84 
 
DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
In our own political system we find the same careful process for reaching
the 
ends of justice. The treaty-making power determines what offences the nation

will lend its aid to punish, and into what hands it is willing to deliver
offenders 
for punishment.   The tenth article of the treaty of Washington, concluded

between the United States and Great Britain on this subject, shows, by the

catalogue of crimes it embraces, that we are willing to trust the enlightened

criminal jurisprudence of England in a wider class of offences than we would

remand to some other countries whose creeds are less conformed to the humane

spirit of the age. When the treaty-making power has ascertaied the extent
of 
the obligation of surrender, and assumed the corresponding duty, the legislative

power comes forward to provide for the fulfilment of that duty; and in so
doing 
Congress has thought proper to omit none of those safeguards which have been

found essential to protect the accused against baseless charges, and which,

necessary as they are in cases where the accused is to be tried in the jurisdiction

where he is found, are doubly and trebly necessary where the *barges are
put 
forward, not for trial here, but as the means of obtaining possession of
the ac- 
cused and carrying him abroad. 
It is not improbable that factitious accusations should be brought for the

mere purpose of procuring the arrest and surrender of a fugitive. Hence it
is 
that the careful provisions of the statute, regulating extradition in this
country, 
commit to the judiciary-versed as that department already is in all the pro-

ceedings preparatory to a trial-the duty of arresting the fugitive and of
ascer- 
taining whether in fact a crime has been committed, and whether there is
suf- 
ficient evidence to hold the accused for trial. When these questions have
been 
settled by the judiciary, and not till then, does the nation consent to deny
the 
right of asylum to the fugitive who has sought its protection and deliver
him 
into the hands of the alien prosecutor. 
It is needless to add that in the case of Arguelles the Executive has assumed

all the authority which by the Constitution is distributed among the treaty-

making power, the law-making power, and the judiciary. Without treaty, 
without law, and without judicial action, the Executive has assumed to do

what only all three combined could lawfully empower him to do. 
And in making this statement as a proposition of law, we indulge in no per-

sonal crimination of the President's motives. As he makes no legal defence
of 
his conduct, but bases that defence on his good intentions, we make all due

allowance for such good intentions while bringing his proceedings to the
bar of 
the law he has transcended. It is one of the inconveniences which attach
to 
such errors of judgment, and which illustrate their practical dangers, that
all 
punishments visited on criminals outside of the laws array a certain sympathy

in favor of the culprit, however guilty he may be. Colonel Arguelles may
be 
the criminal he is represented to be by the Cuban authorities, but as these

authorities are now seized of his person in a way not authorized by our laws,

the penalty he may be called to pay for his alleged crime is one which concerns

the honor of the nation in the eyes of the civilized world. It is to be hoped,

for the sake of our own credit on the score of humanity, that the proceedings
of 
Spanish jurisprudence in his case may be such as to show that only justice
has 
been done him in the forum to which we have remitted him, eVen if something

less than justice, as justice is understood in this country, has been done
him by 
our authorities in the circumstances under which they have delivered him
up 
for trial. The civilized world sits in judgment not only on the crimes of
men, 
but on the processes by which these crimes are redressed; and when justice
is 
inflicted against the received rules of justice, men never fail to resent
the wrong 
done to the latter, whatever may be their abhorrence at the wickedness of
the 
criminal. It was thus that all Europe thrilled with indignation and horror
at 
the conduct of the King of Saxony, when, in the early part of the 18th century,

he delivered up the person of the unhappy Patkul to the vengeance of his