Mr. Bayard also stated that upon the papers before the Department the charges made by the Mexican Government against the claimant were well founded. See, as to this case, For. Rel. 1884, 344, 358, 363, 365, 371, 372. July 19, 1886, the American minister to Mexico was instructed "to demand of the Mexican government the instant release of A. K. Cutting, a citizen of the United States, now unlawfully imprisoned at Paso del Norte." Mr. Bayard, Sec. of State, to Mr. Jackson, min. to Mexico, tel., July 19, For the grounds on which this demand was based, see Mr. Bayard to Mr. Bayard's No. 221 is given supra, § 201, where other documents and a With reference to the allegation that two persons had been kept in prison in Mexico for eleven months without information of the evidence against them, and that they had been approached since their imprisonment by Mexican officials with offers from which it was to be inferred that the object of the prosecution was to obtain possession of an estate of which one of the prisoners was executor, the Department of State said: "Under these circumstances, I instruct you to call upon the Mexican government to direct that the prosecution against Messrs. Gaskill and Ward be brought at once to trial, and that the proceeding should be conducted in such a way as to give the accused in advance a statement of the witnesses to be produced against them and the opportunity of cross-examining these witnesses face to face on trial, and of producing witnesses on their behalf in defense. It will be proper also to state that the trial will be watched by this government with interest and close attention, so that the Department will be informed. if there is any action taken on such trial at variance with the rules of justice acknowledged in common by Mexico and ourselves." Mr. Bayard, Sec. of State, to Mr. Jackson, min. to Mexico, No. 226, July 26, 1886, MS. Inst. Mexico, XXI. 535. While it is undoubtedly a general principle "that a denial of justice can not be asserted until judicial remedies have been exhausted," it is "also true that injustice may be inflicted by delays in the administration of the law, as well as by wrong determinations. This proposition is as true as the first, and is not inconsistent with it." A delay of more than a year and a half consumed in a secret investigation "can not be regarded as reasonable for the trial of an ordinary criminal charge, and to impose such a delay in order to obtain evi dence of guilt is in reality to make the prisoner's apparent innocence the ground of his imprisonment." Mr. Blaine, Sec. of State, to Mr. Ryan, min. to Mexico, June 28, 1890, MS. "Nothing short of convincing evidence" that an American citizen "is the victim of intentional discrimination, partiality, or other injustice on the part of the court in which the prosecution is pending, could justify diplomatic intervention in his behalf." Mr. Gresham, Sec. of State, to Mr. Morse, May 31, 1893, 192 MS. Dom. As to the joint investigation of the case of Dr. Ruiz, an American citizen, "Your claim for damages on account of your detention in Peru is not a proper subject of diplomatic intervention. Your detention there seems to have been in pursuance of a regular judicial sentence after trial at which testimony was heard. Even admitting that the sentence was wholly wrong and that your detention was altogether unjust, yet the judgment of the appellate court reversed that sentence and removed all restraint on your liberty. The government of Peru itself has therefore corrected the injustice of the lower court in the manner in which alone all governments, as a rule, correct injustice of their inferior tribunals." Mr. Gresham, Sec. of State, to Mr. Hevner, June 10, 1893, 192 MS. Dom. Of the same purport is Mr. Uhl, Act. Sec. of State, to Mr. Grip, min. of (2) REQUESTS FOR INFORMATION. $915. “If ... Mr. Speer should be a duly naturalized citizen of the United States; if in returning to the Austrian dominions he should not have incurred any penalty or have violated any obligation originating prior to his naturalization, this government will expect to be informed of the nature of the charge, of the form of proceedings, and to be furnished with a copy of the testimony against him, if this was reduced to writing." Mr. Marcy, Sec. of State, to Mr. Jackson, chargé at Vienna, Nov. 6, 1854. "Although it may be unusual for complaints in ordinary cases of alleged offences against the laws of one country by the citizens or subjects of another to be made international questions, if there is good ground for apprehension that there may have been a denial of justice through corruption on the part of the magistrates or a wilful and oppressive perversion of the ordinary forms, the government of the aggrieved party has, it is conceived, a clear right to demand and expect all such information on the subject as may serve to satisfy its reasonable doubts.” Mr. Marcy, Sec. of State, to Mr. Jackson, chargé at Vienna, Nov. 6, 1854, Martin Speer, alias Martin Speerschneider, referred to above, was State subsequently declined to make in his behalf a claim for "If any nation has good reason to believe that justice has been denied to one of its citizens by another, and that the forms of law have been used and perverted to inflict wrong and injury upon him, it may reasonably expect that explanation when demanded will be given. The reluctance shown by Austria to give explanation in Speer's case when it was first asked, very naturally cast some suspicion upon the motives which had led to his prosecution. She has, however, at length yielded to our demand, though not to the extent desired. On the ground of comity we might reasonably expect from her a more full account of the proceedings against Speer, but whether we could claim more as a right, and treat the refusal to grant it as an international