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and governor of Maine, in all American history, so we trust it will not itself become a precedent. We believe the agents of the people of Maine for legislative and executive purposes for the year 1856, will find that they are not sustained by the people in their attack upon the judiciary; and especially, that all future governors will be taught that they are not the State. Such a result will rebuke the act, but it will not undo it. We learn that the constitutionality of this removal will be tested before the full bench of the Supreme Court. We presume there can be no more doubt that the court must pass upon the constitutionality of this removal, than there is that they cannot pass upon its propriety, or review the motives that induced it. If Judge Davis is not removed in such manner and for such causes as the constitution authorizes, the act is void ab initio, and not voidable, and the court must so treat it, and their decision must be conclusive. The question is in no sense a political, but solely a judical question, under our system. In every other country in Christendom, and in all ages heretofore, such a removal would be a sovereign political act, not to be inquired into by any department of the government. Under the written constitutions of the American model, it is the act of specific agents, appointed by the sovereign, with limited powers, for specific purposes, and is void unless warranted by the terms of the trust; and the sovereign has established a tribunal to determine whether it is so warranted. If the legislature should abolish the Supreme Court, or the governor should remove a judge and commission a successor without address or impeachment, it cannot be doubted that the validity of the new commission could be determined by the judicial department, and must be. So, if a removal be for causes not warranted by the constitution, or without any causes assigned, or without notice, or without opportunity to be heard in defence within the meaning of theconstitution, the action is void, and must be so pronounced.

The public will be deeply interested, more deeply than it now fully knows, in the decision of this question by the Supreme Court of Maine. This question presents to that tribunal an issue, which they may find a way, if they are so disposed, timidly, disengenuously, and as unfaithful stewards of the public trust, to avoid. But it presents an issue which as jurists and scholars, as citizens of America, and of the State whose constitution is committed to their guard, as men who know that on the maintenance of constitutional government is staked the freedom, and security,

and earthly happiness of every human being, now or hereafter in our land, they should be proud and happy to meet. They should meet it, and we doubt not they will, not as defending the judiciary as an order, nor as maintaining any right of Woodbury Davis, or of their own, however dear that right may be to them or to him; but as charged by the people with the duty of making sure to every man in Maine, who has a claim to try against a majority, a party, a governor, or a legislature, the right to look his judge in the face, and know that he is not the agent or the servant of the other party to the controversy. Never to our recollection, since the grand American principle of constitutional authority over legislatures and executive magistrates sprang into being, has the judiciary of a State been charged with a more momentous duty.

AMERICANS IN TURKEY.

OPINION OF THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES.

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SIR-In my communication of the 19th ult., on the subject of the judicial authority of the diplomatic and consular agents of the United States in Turkey and China, allusion is made to the fact that the act of Congress of August 11, 1848, which regulates this matter, provides in terms for the exercise of such authority by ministers and consuls in Turkey, only "so far as regards the punishment of crime," leaving the question of civil jurisdiction to stand upon treaties or the peculiar public law of the Levant.

The important distinction thus made as between China. and Turkey may have arisen from some doubt as to the force and effect of the provisions on this point, contained in the treaty between the United States and the Ottoman Porte.

I confess the language of the treaty is inexplicit, and apparently somewhat equivocal. The words of the main article are these:

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"If litigations and disputes arise between the subjects of the Sublime Porte and citizens of the United States, the parties shall not be heard, nor shall judgment be pro

nounced, unless the American dragoman be present. Causes in which the sum may exceed five hundred piastres, shall be submitted to the Sublime Porte, to be decided according to the laws of equity and justice. Citizens of the United States of America, quietly pursuing their commerce, and not being charged or convicted of any crime or offence, shall not be molested; and even when they may have committed some offence, they shall not be arrested or put in prison by the local authorities, but they shall be tried by their minister or consul, and punished according to their offence, following, in this respect, the usage observed towards other Franks." (Art. IV.)

In another article, it is stipulated that "American merchants established in the well-defended states of the Sublime Porte for purposes of commerce shall not be disturbed in their affairs, nor shall they be treated in any way contrary to established usages." (Art. II.)

Finally, the treaty further stipulates that the United States may appoint consuls "at the commercial places in the dominions of the Sublime Porte, where it shall be found needful to superintend the affairs of commerce," which consuls "shall enjoy suitable distinction, and shall have necessary aid and protection." (Art. II.)

Now, upon the superficies of these articles, and of all the rest of the treaty, citizens of the United States are entitled to residence in Turkey and to exemption from molestation there, only in pursuits of " commerce," and consuls are but officers "to superintend the affairs of commerce."

