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immediate safety of the state, not even the privilege of personal security will protect him from any degree of force which may be necessary to defeat his intentions: thus, if he engages in a conspiracy against the government, he may, if the circumstances require it, be put under arrest, in order to be sent home, and if he is found in arms joining in a rebellion, he may be treated as an enemy. The same principle also extends to civil suits, and no claim can be enforced against an ambassador by any compulsory process.

These privileges are not confined to the ambassador alone, but are extended to all his suite-his companions, as they are sometimes called,—including not only the persons employed by him in diplomatic services, but his wife, chaplain, and household. The law of nations in this respect is fully recognised by the law of England. By the statute of 7 Anne, c. 12, all legal process against the person or goods of an ambassador, or of his domestic, or domestic servants, is declared to be void. The benefit of this Act may be claimed by any one who is actually in the domestic service of the ambassador, whether he is a British subject or a foreigner, provided he is not a merchant or trader within the bankrupt law; and it is not necessary that he should be resident in the ambassador's house. But if he takes a house, and uses it for any other purpose besides that of residenceas if he lets part of it in lodgings, he so far loses his privilege, and his goods are liable to be distrained for parochial rates. Whoever sues out or executes any process contrary to the provisions of the act, is punishable at the discretion of the lord chancellor and the two chief justices, or any two of them, as a violator of the law of nations, and disturber of the public repose ;-with this exception, however, that no one can be punished for arresting an ambassador's servant, unless the name of such servant be registered with the secretary of state, and by him transmitted to the sheriffs of London and Middlesex.

The third important privilege of an ambassador is, that his residence enjoys a security similar to that of his person

and property: it is not only protected from open outrage, but it is likewise exempted from being searched or visited, whether by the police, by revenue officers, or under colour of legal process of any description whatever.

This privilege has sometimes been construed to extend so far, as to make the ambassador's residence an asylum to which any offender might flee and be out of the reach of the law; but the government may, in such a case, demand that the offender be given up, and if he is an offender against the state, in case of a refusal on the part of the ambassador, and if the circumstances require it, he may be taken by force.

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This privilege of asylum, as it is called, was formerly granted in some cities to the whole quarter in which the ambassador resided; such was the case Madrid, till in the year 1684 it was confined to the residence itself. Such also was the case at Rome to a much later date; and even at the present day some vestiges of this immunity still remain, but since 1815 it has been confined to cases of correctional police.

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There are some other privileges which, though not essential to the character of ambassadors, are yet very generally admitted. Ambassadors are, for instance, in all civilized countries allowed the free exercise of their religion; they are in general exempted from direct taxation and they are usually allowed to import their goods without paying any customhouse duties: this last privilege, however, being extremely liable to abuse, has sometimes been limited. At Madrid since the year 1814, and at St. Petersburg since 1817, ambassadors are allowed six months to import their goods free of customs, and after that time their exemption ceases. At Berlin they are only allowed to import goods until the duties payable amount to a certain sum.

If any violence has been offered to an ambassador, or any of his privileges have been infringed, although he may himself, if he chooses, prosecute the offender, it is more usual for him to demand satisfaction of the government, and it is their duty to bring the offender to punish. ment.

The title of ambassador, in the more limited sense of the word, as it is used at present, is confined to diplomatic ministers of the highest order. Ambassadors, in this sense of the word, hold an office of very exalted rank; their credentials are addressed immediately from their own sovereign to the sovereign to whom they are sent; with whom they thereby are entitled to treat personally, without the intervention of his ministers, in the same manner as their master would if he were present. This is a power, however, which, at least in free states, where the ministers alone are responsible for the acts of the government, exists rather in name than in reality. The ambassadors, properly so called, are deemed to represent not only the interests, but likewise the person and dignity of their master or of their state; but this representative character, as it is called, amounts in reality to little more than the enjoyment of certain marks of distinction; the principal of which are, that an ambassador is always styled Your Excellence,' which was formerly the mode of addressing a sovereign prince; 2. That he takes precedence next after princes of the blood royal, &c.

