322 



DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE AND FOREIGN RELATIONS. 



States, with papers, making certain explana- 

 tions relative to transactions on the Rio Grande, 

 upon which the Government of the United 

 States had made representations to the Impe- 

 rial Government of France. The Secretary, on 

 the 18th, after a conference with the President, 

 returned the letter to Count Montholon, saying 

 that the Government of the United States was 

 in friendly communication with the Republican 

 Government of Mexico, and therefore the Pres- 

 ident declined to receive the letter, or to hold 

 intercourse with the agent who brought it. 



Extradition. An extradition case was 

 argued and decided in the Court of Queen's 

 Bench in England, early in the spring, which 

 settled some important points in reference to 

 the treaty providing for the rendering up of 

 persons charged with offences ; the following is 

 a history of the case and the decision : 



One Charles Windsor, of New York, made 

 fraudulent entries in the books of the Mercan- 

 tile Bank of that city, " whereby the bank was 

 defrauded of $200,000." He escaped arrest by 

 flight to England. Such a fraudulent entry is 

 punishable in the State of New York, under 

 statute, as forgery. Forgery is one of the 

 crimes mentioned in the extradition treaty. 

 Mere fraud or embezzlement is not. At com- 

 mon law, or by the law of England, these fraud- 

 ulent entries do not amount to forgery. It is 

 of the essence of the crime that a writing should 

 be made or uttered as the writing of somebody 

 else than the writer. "Windsor being arrested in 

 England and held for extradition, was brought 

 before the Court of Queen's Bench, Habeas 

 Corpus, Chief Justice Cockburn, Mr. Justice 

 Blackburn, and Mr. Justice Shee sitting. The 

 pretension of the prisoner's counsel was that a 

 mere local statute could not create offences, or 

 change the name of offences, and thus bring 

 them within the scope of a treaty if they were 

 not contemplated or intended by both parties 

 in using the words employed in it; that this 

 was not forgery as intended by the Ashburton 

 treaty, or the British statute giving effect to it, 

 and therefore the prisoner was not properly 

 held to extradition under it. Counsel cited the 

 Anderson case, in which a rule had been grant- 

 ed virtually to set aside the ruling of the Upper 

 Canada judges, as a case in point. ' Mr. Justice 

 Blackburn, however, observed that nothing 

 was definitely decided in that case, only a rule 

 nisi granted. 



On the other side, the Gerity case was cited, 

 in which counsel urged it had been laid down 

 that the piracy meant must be piracy under the 

 local law, not piracy jure gentium, which could 

 be tried anywhere, and therefore not properly 

 the subject of a treaty of extradition. That 

 was an express recognition of the creation of 

 offences by local legislation. It was necessary, 

 therefore, that the offence should be the same 

 in both countries. 



The prisoner was discharged on the ground 

 most succinctly put by Mr. Justice Shee : " The 

 offence must satisfy in all material respects the 



definition of the offence by the law of both 

 countries. The terms of the treaty must be 

 taken as the language of both countries, and 

 therefore must be construed as used in the 

 same sense and in the sense common to both. 

 In this case the false entry was not really for- 

 gery by the general or common law of either 

 country, and therefore was clearly not -yithin 

 the stipulation of this country." 



Claim was also made under the treaty with 

 Great Britain, for the delivery of Young and 

 his companions in the raid upon St. Albans, 

 Vermont, during 1864. The matter was heard 

 before Mr. Justice Smith, of Montreal, who dis- 

 charged the prisoners; his opinion, given at 

 length, treats of the case as follows : 



That the evidence before him proved the existence 

 of the following state of facts as constituting the lead- 

 ing features of the attack on St. Albans by the pris- 

 oners and others on the 19th October last. 



1. That on that day the prisoner, Bennet H. Young, 

 and about twenty other persons, suddenly appeared 

 in the town of St. Albans, took possession of the 

 three banks and pillaged them, at the same time set 

 fire or attempted to set fire to several buildings ; took 

 and held a number of the -citizens prisoners during 

 the occupation of the town ; seized horses, and were 

 finally fired upon and driven out of the town by the 

 people, exchanging shots with them to an extent 

 which does not clearly appear by the evidence, after 

 having been apparently in some degree in possession 

 of the town for about half an hour. During the pil- 

 lage of one of the banks a sum of money was taken 

 under threats of violence from one Breck, who en- 

 tered the bank where the prisoners were with the 

 money in his hand, and it is in evidence that one man 

 was shot dead in the streets of the town, though the 

 circumstances of his death are not described. The 

 charge of robbing Breck being the charge embodied 

 in the information before the Court. 



That on the 19th October last, Bennet H. Young 

 was an officer in the army of the so-called Confed- 

 erate States, holding the rank of first lieutenant, 

 under an appointment made by Mr. Davis of the 16th 

 June, 1864, as signified to Mr. Young by Mr. Seddon, 

 the Secretary or War ; that the other prisoners were 

 soldiers in that army acting under his orders, and 

 that in the attack on St. Albans he and his party 

 assumed and declared themselves to be acting as such 

 officer and soldiers on behalf of the Confederate States, 

 alleging that they were detailed for the purpose as a 

 measure of retaliation for the mode in which they 

 asserted the war had been carried on by the United 

 States in the South. 



2. That Lieutenant Young received written instruc- 

 tions from Secretary Seddon, bearing the same date 

 as his appointment, authorizing him to organize in 

 the territory of the enemy for special service a com- 

 pany of twenty men from among persons belonging 

 to the Confederate service and then beyond the Con- 

 federate States. By one set of these instructions he 

 was ordered to proceed to the British Provinces to 

 report to Messrs. Thompson and ClaVj who appear 

 to be agents for the Confederates in this country, to 

 execute such enterprises as should be intrusted to 

 him, to violate no local law, and to obey implicitly 

 their instructions. Another letter of instructions 

 conveys similar orders to him, except that he is direct- 

 ed to Mr. C. C. Clay alone, instead of Messrs. Thomp- 

 son and Clay. 



3. That during the autumn of 1863, Young escaped 

 from prison as a prisoner of war of the United States 

 and reached Toronto, where he remained till the 

 spring of 1864, during which time he attended lec- 

 tures at the University. That he left Toronto in the 

 spring, declaring his intention of going to Richmond ; 



