seek to reopen the claims in question after their dismissal on the merits. by the Commission. It is conceived that the distinction which you draw between a claims commission under a treaty, duly ratified by the Senate, and such a commission under a diplomatic agreement, while material in some relations, does not affect the binding force of the decisions in either case, as between the contracting governments, upon all claims which properly fall within the scope of the commission. The case of the brig General Armstrong, which you cite, does not appear to lend any strength to your argument. For, notwithstanding the denunciations of the award of the arbitrator, no effort was made to reopen the question with Portugal; and in the opinion of Chief Justice Gilchrist, to which you refer, there was an express disclaimer of any denial of the power of the United States' to submit to arbitration the claim of one of its own citizens upon a foreign government which it has been prosecuting in such a way as to preclude itself from again pressing that claim upon such foreign governments.' "It is also to be observed that in the cases which you are now seeking to have reopened, the claimants submitted themselves to the commission without protest, and had their cause ably and fully presented. In this regard their present position is the reverse of that of the daimants in the case of the General Armstrong, when they presented their petition to Congress for relief. The only act by which it was attempted to show that they had consented to the submission of their claim to arbitration was the request of their agent to be permitted to present an argument in support of their claim to the arbitrator, and the request the Secretary of State denied. Under all the circumstances, I must decline to reopen the awards of the United States and Spanish Claims Commission in the cases now under consideration." Mr. Bayard, Sec. of State, to Mr. Rodriguez, March 31, 1886, 159 MS. For the decision of the Claims Commission in this case, see Moore, Int. As to the case of the General Armstrong, see Moore, Int. Arbitrations, II. "Motions to open or set aside international awards are not entertained unless made promptly, and upon proof of fraudulent concoetion or of strong after-discovered evidence." Mr. Bayard, Sec. of State, to Mr. Morris, May 12, 1886, 160 MS. Dom. The rule that the Department of State will not hear, after any considerable delay, applications to reopen cases adjudicated by it, applies even more strongly to final judgments rendered by international commissions on international claims, even apart from the special stipulations of treaties by which claims not submitted for the adjudication of such commissions may be barred. Mr. Rives, Assist. Sec. of State, to Mr. Shipman, Feb. 2, 1888, 167 MS. This letter related to the case of Danford Knowlton & Co. v. Spain, which "While the decision of the arbitrator has been noted with much regret, as a different decision was hoped for, yet this Government is bound by the usage in such cases to abide by the decision as made, inasmuch as it stipulated in the agreement for arbitration that any award made by the arbitrator should be final and conclusive. The award, therefore, must be deemed as a final disposition of the case.” Mr. Day, Assist. Sec. of State, to Mr. Oberlander, January 7, 1898, 224 For the award in the Oberlander-Messenger case, above referred to, see The claim of Pedro D. Buzzi against Spain, which was dismissed by the commission under the agreement of 1871, was, after the conclusion of the labors of the commission, presented to the Spanish Government, which declined to entertain it, on the ground that it had been definitely disposed of under Article VI. of the agreement, which provided: "The two Governments will accept the awards made in the several cases submitted to the said arbitration as final and conclusive and will give full effect to the same and as soon as possible." On May 15, 1896, Mr. Buzzi again brought his claim to the attention. of the Department of State. Mr. Olney, on the 15th of the following month, held that it must, in conformity with Article VI., be regarded as "finally adjudicated and disposed of." This conclusion was subsequently reaffirmed by Mr. Hay. Mr. Hay, Sec. of State, to Mr. Sparkman, June 6, 1899, 237 MS. Dom. For the action of the commission in Buzzi's case, see Moore, Int. Arbitra- A claim was made, before the mixed commission under the convention between the United States and Mexico, of July 4, 1868, by the Bishop of Monterey and the Archbishop of San Francisco against the Mexican Government for arrears of unpaid interest on what was known as the "Pious Fund," which represented the proceeds of donations made to Jesuit fathers in the Californias for the conversion of the heathen in those provinces. On the expulsion of the Jesuits from Mexico in 1768, the administration of the fund was undertaken by the Spanish Government. The Mexican Government, on establishing its independence, succeeded to the trust, and by a law of September 19, 1836, its management was confided to the Catholic bishop of the two Californias. This law was abrogated by a decree of President Santa Anna, of February 8, 1842, and the administration of the fund again devolved on the state. By a further decree of October 24, in the same year, Santa Anna directed the property belonging to the fund to be sold, but recognized an obligation on the part of the Government to pay interest on the capital thereafter. In 1845 the Mexican Congress restored to the bishop of the Californias the administration of the properties yet remaining unsold, but the interest on that part of the fund derived from property which had already been disposed of was not paid by the Mexican Government. It was for the amount of this interest that the claim was made before the commission. On November 11, 1875, the umpire, Sir Edward Thornton, awarded the claimants the sum of $904,070.91, which represented an aggregate of $43,080.99 for the term of twenty-one years. The Mexican agent before the commission presented a statement to be entered in the records to the effect that, although the award referred only to the accrued interest, the claim should be considered as "finally settled in toto," and that any claim in regard to either principal or interest should thereafter be forever inadmissible. This statement was communicated to Mr. Fish, as Secretary of State, who declined to acquiesce in it or to enter into any discussion of the subject. A claim was afterwards made for the payment to the Archbishop of San Francisco and the Bishop of Monterey of interest accruing after the award of Sir Edward