Ambassadors are of two kinds:-1. Those who reside regularly at the court at which they are accredited, to perform the usual duties of their office; 2. Those who are sent on special occasions, either on missions of important business, as the negotiation of a treaty, or more frequently on some errand of state ceremony, such as to be present at a coronation or a marriage. The designation of Ambassador Extraordinary was originally appropriated to those of the second kind (such as belonged to the first being styled Ordinary Ambassadors); but the title of Extraordinary, being considered more exalted, is now usually bestowed even on those who are regularly resident. To the highest order of minister belong also the Legates and Nuncios of the Pope. [LEGATE; NUNCIO.]

The rank and pomp annexed to the office of ambassador being attended with considerable expense, and having frequently occasioned embarrassments and disputes, it was found expedient to employ

ministers under other denominations, who, though inferior in point of dignity, should be invested with equal powers. The chief difference by which all the lower orders of diplomatic agents are distinguished from ambassadors, properly so called, is, that they are the representatives not of the persoual dignity of their prince, but only of his affairs and interests, in the same manner as an ordinary agent is the representative of his principal. Diplomatic ministers of the second order receive their credentials (like ambassadors) immediately from their own sovereign. To this order belong envoys, ordinary and extraordinary, ministers plenipotentiary, the internuncios of the pope, and the Austrian minister at Constantinople, who is styled internuncio and minister plenipotentiary. The distinction of ministers into those of the first and those of the second order began to prevail towards the end of the fifteenth century, and is said to have been originally introduced by Louis XI. of France. [ENVOY.]

There is likewise a third order of diplomatic agents, which does not appear to have been recognised till towards the beginning of the eighteenth century. Those who belong to it are known by the title of Chargés d'Affaires (which is said to have been given by a prince, for the first time, to the Swedish minister at Constantinople, in 1748), Resident, or Minister. Their credentials are given them by the ministers of state in their own country, and are addressed to the ministers of the country they are sent to; except in the case of the diplomatic agents of the Hanseatic towns, whose credentials are addressed to the sovereign. In this order may also be included the ministers whom an ambassador or envoy, by virtue of an authority from his prince or state, ap points (usually under the title of Chargé d'Affaires) to conduct in his absence the affairs of his mission. ̧ [CHARGE' D'AFFAIRES.]

The great Powers at the Congress of Vienna, in 1815, divided diplomatic agents into four classes: 1. Ambassadors, legates, or nuncios. 2. Envoys, ministers, and other agents accredited to sovereigns. 3. Chargés d'Affaires, accredited to the department of foreign affairs.

Consuls are not in general reckoned | among diplomatic ministers; in some particular cases, however, where they have diplomatic duties to perform, they are accredited and treated as ministers. [CONSUL.]

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It was long a disputed question, whether the smaller powers should communicate by means of ministers of the highest order. According to the practice of the present day, it is only in the intercourse between the great powers that ambassadors or ministers are employed. The United States of North America are usually represented at the courts of the great powers of the first class by ministers plenipotentiary, and at those of inferior rank by chargés d'affairs; and they have never sent a person of the rank of ambassador in the diplomatic sense. (Note, Kent's Commentaries, p. 40, vol. i.) The courts to which the British government sends an ambassador are those of Paris, Vienna, St. Petersburg and the Porte: to the courts of Prussia, Spain, the Two Sicilies, Holland, Portugal, Sweden, Hanover, Brazil, and to the United States, we send an Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary;' to Sardinia, Denmark, Bavaria, Würtemberg, and Frankfort, an Envoy Extraordinary ;' to Saxony, Tuscany, the Swiss Cantons, Greece, Mexico, and Buenos Ayres, a Minister Plenipotentiary; to the states of New Grenada, Venezuela, Peru, Chili, and Texas, a Chargé d'Affaires.' The principal secretary of an ambassador is termed 'Secretary of Embassy,' and of envoys and ministers, Secretary of Legation. Attached to each embassy there are two paid Attachés,' but in the embassy to the Ottoman Porte, when an envoy and minister' only is employed, there is only one paid attaché. The salary of the ambassador to the court of St. Petersburg is 11,000l. a-year; that of the secretary is 10007.; and the two attachés receive 4007. and 300l. a-year respectively. The expenses of the other embassies are not quite so high. The salaries and pensions for diplomatic services are paid out of the consolidated fund, and are regulated by 2 & 3 Wm. IV. c. 116. When this act was passed, in 1832, the annual sum was fixed at 203,5107.; and it was provided that

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until the amount was reduced to 180,000l., his majesty should not grant a larger annual amount in diplomatic pensions than 20007.; and that when reduced, the whole annual expense of this branch of the public service should not exceed 180,000l. În 1843 the charge for services and allowances was 140,000l., and for pensions 39,982l. 12s. 6d.; making a total of 179,982l. 12s. 6d.

