A Treatise on Extradition. and Interstate Rendition. By John Bassett
Moore. 2 vols. (United States Book Company, Stevens and Sons, Boston.) —This is an exhaustive treatise on an im- portant and difficult subject. In his first volume, Mr. Moore discusses the law of extradition as it stands between different nations ; in the second, he deals with it as it regulates the action of the States that constitute the Union. With the latter we are not concerned, though it is not without a possible interest, as indicating a set of difficulties which would be sure to arise if the Home-rule faction should get its way. It is quite possible that Ireland might become an asylum for offenders against English law. The importance of the precedents and practice of extradi- tion as given, in the first volume, is very great. In the Civil War, acts on the part of alleged Confederate agents that looked very like piracy, were held by British and Canadian Courts to be outside the operation of the law of extradition. If a man held a commission from the Confederate authorities, he was, it would seem, free to murder and rob as much as he pleased. Acts that could not possibly further the military interests of the Confederacy, as, for instance, raiding a little town and robbing the banks, were held to be acts of belligerency. On the other hand, we find the officials of the States advancing what looks like a very strange doctrine indeed in answer to an applica- tion from the Mexican Government for the surrender of some alleged criminals. The words of the Acting Secretary of State are these (under date September 22nd, 1880) :—" The fact, too, that they are charged with being revolutionists shows that, what- ever may have been their other crimes, they may also have been guilty of a political offence, for which the treaty stipulates that no extradition shall be granted." This reads as if a criminal had only to commit a so-called political offence, in addition to other misdeeds, to secure asylum. A set of Irish " patriots," for instance, might rob the Bank of England with impunity, if they also blew up one of the public offices in Whitehall.
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