Thornton. It was contended on the part of the Mexican Government that the proceedings under the commission barred the presentation of such a claim. The United States, on the other hand, took the ground that the award of Sir Edward Thornton, instead of barring the further claim, constituted in effect a res judicata, in the sense that it fixed Mexico's liability for the future payment of interest on the fund. This difference was referred, under a protocol concluded May 22, 1902, to a tribunal of arbitration selected from the permanent court at The Hague. This tribunal held that Mexico should pay the overdue installments, and should in future in perpetuity pay the interest due in each year, all in money having legal currency in Mexico. Moore, Int. Arbitrations, II. 1348-1352; For. Rel. 1902, Appendix (2) AWARD OUTSIDE LIMITS OF SUBMISSION NOT BINDING. $ 1082. Under the convention between the United States and Great Britain of September 29, 1827, the King of the Netherlands was chosen as arbitrator to determine the true divisional line between the northeastern part of the United States and the adjacent British possessions under the treaty of peace of 1782-83. The King of the Netherlands, in his award given at The Hague January 10, 1831, held that neither the line claimed by the United States nor that claimed by Great Britain so nearly answered the requirements of the treaty that a preference could be given to the one over the other; and abandoning, therefore, as impracticable, the attempt to draw the line described in the treaty, he recommended a line of convenience. When the award was delivered the agent of the United States entered a respectful protest against it as constituting a departure from the powers delegated to the arbitrator by the high contracting parties. The British Government also recognized the fact that the award was recommendatory rather than decisive, and, while signifying its readiness to acquiesce in the recommendation, authorized its minister at Washington privately to intimate that it would not consider the formal acceptance of the award by the two Governments as precluding modifications of the line by mutual exchange and concession. President Jackson was inclined to accept the award, and, it seems, afterwards regretted that he had not done so. But, as it was unsatisfactory both to Maine and to Massachusetts, he submitted the question of acceptance or rejection to the Senate, which, by a vote of 35 to 8, resolved that the award was not obligatory, and advised the President to open a new negotiation with Great Britain for the ascertainment of the line. The British Government promised to enter upon negotiations in a friendly spirit, and it was agreed that both sides should meanwhile refrain from exercising jurisdiction beyond the territories which they actually occupied. Moore, Int. Arbitrations, I. 137-138, citing S. Ex. Doc. 3, 22 Cong. 1 sess.; 22 Br. & For. State Papers, 772, 776, 783, 788, 795, 850, 871; Curtis, Life of Webster, II. 139. The boundary was settled by the Webster-Ashburton treaty of Aug. 9, 1842. (Webster's Works, V. 84; Benton's Thirty Years' View, II. 438.) By a protocol concluded May 24, 1884, the United States and Hayti agreed to submit to arbitration the claim of Antonio Pelletier, as a citizen of the United States and master of the bark William, growing out of the seizure of the vessel and the imprisonment of her master and crew at Fort Liberté, in Hayti, in 1861, on a charge of piracy and attempt at slave trading. The protocol required that the case should be decided "according to the rules of international law existing at the time of the transactions complained of." An award was rendered in favor of the claimant, but it appeared, by the proceedings in the arbitration, that the arbitrator, while declaring it to be "beyond doubt" that "had the bark been captured and brought into an American port, when she was seized at Fort Liberté, she would have been condemned by the United States courts as an intended slaver," took the ground (1) that, as a claim had been made, he was restricted to the decision of a pure question of law, and (2) that under the stipulation above quoted the sole question to be decided was whether the claimant had been guilty of piracy by law of nations, as distinguished from piracy by municipal statute, so that an award of damages must be made in case it should be found that piracy by law of nations was not committed. The Department of State, reporting against the enforcement of the award, held that the arbitrator had misconstrued his powers; that the submission of the case to arbitration implied, in the absence of anything to the contrary in the protocol, that the United States did not desire that its previous action on ex parte information should be regarded as a prejudgment of the merits of the claim, and that the arbitrator was not precluded, by the rules of international law as they existed in 1861, from inquiring whether the claimant was guilty of piracy by Haytian law, since it was then, as it had continued to be, a rule of international law that offences committed. within the territorial jurisdiction of a nation may be tried and punished there, according to the definitions and penalties of its municipal law. Report of Mr. Bayard, Sec. of State, to the President, Jan. 20, 1887, For. By Article V. of the modus vivendi between the United States and Great Britain of April 18, 1892, which was entered into for the purpose of suspending the taking of fur seals in certain waters of Bering Sea and limiting the killing on the Pribiloff Islands, during the arbitration under the treaty of February 29, 1892, it was provided, among other things, that "if the result of the arbitration shall be to deny the right of British sealers to take seals within the said waters, then compensation shall be made by Great Britain to the United States (for itself, its citizens and lessees) for this agreemnt to limit the island catch to 7,500 a season, upon the basis of the difference between this number and such larger catch as in the opinion of the arbitrators might have been taken without an undue diminution of the seal herds." The United States, in its case before the tribunal of arbitration, presented a claim for the damages which the Government and its lessee had sustained by reason of the limitation; but this claim was not presented as a claim which the lessee could maintain against the United States under the lease; and, in the argument for the United States, counsel declared, upon the strength of the proofs in the counter case of the United States, that that Government ** could not have allowed its lessees to have much, if any, exceeded the |