In its No. 152, Oct. 23, 1897, the American embassy at Berlin made a report of a debate in the Bavarian Diet on a resolution to terminate the most-favored-nation clause in the treaty with the United States. (Mr. Day, Assist. Sec. of State, to Sec. of Treas., Nov. 8, 1897, 222 MS. Dom. Let. 287.) The treaty between the United States and Hanover, of 1847, in providing that the citizens or subjects of each contracting party shall have free access to the tribunals of the other in their litigious affairs on the same terms as native citizens or subjects, refers only to ordinary litigation, and does not prevent the government from giving to its own citizens or subjects exclusive rights of action against itself, such as the right to maintain an action under the act of March 3, 1891, which gives the Court of Claims jurisdiction of certain claims "for property of citizens of the United States taken or destroyed by Indians belonging to a band, tribe, or nation in amity with the United States. Valk v. United States, 29 Ct. Cl. 62. The Grand Duchy of Oldenburg, by a treaty of March 10, 1847, acceded to the treaty of June 10, 1846, between the United States and Hanover. The latter treaty was, according to the general view of international law, annulled by the conquest of Hanover and its incorporation into Prussia in 1866, whereby, like Nassau, the state lost its separate existence. Whether the adhesion of Oldenburg to the treaty with Hanover operated to create a separate convention between the United States and Oldenburg, which survived the annulment of the original treaty with Hanover, is a question which has never been authoritatively answered. Mr. Hill, Assist. Sec. of State, to Mr. Hitt, M. C., Dec. 20, 1900, 249 MS. "On the 14th January last the consul-general of Würtemberg at New York presented, in behalf of his government, its complaint of the construction put by the Supreme Court of the United States in Frederickson v. The State of Louisiana (23 How. 446), on the 3d article of the treaty of April 10, 1844 (8 Stat. L. 588). "In the case referred to, a native of Würtemberg having been duly naturalized, and having died in Louisiana, bequeathing legacies to kindred residing in Würtemberg, and subjects of its King, the legacies were subjected to a tax of 10 per cent. This was under a statute of Louisiana which imposed that tax upon successions devolving on any persons not domiciled in that State, and not being a citizen of any other State or Territory of the Union. The Supreme Court held that the decedent being a citizen of the United States, his estate was not within the provisions of the treaty, which was intended to cover only the case of a subject of Würtemberg bequeathing property in this country, or a citizen of the United States dying and leaving property in Würtemberg. "This government, having no power, as you are aware, to act upon any other construction of the existing treaty than that adopted by the Supreme Court, signified to the consul-general of Würtemberg its readiness to negotiate a new convention in conformity to the interpretation which his government puts upon that now in force, and with a proposition to that effect which he submitted." Mr. Seward, Sec. of State, to Mr. Bancroft, Aug. 18, 1868, MS. Inst. Prussia, XV. 2. The treaty of Dec. 11, 1871, between the United States and the German Empire, which provides (Art. XVII.) that, with regard to the marks or labels of goods, or their packages, German subjects shall enjoy in the United States the same protection as native citizens, does not give to a German subject who has acquired the right to a trade-mark in Germany a similar right to the trade-mark in the United States. Richter r. Reynolds (C. C. A.), 59 Fed. Rep. 577. Questions of citizenship, extradition, and to a certain extent of commerce are regulated by treaties entered into with the North German Union or with the several German States prior to the formation of the German Empire. As to meat and cattle inspection in Germany and the examination for sanitary reasons of various articles imported into the United States, see For. Rel. 1900, 485-512. As to trade relations between the United States and Germany, see President Cleveland, annual message, Dec. 2, 1895, For. Rel. 1895, XXIV. President McKinley, annual mesage, Dec. 5, 1898, For. Rel. 1898, lxxv.; Mr. Jackson, chargé, to Mr. Sherman, Sec. of State, Oct. 28, 1897, For. Rel. 1897, 179. As to the importation of American pork containing trachina, see For. Rel. For a discussion as to the use of poisonous paint on German toys, see For expression of sympathy on the death of Emperor William I., see For. "The Ralik group of islands in the Marshall Archipelago" "is understood to be under no foreign flag or protectorate, and to feel no foreign influence other than that of the resident consular officer, a German, and of the distant consular representatives at Samoa and Fiji, within the jurisdiction of which the Ralik Islands seem to fall.” Hence this government, in desiring to aid the native government of those islands in the establishment, in connection with the missionaries, of temperance restrictions, can only do so through the agency of the German government. Mr. Evarts, Sec. of State, to Mr. White, min. to Germany, Nov. 13, 1880, "We have no treaty relations with the Gilbert and Marshall islands, or any knowledge of the intention of Germany with respect thereto, except the reports which reach us, with more or less authenticity, that Great Britain and Germany have agreed upon lines of division in the Pacific Ocean, by which determinate areas will be open to the exclusive settlement and control of the respective Governments." Mr. Bayard, Sec. of State, to Mr. Morrow, M. C., Feb. 26, 1886, 159 MS. See, also, Mr. Bayard, Sec. of State, to Mr. Pendleton, Feb. 27, 1886, MS. As to the subsequent establishment by Great Britain of a protectorate XIX. GREAT BRITAIN. 