sacred than that this intercourse cannot subsist on any
other footing than that of the direct permission of the
state. Who can be insensible to the consequences that might
follow, if every person in time of war had a right to carry
on a commercial intercourse with the enemy; and under colour
of that, had the means of carrying on any other species of
intercourse he might think fit? The inconvenience to the
public might be extreme; and where is the inconvenience on
the other side, that the merchants should be compelled, in
such a situation of the two countries, to carry on his trade
between them, (if necessary,) under the eye and control of
the Government charged with the care of public safety?"

[Sidenote: Alien Enemy cannot sue in this country.]

Sir William then goes on to say,

"another principle of law, of a less politic nature, but
equally general in its reception and direct in its
application, forbids this sort of communication as
fundamentally inconsistent with the relation at the time
existing between the two countries, and that is the total
inability to sustain any contract by an appeal to the
tribunals of the one country, on the part of the subjects of
the other. In the law of almost every country, the character
of an Alien Enemy carries with it a disability to sue, or to
sustain, in the language of the civilians, a _persona standi
in judicio_. The peculiar law of our own country applies
this principle with great rigour--the same principle is
received in our Courts of the Law of nations; they are so
far _British_ courts, that no man can sue therein who is a
subject of the Enemy, unless under particular circumstances
that _pro hac vice_ discharge him from the character of an
Enemy, such as his coming under a flag of truce, a cartel,
or a pass, or some other act of public authority that puts
him in the Queen's peace _pro hac vice_. But otherwise he is
totally _Ex lex_! Even in the case of ransom bills which
were contracts, but contracts arising out of _the laws of
war_, and tolerated as such, the Enemy was not permitted to
sue _in his own person_, for the payment of the ransom bill;
the payment was enforced by an action brought by the
imprisoned hostage in the courts of his own country, for the
recovery of his freedom. A sta