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bless the jus gentium. T..is decree imposes a pen

alty on Austrian subjects leaving the emperor's dominions without permission, with the view of preventing them from doing so, and not with a view, if they choose to incur it, of releasing them from their obligation of allegiance. As such release evidently did not enter into the intention of the legislators, it cannot be presumed from the nature of the penalty imposed. To deprive a citizen unjustly of all his civil and political rights is tyrannical, and undoubtedly releases him from the bond of allegiance; but it does not therefore follow that he who forfeits those rights by his unlawful acts is thereby released from his subjection. It is a maxim of law, that no man can stand upon his own wrong, and therefore no man by his own wrong-doing can free himself from any moral or civil obligation; otherwise by crime one might gain the right to commit crime with impunity,-a doctrine subversive of all morals, and of civil society itself. As the decree imposes the loss of civil and political rights as a penalty for an unlawful act, we cannot infer that it releases him who incurs it from his subjection to his prince, unless such be the expressed will of the prince himself; which in the present case evidently is not the fact.

But only they who leave the emperor's dominions with an intention never to return incur this penalty. Nothing proves that Koszta left those dominions with any such in tention. The contrary is far more probably the fact. He with Kossuth and others fled across the frontier into Turkey, as a place of temporary refuge, and, if we may believe what Kossuth, their acknowledged chief, has repeatedly declared, publicly and privately, with the intention and the hope of speedily returning. For what else did Kossuth, from whom in this matter we cannot separate Koszta, solicit material aid" of our tender-hearted citizens, and purchase saddles and bridles, but to enable him to return, as he hoped at an early day, within the emperor's dominions? How will you, then, bring Koszta under the operation of the imperial decree? Has Austria ever declared him to have forfeited, under that decree, all his civil and political rights? Has she enforced that decree against him? We do not understand even Mr. Marcy to maintain that Austria has actually condemned Koszta as an unlawful emigrant, and deprived him accordingly. If she has not, the law has not been enforced against him, and he has suffered nothing by it, and even if it was intended to operate his release from his obligation of allegiance, it has not so oper

ated. Before he can plead it in his favor, he must show that it has been enforced, or attempted to be enforced, to his damage.

Mr. Marcy argues that the position of Koszta deprived of all his civil and political rights, and not released from his subjection, would be very hard, and much worse than that of absolute alienage. Very possibly. But the loss of those rights was imposed as a penalty, and we never understood that penalties were intended to be easy. It is harder to be condemned to imprisonment for life than it is to be a simple alien; but can you thence infer that a prisoner so condemned is absolved from his allegiance? Cannot a penalty be lawfully imposed, unless compensated by a corresponding benefit conferred in incurring it? The condition of Austria would be hard, too, if Mr. Marcy's interpretation of the decree in question must be accepted. She could make no extradition treaties, because all such treaties proceed on the supposition that the fugitives from justice, though out of his jurisdiction, remain subject to their sovereign. Her subjects, guilty of a crime, would have only to cross the frontier into a neighboring state, with an intention of never returning, in order to be for ever released from their allegiance, and to be for ever, even if found in her dominions, free from her penal justice. It is singular, if such is the meaning of that decree, that France, England, and the United States, the powers that advised, perhaps forced, certainly encouraged, the Ottoman porte not to give up the Hungarian refugees, never discovered it, and made no use of it in 1849-50. They contented themselves with informing the porte that she was not bound by treaty to give them up; how much stronger and more to the purpose to have told her to reply, that those refugees were unlawful emigrants, and as such, by the laws of Austria herself, released from their allegiance, that they were no longer her subjects, and she had no longer any authority over them! But they advised no such answer. Mr. Marcy was not then, we believe, in the cabinet.