affront, is very questionable. There is, undoubtedly, a limit beyond which such an enquiry could not be pushed and might be rightfully resisted. It can not be expected that any government would go so far as to yield to a pretension of a foreign power to revise and review the proceedings of its courts, under the claim of an international right to correct errors therein, either in respect to the application of principles of law, or the appreciation of facts as evidence in cases where the citizens of such foreign power have been convicted. It certainly could not be expected that such a claim would be allowed before the party making it had first presented a clear case prima facie of wilful denial of justice or a deliberate perversion of judicial forms for the purpose of oppression." . Mr. Marcy, Sec. of State, to Mr. Jackson, chargé at Vienna, April 6, 1855, MS. Inst. Austria, I. 105. Mr. Marcy in a previous instruction had stated that the United States would "expect to be informed of the nature of the charge, of the form of proceedings, and to be furnished with a copy of the testimony against him [Speer], if this was reduced to writing." (Mr. Marcy, Sec. of State, to Mr. Jackson, chargé at Vienna, Nov. 6, 1854, MS. Inst. Austria, I. 103.) The Austrian government declined to furnish a full copy of the proceedings, but an extract from them was communicated by Count Buol to the American legation. It was with reference to this situation that the instruction of April 6, 1855, supra, was written. In a final instruction on the subject, Mr. Marcy said: "In your note of the 18th of February to Baron Werner you repeat your demand for an authenticated copy of all evidence, documentary and parol, invoked to justify the arrest and secure the conviction of Speer, and you say that after the date of that demand you would not return to the subject without positive instructions to that effect, and the Department deems it necessary only to add that it fully approves of this determination." (Mr. Marcy, Sec. of State, to Mr. Jackson, chargé at Vienna, April 8, 1856, MS. Inst. Austria, I. 117.) "I do not think the United States can complain of Austria for having committed a national wrong by neglecting or refusing to notify our consuls or diplomatic agents of the arrest and prosecution of a person who claims to be or has a passport showing that he is an American citizen. It is certainly not the practice in our country to give such notices, though information applied for would not be withheld." Mr. Marcy, Sec. of State, to Mr. Jackson, chargé at Vienna, April 6, 1855, The interposition of one government in legal proceedings within the jurisdiction of another being always a matter of delicacy, it should not be conducted in such a way as to involve a marked assumption of a denial of justice or as to suggest a lack of consideration for the constituted authority, such as would be indicated by a request to the minister of foreign affairs for "copies of all the papers" and for "such other details" as might be "within his knowledge and procurement," in a case pending before the courts, in order that an opinion might be formed as to the propriety or regularity of their proceedings. Mr. Blaine, Sec. of State, to Mr. Ryan, min. to Mexico, Feb. 16, 1891, MS. "The Department is perfectly aware that the proceedings of first instance, under the general code of the countries deriving their procedure from the Roman law, are analogous in their nature to the inquest of a grand jury under the common law of Saxon nations, and that precise information in respect to and formulation of the charges against the prisoner are not communicable in the preliminary stages. But this does not preclude a respectful inquiry from a consul as to the general nature of the offense charged or as to the status of a pending case." Mr. Sherman, Sec. of State, to Mr. Sepulveda, U. S. chargé d'affaires ad interim at Mexico, May 5, 1897, For. Rel. 1897, 396. 4. DEBTS AND CONTRACTS. § 916. "It has become a common habit of governments, especially in England, to make a distinction between complaints of persons who have lost money through default of a foreign state in paying the interest or capital of loans made to it and the complaints of persons who have suffered in other ways. In the latter case, if the complaint is thought to be well founded, it is regarded as a pure question of expediency on the facts of the particular case or of the importance of the occurrence, whether the state shall interfere, and if it does interfere, whether it shall confine itself to diplomatic representations, or whether, upon refusal or neglect to give redress, it shall adopt measures of constraint falling short of war, or even resort to war itself. In the former case, on the other hand, governments are in the habit of refusing to take any steps in favour of the sufferers, partly because of the onerousness of the responsibility which a state would assume if it engaged as a general rule to recover money so lost, partly because loans to states are frequently, if not generally, made with very sufficient knowledge of the risks attendant on them, and partly because of the difficulty which a state may really have, whether from its own misconduct or otherwise, in meeting its obligations at the time when it makes default. Fundamentally however there is no difference in principle between wrongs inflicted by breach of a monetary agreement and other wrongs for which the state, as itself the wrongdoer, is immediately responsible. The difference which is made. in practice is in no sense obligatory; and it is open to governments to consider each case by itself and to act as seems well to them on its merits." Hall, Int. Law, 5th ed. 280–281. "The foreign debt of Spain, according to MacGregor and McCulloch, amounted in January, 1842, to £65,000,000 sterling. The former |