The rules relating to the ceremonial due to diplomatic ministers are laid down at great length by writers on the subject. The first thing to be done by a minister is to announce his arrival to the minister for foreign affairs. He is then entitled to an audience of the prince, either public or private. The right of demanding at all times, during his stay, a private audience, is the distinction and important privilege of an ambassador. Should his only chance of carrying a measure depend on his having a private audience of the prince to whom he is sent, it is evident that this might be thwarted by the prince's ministers, who would of right be present at the audience of any minister below the rank of ambassador. A minister plenipotentiary, as well as an ambassador, can claim a public audience. He there presents his credentials to the prince, and hands them over to the minister for foreign affairs. Ministers and envoys also present their credentials to the prince in person. After he has been presented to the prince, a minister visits all the diplomatic body. But a minister of the highest order pays his respects in person only to those of the same rank-with ministers of a lower order he merely leaves his card. When an ambassador arrives at a court, all the diplomatists there, who are not of his own rank, call on him first.

Disputes have frequently arisen among ministers of the same rank about precedence. The rules by which it has at various times been endeavoured to settle the respective rank of the representative of each state, being founded on no solid principle, and not sanctioned by general acquiescence, it is unnecessary to men

tion.

A rule which has long been partially adopted, may now be considered fully established: for at the Congress o.

Vienna, in 1815, it was agreed by the eight powers which signed the treaty of Paris, that ministers in each class shall take precedence among themselves, according to the date of their official announcement at court, and that the order of signature of ministers to acts or treaties between several powers, that allow of the alternate, should be determined by lot. If the reader is curious to know wherein this precedence chiefly consists,-in what manner ministers are required to arrange themselves when they are standing up; in what, when they sit round a table: what order it behoves them to observe when they are placed in a row; what, when they walk in a line: how their rank is marked when their numbers are even; how, when their numbers are odd-we must refer him to the Manuel Diplomatique of the Baron Charles De Martens, chap. vi. For further information on the subject of Ambassador, he may consult Wicquefort, De l'Ambassadeur; Les Causes celèbres du droit des Gens, by C. De Martens; and the writers on the law of nations, particularly Vattel and G. F. Martens; and likewise the Cours de droit public, par Pinheiro-Ferreira.

The functions of permanent Ambassadors, as above explained, appear to have originated in modern times. The ambassadors (rpéoßeis) sent by the Greek states, and those sent by the Romans (legati) or received by them, were limited to extraordinary occasions. Among the Romans, ambassadors were so often sent by foreign nations to them, and sent by the Romans to foreign states, that the law with respect to them (Jus Legationis; Livy, vi. 17) became in course of time well settled. Ambassadors to Rome were under the protection of the state, whether they came from a hostile or a friendly nation. Their reception and the length of their stay at Rome would of course depend on the nature of the relations between their state and Rome, and the objects of their mission. They were received by the Roman senate and transacted their business with that body. The senate appointed the ambassadors who were sent from Rome to foreign states. The expenses of such ambassadors were paid by the Roman state, but the ambassadors were also entitled to make

certain demands from the provincials in their progress through a Roman province This privilege gave rise in the later part of the republic to the practice of the Roman 'libera legatio,' which was the term ap plied to the permission obtained from the senate by a senator to leave Rome for distant parts on his own business. It was called 'libera,' free, apparently because the Senator had merely the title of Legatus without the duty; and it was called legatio' in respect of putting him on a like or similar footing with real legati as to the protection to his person and allowances to be claimed in the provinces. This privilege was often abused, both as to the length of time for which it was obtained and otherwise. A Lex Julia (of the Dictator Cæsar) limited the time to which these liberæ legationes' could be extended; but it is an incorrect inference from a passage of Cicero (Ad Attic. xv. 11) to conclude that the law fixed five years: the period which was fixed by the law is not stated. The libera legatio' is mentioned in the Pandect (50, tit. 7, s. 14), whence we may conclude that the practice continued to the time of Justinian, though probably in some modified form.

