"On the 7th of the following June Adams transmitted to the President of Congress an account of the negotiations, with his observations upon the Prussian projét. On the 3d of that month, however, Adams, Franklin, and Jefferson had been invested by Congress with a general power to conclude treaties of amity and commerce with various powers in Europe, among others with Prussia; and they notified Thulemeier that they were ready to consider and complete the plan of a treaty' which he had already transmitted. "Thulemeier communicated this to his Government, and received a 'full power to conclude a treaty of commerce and friendship between Prussia and the United States.' The negotiations were conducted with great rapidity, under the circumstances. Franklin left Passy on the 12th of July, 1785, for America. The French text of the treaty at the time of his signature had not reached Paris, and he signed only the English text. The French draft reached Paris several days later, and was copied, by Jefferson's directions, into the instruments which Franklin had signed. Then Jefferson signed the documents, and Short took them to Adams, in London, for his signature. Short then went to The Hague to secure Thulemeier's signature to the treaty, and its exchange. "On the 11th of July, 1799, when this was about to expire by its own limitation, a new treaty was concluded by John Quincy Adams, at Berlin, which his father, the President, communicated to Congress on the 22d of November, 1800. This also expired in ten years from the exchange of ratifications, in the midst of the wars of Napoleon. "In 1828 a new treaty of amity and commerce with Prussia was concluded, which is still in force. The fourteenth article makes provision for the disposition and the succession of both personal and real estate in each country by citizens of the other. Attorney-General Cushing said of this, there is a stipulation of treaty, constitutional in substance and form; which, as such, is the supreme law of the land; and which abrogates any incompatible law of either of the States. In the circumstances suggested by the Baron von Gerolt, it is an act of mere duty and of simple good faith on our part to assure him that such is the law."" Davis, Notes, Treaty Volume (1776-1887), 1377. "The treaty [of 1845 with Bavaria] was submitted to the Senate, and ratified by it on the 15th of March, 1845, with an amendment striking out from the third article the words 'real and.' The copy for exchange, with this amendment, was sent to Mr. Wheaton, and a copy was transmitted by him to the Bavarian minister at Berlin; and after long deliberation the amendment was accepted by the Bavarian government." Davis, Notes, Treaty Volume (1776–1887), 1248. 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 v. 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 #. 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. 66 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 |