1. TREATY OF PEACE, 1782-83. (1) NEGOTIATIONS. § 824. "It was not until after the first edition of this work [Wharton's Int. Law Dig.] was printed that I [Dr. Wharton] had the opportunity and leisure to examine the Stevens collection of Franklin papers, purchased by Congress, and now on deposit in the Department of State. As to the extraordinary historical value of those papers, as well as the singular skill with which they have been arranged by Mr. Stevens, I entirely concur with Dr. E. E. Hale in the opinion expressed by him in the preface to the interesting volume published this year by himself and his son (Franklin in France, from original documents, by Edward E. Hale and Edward E. Hale, jr., Boston, 1887). Dr. Hale, in this valuable volume, closes his compilation of the Franklin papers with 1782. My object in the present note is (beginning shortly after Dr. Hale closes) to use the materials afforded by the Stevens collection as a means of construing the treaty of peace as definitely settled on September 3, 1783. "The questions which the Franklin papers help largely to solve are, it should be recollected, of great interest in reference not merely the history but to international law. If, as the papers now before us show, the treaty of 1782-3 was a treaty of partition of an empire, then each of the two sovereignties thus separated carried with it all the incidents that it had enjoyed prior to partition so far as this does not conflict with the treaty limitations. The importance of this distinction is manifest. If the United States took by grant" under the treaty, then the rights of reciprocity, both as to fisheries and as to navigation, which existed previously between the colonies and the parent state, could only, so it might be argued, be claimed under the treaty so far as it created them de novo. If, on the other hand, the treaty was one of partition, then these rights remained, except so far as they were limited in the treaty. That the latter view is correct is, I submit, abundantly shown in prior volumes of this work, supra, § § 150, 301 ff. And it is so fully sustained by the papers contained in the Stevens collection that I have thought it important to introduce into this appendix extracts from such of those papers as bear on this question. "Before, however, proceeding to this specific task it is important to notice the vividness with which these papers bring before us, with an accuracy heretofore unobtainable, the leading personages who were concerned in the negotiation of the treaty. The more prominent of these personages, whose letters, many of them in the original manuscript, are now in the Department of State, and some of whose private memoranda and journals are also there deposited, are as follows: The Earl of Shelburne, Mr. Charles James Fox, Mr. Richard Oswald, Mr. Thomas Grenville, Count de Vergennes, Dr. Franklin, Mr. Jay, and Mr. John Adams. "The condition of things, so far as concerned Great Britain, at the time when the peace negotiations began, was as follows: "On February 27, 1782, Lord North being still minister, the opposition carried a resolution declaring the advisers of further offensive war with America to be enemies of their country. On March 8 a resolution of censure on the ministry came within a few votes of adoption. On March 15 a motion of want of confidence in the ministry was lost by a majority of 9, but notice was given of its renewal on the 20th. On that day Lord North resigned, and George III. called on Lord Shelburne for advice. Lord Shelburne declared it essential that Lord Rockingham should be made minister, one of the conditions being the recognition of the independence of the United States. In the ministry thus constituted, Lord Rockingham, as prime minister, took the treasury: Lord John Cavendish was chancellor of the exchequer; Mr. Fox, secretary for foreign affairs; Lord Shelburne, secretary for home and colonial affairs, while Dunning, a lawyer of great eminence, and a personal friend of Shelburne, entered into the cabinet as Lord Ashburton and chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. As noncabinet officers were Burke, pay-master general; Thomas Townshend, secretary at war, and Sheridan, undersecretary of state. The Duke of Portland, afterwards prime minister, went to Ireland as lord-lieutenant. Mr. Pitt declined to take any office that did not bring a seat in the cabinet, and no seat in the cabinet was offered to him. Lord Shelburne. "The Earl of Shelburne, whose character is one of those as to which historians have had the greatest difficulty in giving an explicit judgment, had, in his early political life, been associated with Henry Fox, the first Lord Holland, and with Lord Bute. Certainly two more unsafe guides could not have been found: The first able, subtle, determined, corrupt, making the amassing of wealth his chief parliamentary object; the other a stupid and pompous egotist, without statesmanlike ability, owing his position to the favor with which he was personally regarded by the Princess of Wales during the minority of George III.; and, by his high tory views of prerogative, coupled with his pretentious manner, acquiring great influence over that monarch during the early years of his reign. Lord Shelburne's letters to both Fox and Bute show characteristics which enable us to understand why, against Shelburne, the charge of duplicity was so frequently made. But it must be remembered that Shelburne was then a young man conscious of great ability, possessing great wealth, and with a natural ambition to take a leading position in English political life. English politics were at that time in a chaotic state. There was no strong liberal party as such; leading Whigs had become, as in the case of George Grenville, advocates of high prerogative. William Pitt, the father, withdrawn from political activity by ill health, was about for a time to be sunk in the obscurity of the House of Lords. Lord Shelburne's flattery of Lord Holland and Lord Bute was no more fulsome, and was probably no less entirely a matter of form, than was Lord Chatham's flattery of most of the leading public men to whom his letters are preserved; and it must be kept in mind that as soon as Lord Chatham reappeared on the political stage, taking, whenever his health enabled him to take, a leading independent part, he was sustained by Lord Shelburne with a resoluteness and energy which can not now be questioned. But however this may be, of two points as to Lord Shelburne we may rest assured. Whatever may have been his early political associations, his personal sympathies, as his life matured, were with the school of liberal political economists, of which Adam Smith was the head, and among whose members were Franklin, Price, and Priestley. He did not, indeed, avow republican sentiments, however much he may have regarded them as in theory sound; in this respect following Halifax, whom he resembled in not a few characteristics. Yet his intimacy with philosophical republicans of the advanced whig school, his impatient disdain of the old-line aristo |