f: Sp. L. 26. 21.]

[Footnote g: Van Leeuwen _in Ff._ 50. 7. 17. Barbeyrac's Puff. l. 8.
c. 9. Sec. 9. & 17. Van Bynkershoek _de foro legator._ c. 17, 18, 19.]

[Footnote h: 1 Roll. Rep. 175. 3 Bulstr. 27.]

[Footnote i: 4 Inst. 153.]

[Footnote k: 1 Roll. Rep. 185.]

[Footnote l: Foster's reports. 188.]

[Footnote m: _Securitas legatorum utilitati quae ex poena est
praeponderat._ _de jur. b. & p._ 2. 18. 4. 4.]

IN respect to civil suits, all the foreign jurists agree, that neither
an embassador, nor any of his train or _comites_, can be prosecuted
for any debt or contract in the courts of that kingdom wherein he is
sent to reside. Yet sir Edward Coke maintains, that, if an embassador
make a contract which is good _jure gentium_, he shall answer for it
here[n]. And the truth is, we find no traces in our lawbooks of
allowing any privilege to embassadors or their domestics, even in
civil suits, previous to the reign of queen Anne; when an embassador
from Peter the great, czar of Muscovy, was actually arrested and taken
out of his coach in London, in 1708, for debts which he had there
contracted. This the czar resented very highly, and demanded (we are
told) that the officers who made the arrest should be punished with
death. But the queen (to the amazement of that despotic court)
directed her minister to inform him, "that the law of England had not
yet protected embassadors from the payment of their lawful debts; that
therefore the arrest was no offence by the laws; and that she could
inflict no punishment upon any, the meanest, of her subjects, unless
warranted by the law of the land[o]." To satisfy however the clamours
of the foreign ministers (who made it a common cause) as well as to
appease the wrath of Peter[p], a new statute was enacted by
parliament[q], reciting the arrest which had been made, "in contempt
of the protection granted by her majesty, contrary to the law of
nations, and in prejudice of the rights and privileges, which
embassadors and other public ministers have at all times been thereby
possessed of, and ought to be kept sacred and inviolable:" wherefore
it enacts, that for the future all process whereby the person of any
embassador, or of his domestic or domestic servant, may be arrested,
or his goods distreined or seised, shall be utterly null and void; and
the persons prosecuting, soliciting, or executing such process shall
be deemed violaters of the law of nations, and disturbers of the