A Treatise Upon the Law of Extradition Author:Edward Clarke Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: of the prisoner should be reserved for the Government to refuse to deliver up a person so accused. This exactly corresponds with the opinion expressed in the... more » first edition of this work, which is quoted in the Appendix to the present edition. It will be observed that, in considering how far a state was entitled, or should bind itself, to deliver up its own subjects for trial in a foreign country whose laws they were accused of having broken, the Commission made no reference to the question of the right of a state to imprison for offences against a foreign law, and to surrender for trial in a foreign state, persons not subjects of that state, but of a third state. This, however, is not an unimportant question, and it has become the more interesting from a decision lately given in our Courts. Before examining that decision it may be well to examine the principle upon which all extradition rests. That principle is, that a state, against whose laws a person subject to their obligation has committed an offence, is entitled to ask, as a matter of international courtesy, that the authorities of the place in which he has taken refuge shall assist in his being brought to justice, by surrendering him to the Executive of the country whose tribunals are entitled to punish the offence committed. If he be a subject of the power claiming his surrender, there is no difficulty. If he be a subject of the power upon which the request for his extradition is made, that power may or may not surrender him. It is quite entitled to take either course, but the comity of nations founded upon the general interests of mankind would appear to require that his surrender should only be refused where sufficient opportunity exists of punishing him at the place where he has taken refuge. It must be admitte...« less