But the imperial decree Mr. Marcy cites is municipal, not international law. Austria has the sole right to interpret her own municipal laws. She has not interpreted this law in the sense of Mr. Marcy, but has shown us plainly that, in her interpretation, it either does not apply to him at all, or if it does, it does not release him from his subjection to her authority, or deprive him of his character as her sub

ject. She claimed his surrender to her by Turkey, as her subject; when she waived for the moment that claim, she insisted on his removal from her frontier, and his continement at Kutahia, as her subject; and as her subject she consented to his liberation, on condition of his never setting his foot again on Ottoman territory. This is conclusive against Mr. Marcy as to the operation of the imperial decree of March, 1832, for he cannnot go behind Austria's own interpretation of her own municipal laws.

The argument drawn from the imperial decree, then, it appears, must be abandoned. Then Koszta was an Austrian subject at the time of his arrest at Smyrna, unless Austria, by consenting to his release from Kutahia on certain conditions, released him from his allegiance. This, Mr. Marcy contends, was the case, for he maintains that by doing so she banished him, and lost all her authority over him. As long as the conditions of the banishment, if banishment it was, were complied with, it may be so; but banishment, unless such be the intention of the sovereign, does not absolutely, and under all circumstances, dissolve for ever all connection between the sovereign and the subject. It is usually accompanied with an alternative, and if the banished person returns he is liable to suffer it, and, though he may not resume all his original rights, there is no doubt that the sovereign resumes all his original authority, and may at his pleasure pardon or punish him. But we do not admit that, strictly speaking, Austria banished Koszta. He was liberated by her permission indeed, on the condition of leaving and never returning to Turkey; but not at her instance, or, so far as appears, by her wish. It was done at the earnest solicitation of France, Great Britain, and the United States, the friends of the Hungarian refugees. It was a permission to go into voluntary exile, rather than banishment. If it released Koszta from his subjection to Austria, it did so only conditionally, and only so long as the condition was complied with. The authority of the sovereign survived in the conditions imposed, and resumed all its original vigor when they were broken.

The condition on which Koszta was liberated, M. Hülsemann positively asserts, was, that he was "never to set his foot again on Ottoman territory." M. Hülsemann says Koszta gave a written pledge to that effect. Mr. Marcy thinks this is doubtful, but he cannot mean that it is doubtful that the condition asserted was imposed, for he contends.

that Austria procured his expulsion from Turkey, and argues thence that she sent him into perpetual banishment. When, therefore, without permission from Austria, he returned to Turkey last spring or summer, he broke the condition of his liberation, and necessarily fell back into his former character of a subject of his Imperial and Apostolic Majesty, who resumed at once all his original authority over him. He was, therefore, at the time of his arrest at Smyrna, an Austrian subject, as he himself confessed; for when he was asked if he was an American citizen, he replied, as our chargé d'affaires ad interim at Constantinople acknowledges, "I am a Hungarian, and I will live and die a Hungarian." If a Hungarian, an Austrian subject. Mr. Marcy would like to deny this confession, but he does not, and cannot; and he tries to neutralize its damaging effect by suggesting that there was, in Koszta's mind, a great difference between a Hungarian and an Austrian subject. But there was no difference that Koszta could entertain without disloyalty, and none at all that Mr. Marcy, in an official document, could recognize without disrespect to Austria.

We are

The nationality of Koszta being proved to have been Austrian, at the time of his arrest, the question raised by Mr. Marcy, as to the American nationality he had acquired by having declared his intention to become an American citizen, and by having been domiciled in the country, however important and even delicate it may be in itself, becomes quite unimportant in the case before us. for pushing the rights of American nationality to the full extent admitted by international law. The citizens or subjects of foreign states, free to expatriate themselves, who are naturalized here according to the forms required by our laws, are clothed with a perfect American nationality, and, save as to the eligibility to the offices of president and vicepresident of the United States, stand on the same footing with natural-born citizens, have the same rights and the same duties, and our government has the same right and the same duty to protect them, even against their former sovereign. But those citizens or subjects who have not "faithfully performed the past and the present duties resulting from their relation to the sovereign," not being free to expatriate themselves, cannot be clothed with a perfect American nationality, without a release of their allegiance by their sovereign, who may attach to the release such conditions as he judges advisable for his own safety or the peace