It is true that Americans in Turkey, committing crime, are to be tried by their minister or consul, "following, in this respect, the usage observed towards other Franks;" and the American" dragoman" (not the minister or consul,) is to be present at the trial of any litigation or dispute between the subjects of the Porte and citizens of the United States.

But how is it in the case of a "dispute" between two citizens of the United States in Turkey, or a citizen of the United States and a subject of Austria, France, or Great Britain? As to these important questions, the treaty is either silent or obscure.

What are the "causes in which the sum (demanded) exceeds five hundred piastres," and "which are to be submitted to the Sublime Porte to be decided according to the laws of equity and justice?" Are these causes between citizens of the United States, or between citizens of the

United States and other Franks, or causes of the class described in the preceding sentence, that is, between Americans and the subjects of the Porte? All that, in the language of the treaty, is matter of construction, with much margin for controversy.

I express the opinion, in the communication to which the present is supplementary, that "commerce" in the treaty means any subject or object of residence or intercourse whatever; that as to all civil affairs to which no subject of Turkey is a party, Americans are wholly exempt from the local jurisdiction, and that in civil matters as well as criminal, Americans in Turkey are entitled to the benefit of the usage observed towards other Franks."

I think the "causes" spoken of in the second sentence of the fourth article are of the same nature as to parties as those, the "litigations and disputes" mentioned in the first sentence, that is, between citizens of the United States and subjects of the Porte: the meaning of which is, that causes between such parties under five hundred piastres in amount are to be decided by the ordinary local magistrates assisted by the dragoman, and causes above that amount by the Porte itself, that is, the Sultan or his appropriate minister, with intervention of the minister or consul of the United States.

My conclusions in this respect are founded, first, on the phrase in the second article, which engages that citizens of the United States in Turkey, shall not be "treated, in any way contrary to established usages." What are the "established usages?" Undoubtedly, the absolute exemption of all Franks, in controversies among themselves, from the local jurisdiction of the Porte.

I will not repeat here what has been said in previous communications as to the ground or principle of the right of exterritoriality asserted by, and fully conceded to, Franks generally, that is, Western Christians, in Turkey. But it may be useful to show by some few authorities the full extent of the fact.

In truth, as already intimated, there is a completely distinctive code of public law, for the Levant, including Barbary, that is, for all the Mohammedan countries of the Mediterranean.

For ample understanding of this, we may take the condition of the consuls and subjects of France in the Levant as an example.

In the first place, the French consuls enjoy diplomatic

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privileges, as well in the matter of personal security as of intercourse with the government. (Moreuil, Agents Consulaires, tit. ii. ch. i.)

Secondly. French subjects in the Levant constitute a nation there, justiciable, in matters civil as well as criminal, by the minister and consuls, and according to the laws of France. (De Clercq, Guide des Consulats, liv. vii. ch. 1, p. 4.)

Such, in substance, is the condition of British subjects in the Levant. (Phillimore, Inter. Law, vol. ii. p. 271.)

So it is, indeed, with subjects of the other independent powers of Christian Europe. (Wheaton's Elements, by Lawrence, p. 166.)

On the general doctrine thus in force in the Levant, of the exterritoriality of foreign Christians, has been founded a complete system of peculiar municipal and legal administration, consisting of

1. Turkish tribunals for questions between subjects of the Porte and foreign Christians.

2. Consular courts for the business of each nation of foreign Christians.

3. Trial of questions between foreign Christians of different nations in the consular court of the defendant's nation.

4. Mixed tribunals of Turkish magistrates and foreign Christians at length substituted, by common consent, in part for cases between Turks and foreign Christians.

5. Finally, for cases between foreign Christians, the substitution at length of mixed tribunals in place of the separate consular courts, this arrangement, introduced at first by the legations of Austria, Great Britain, France, and Russia, and then tacitly acceded to by the legations of other foreign Christians.

Such is the outline of the European system in Turkey, as explained by M.M. de Clercq and de Vallat, the latest and fullest authority in this department of public law. (Guide pratique des Consulats, liv. viii., ch. ii. sect. i.)

I conceive that, notwithstanding the apparent silence of the fourth article upon the whole subject of the civil affairs of Americans, and the seeming reference of their crimes alone to "the usage observed towards other Franks," yet the engagement in the second article secures to Americans in Turkey, and consequently to the consuls of the United States, the same rights and privileges which are enjoyed by those of Austria, Great Britain, France, or Russia.

This opinion derives confirmation from the tenor of all

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