The word 'legatus' is a participle from the verb lego,' and signifies a person who is commissioned or empowered to do certain things.

AMENDMENT. [BILL IN PARLIA

MENT.]

A'MNESTY is a word derived from the Greek ȧuvnoría, amnestia, which, literally, signifies nothing more than nonremembrance. The word amnestia is not used by the earlier Greek writers; but the thing intended by it was expressed by the verbal form (un uno KакеTV). The word αμνηστία occurs in Plutarch and Herodian. Some critics suppose that Cicero (Philipp. i. 1) alludes to his having used the word; but he may have expressed the thing with out using the word amnestia. It occurs in the life of Aurelian by Vopiscus (c. 39), according to some editions in the Latin form, but it is possible that Vopiscus wrote the word in Greek characters, and it is doubtful whether the word was ever incorporated into the Latin lan

(e. 3), expresses the notion of an act of Amnesty by the words "lex oblivionis," and it is clear from a passage in Valerius Maximus (iv. 1), that the word was not adopted into the Latin language when Valerius wrote, whatever that time may

be.

guage. Nepos, in his life of Thrasybulus | amnesty, that it did not point out with sufficient perspicuity the individuals who were to be excepted from its operation. Instead of confining itself to naming the offenders, it excepted whole classes of offences, by which means a degree of uncertainty and confusion was occasioned, which much retarded the peaceable settlement of the nation. "In consequence of this course," says M. de Châteaubriand in a pamphlet published soon after the event, " punishment and fear have been permitted to hover over France; wounds have been kept open, passions exasperated, and recollections of enmity awakened." The act of indemnity, passed at the accession of Charles II., was not liable to this objection, by the distinctness of which, as Dr. Johnson said, "the flutter of innumerable bosoms was stilled," and a state of public feeling promoted, extremely favourable to the authority and quiet government of the restored prince.

The notion of an amnesty among the Greeks was a declaration of the person or persons who had newly acquired or recovered the sovereign power in a state, by which they pardoned all persons who composed, supported, or obeyed the government which had been just overthrown. A declaration of this kind may be either absolute and universal, or it may except certain persons specifically named, or certain classes of persons generally described. Thus, in Athens, when Thrasybulus had destroyed the oligarchy of the Thirty Tyrants, and had restored the democratical form of government, an exceptive amnesty of past political offences was declared, from the operation of which the Thirty themselves, and some few persons who had acted in the most invidious offices under them, were excluded. (Xenophon, Hellen. ii. 4, 38; Isocrates, Against Callimachus, c. 1.) So when Bonaparte returned from Elba in 1815, he published an amnesty, from which he excluded thirteen persons, whom he named in a decree published at Lyon. The act of indemnity, passed upon the restoration of Charles II., by which the persons actually concerned in the execution of his father were excluded from the benefit of the royal and parliamentary pardon, is an instance of an aninesty from which a class of persons were excepted by a general description and not by name. Of a like nature was the law passed by the French Chambers in January, 1816, upon the return of Louis XVIII. to the throne of France after the victory at Waterloo, which offered a complete amnesty to "all persons who had directly or indirectly taken part in the rebellion and usurpation of Napoleon Bonaparte," with the exception of certain persons, whose names had been previously mentioned in a royal ordinance as the most active partisans of the usurper. It was objected to this French law of

ΑΜΡΗΙΤΤΥ O NS ('Αμφικτύονες), members of a celebrated council in ancient Greece, called the Amphictyonic Council.

According to the popular story, this council was founded by Amphictyon, son of Deucalion, who lived, if he lived at all, many centuries before the Trojan war. It is supposed, by a writer quoted by Pausanias (x. 8), to derive its name, with a slight alteration, from a word signifying "settlers around a place." Strabo, who professes to know nothing of its founder, says that Acrisius, the mythological king of Argos, fixed its constitution and regulated its proceedings. Amidst the darkness which hangs over its origin, we discover with certainty that it was one of the earliest institutions in Greece. No full or clear account has been given of it during any period of its existence by those who had the means of informing us. The fullest information is supplied by Eschines the orator; but before any attempt is made, by the help of some short notices from other writers, and of conjecture, to trace its earlier history, it may not be amiss to state what is certainly known of this council as it existed in his time.

According to Eschines, the Greek nations which had a right to be represented

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