it manifests the foreign estimate of the position of powerlessness 

 assumed by the Federal government. The minister of the United 

 States to Italy forwarded to the Secretary of State an extract from 

 a newspaper printed at Rome, and said of it that it represented 

 fairly public opinion.-"* Said the editorial article: 



"A number of our confreres are astonished that in the face of a fact 

 so abominable as the lynching of four or five human beings, it should not be 

 possible for either to claim, or obtain, a more substantial reparation than the 

 payment of an indemnity, more or less large, to the families of the victims. 

 Nevertheless this is the fact, and all protests against it would be futile. 



" The Constitution of the United States gives the President of the 

 Republic no power over the internal aflfairs of the different States. 

 The Governor of Louisiana has no account to render to the Presi- 

 dent of the Confederation in regard to what takes place in his State. The 

 Governor is as powerful at home as the President is at Washington. Louisi- 

 ana has its laws, its magistrates, its parliament, its customs, and if President 

 McKinley should seek to impose his will upon it, he would receive a per- 

 emptory refusal, and not only that, but he would raise up against him the 

 whole public opinion of America. This American Constitution is, without 

 doubt an anomaly, above all from the European point of view. It is difficult 

 to admit that a State should not be able to answer for the acts which take 



^^ James G. Blaine to Marquis Imperiali, Foreign Relations, 1891, p. 685. 

 ^^ Foreign Relations, 1899, p. 445. 



