[were at one time distinguished, expressed itself in the competing claims of different States to employ diplomatic agents of different degrees of importance and dignity. It was understood that "ambassadors" proper, including the Pope's legates and nuncios,* could only be despatched by the limited class of monarchical and republican States which were held to be entitled to "royal honours." Such ambassadors were held to represent the very personality of the State on behalf of which they were sent, and they were entitled to no less ceremonious treatment than would be accorded to the executive authority of that State. Other diplomatic agents, as "envoys," ordinary and extraordinary, and "ministers plenipotentiary," represented their sovereign in his affairs preeminently, and in his person subordinately. Their capacity would seem to have been practically as ample as that of the former class, but their dignity inferior. A third class of diplomatic agents, that of chargés d'affaires, were held to be accredited to the minister, and not to the sovereign, of the foreign State; and to represent a minister, and not the sovereign, of their

own.

The exigencies of the incessant intercourse between modern states gradually introduced a class of diplomatic agents intermediate in function and dignity between the second and third of these classes, that is, a class of resident ministers exempt from the traditional and ceremonious usages appropriate to ambassadors and envoys, transacting their business through the ministers of their own and the foreign government, and yet, in some way, representing the person and dignity of their own sovereign. The Treaty of Vienna, in 1815, between Great Britain, Austria, France, Prussia, Portugal,

[* Nuncios represent the Pope in the conduct of his affairs of all sorts; legates, who are cardinals, exercise in the Pope's name in Roman Catholic countries the spiritual functions which depend upon his recognition as head of the Church.

[Spain, Sweden and Russia, was accompanied by a protocol, having for its purpose "to prevent the embarrassments which had often occurred and might yet arise from the claims to precedence between different diplomatic agents." By this protocol, diplomatic agents were formally divided into the three classes first enumerated above, that is, into those of (1) "ambassadors, legates, or nuncios;" (2) " envoys, ministers, or others accredited to sovereigns;" (3) "chargés d'affaires accredited to ministers charged with foreign affairs." By a protocol of the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818, to which Austria, Great Britain, France, Prussia, and Russia were parties, the intermediate class of agents, that of "resident ministers" noticed above, was formally recognised and inserted between the second and third classes of the protocol of the Treaty of Vienna. This last mentioned protocol also contained articles of the greatest value for the purpose of finally getting rid of the frivolous controversies for precedence among diplomatic agents which had often been fraught with the most serious consequences. The 4th article of the protocol of the Treaty of Vienna declared that "diplomatic employés should take rank among themselves in each class according to the date of the official notification of their arrival." By the 5th article, in each State "an uniform mode was to be determined upon for the reception of the diplomatic employés of each class." By the 6th article, “the ties of relationship or of family alliance between courts were to give no rank to their diplomatic employés, and the same was to be true of political ties." Lastly, by the 7th article "in these acts or treaties. between the several powers which admit of the alternat" (that is, of varying the order of signature on some fixed principle)," the lot should decide between the ministers as to the order to be followed in signatures."

It is to be noticed that members of all the four classes equally enjoy the immunities and privileges incident to the right of embassage as described lower down.

These

[An ambassador (using the term in the generic and not the specific and technical sense) is furnished, on entering upon his mission, with two documents, which were, however, formerly combined into one. are, the "Letters of Credence" and the "Full Power." The former is in the shape of a written communication from the sovereign of the sending State or his minister for foreign affairs, addressed to the sovereign of the receiving State or to his minister, as the case may be. The purpose of the letters is to identify the minister, and formally to guarantee him as a proper and responsible agent. The delivery of these letters to the sovereign was at one time an occasion of much ostentatious display. It now usually takes place in private, a copy of the letters having first been lodged with the minister for foreign affairs. Agents of the first class, that is, ambassadors proper, legates and nuncios, are still said to be able to claim a public audience.

The latter document, named "the Full Power," is in the shape of letters patent, advertising to all whom it may concern that the minister named in them is authorized to represent his sovereign in the way and to the extent therein described.

Nevertheless, it is obvious from the nature of the case, that the instructions contained in a document. visible to all the world can never be an exact measure and adequate test of the real authority which is intended to be imparted by a sovereign to his agent. What are called "secret instructions," either express or implied, and either conveyed at the commencement of the mission or given or varied afterwards, must always accompany the "full power." These instructions are necessarily somewhat divergent from those implied in the full power, if only because they give increased precision to the circumstances under which the authority conveyed by the full power is alone to be exercised; and it is quite possible that, in some respects, the secret instructions may practically contradict the

[instructions implied in the full power. Thus a practical question of the utmost importance is presented as to the legal liability of a sovereign to ratify the acts of his diplomatic agent in cases where the agent has conformed to the instructions implied in the full power, but has not conformed to his secret instructions, supposing the different sorts of instructions to be at variance from one another. If the analogy of national law were applicable, no sort of secret instruction could qualify the liability of the principal towards others as measured by the overt engagement contained in the full power. But this is a signal illustration of the imperfection of the analogies so frequently drawn, and so rashly insisted on, between the rules of the Law of Nations and those of national law. A sovereign of a State is at the most a transient representative of the State itself, and his ambassador can, at the most, only bind him and not the State itself. Thus the better opinion at the present day is that there is no engagement made by a diplomatic agent, however wide the terms of his full power, from which his sovereign may not, if he conceives the necessity urgent enough, retreat. A good ground for taking such a (confessedly) extreme course would undoubtedly be that the agent had disobeyed his secret instructions. The refusal, however, to ratify an engagement made in exact compliance with a full power must be treated as a purely exceptional course, and one only to be justified by special considerations. In itself, it tends to bring into discredit the general character of diplomatic agents, and, to this extent, to impede the ready intercourse between States.*

There is no part of the law relating to diplomatic agents which is more certain in some parts of it and

[* The leading authorities are referred to and cited in Wheaton's International Law, Part III. chap. v. See especially Bynkershoek, Lib. II. c. 7.]

[more uncertain in other parts than that which defines the character and amount of the immunity of such agents from the criminal and civil jurisdiction of the courts of the territory in which they are residing. It has been attempted to simplify the statement of the doctrines applicable to the subject by resorting to the fiction of "exterritoriality," whether as imputed to the person of the ambassador, to his residence, or to his property generally. This fiction proves, however, to be signally unserviceable in practice, as it just fails at the point at which a demand is made upon it, that is to say, when it is appealed to in order to solve a question of special and novel intricacy.

The general immunity of ambassadors, their families, and their suite, from the criminal and civil jurisdiction of the courts of the territory in which they reside, is said to be based, partly on considerations of courtesy, partly on impediments which a different practice might place in the way of a free discharge of his functions by an ambassador, and partly on the corrupt use which a State might otherwise, for political purposes, make of its judicial machinery.

Stated in its broadest form, it would seem that there is no process either of a criminal or civil court which can directly reach to the person or the property of an ambassador resident in the territory, or to his family or suite. Who are, for this purpose, to be comprehended in the ambassador's suite, beside the secretary of legation and the secretary of the embassy, has been a matter of much judicial controversy, and it is the practice now for the ambassador to anticipate the solution of such controversies by handing in to the minister for foreign affairs a list of all the members of the ambassador's household in respect of whom the privilege is claimed.

There are several leading cases (a brief epitome of which is contained in the 2nd volume of Phillimore's Commentaries on International Law, part vi., chap. VII.)