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convicted before the courts of the United States; all proclamations by the President; all exequaturs to foreign consular officers in the United States who are appointed by the heads of the governments which they represent; to warrants by the President to receive persons surrendered by foreign governments under extradition treaties; and to all miscellaneous commissions of civil officers appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, whose appointments are not now especially directed by law to be signed under a different seal.*

The recording of commissions, which the law required should be done by the Secretary of State after the affixing of the seal, has continued upon practically the same plan since 1789. The commission is written in the Department of State and sent to the President. Upon being returned with his signature, it is countersigned

*The Seal of the United States; How it was Developed and Adopted. Department of State, 1892.

by the Secretary of State and the seal affixed. It is then recorded and delivered to the person for whom it is intended. During the early days of the Department Vice and Deputy Consuls were given commissions signed by the President and bearing the seal of the United States; but this practice was soon abandoned, such appointments being made upon the certificate of the Secretary of State with the Department seal attached, and this system prevails at present. All appointments, however, of every grade have always been recorded, and the record books indexed.

Although the President's warrants for par doning criminals are still issued by the Secretary of State and bear the seal of the United States, the petitions and all other papers relating to the granting of the pardon are sent to the Attorney-General for his consideration. Up to 1850 they were, however, sent to the Secretary of State and passed upon by him, as well as by the Attorney-General, before they were sent to

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the President for his final decision. Since that year the Secretary of State has issued the pardons upon request of the Attorney-General, his duties being purely of an administrative character.*

The Secretary of State also causes the seal to be affixed to Presidential warrants of extradition, and this brings us to one of the most important of the Department's legal functions.

Extradition, "the act by which one nation delivers up an individual accused or convicted of an offense outside of its own territory to another nation which demands him,"+ is one of the functions committed to the Secretary of State, as the official charged with the duty of conducting foreign intercourse. In the earlier days of the Republic, this function was not infrequently discharged by the Governors of the individual

*At the time of writing this a movement has been made to relieve the Department of State of this unnecessary labor.

Moore on Extradition; Boston, 1891. The author is indebted to Mr. Moore for the account of the early practice in this matter.

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States, in some cases with the approval of the Federal Secretary of State, and in others without consulting him. Some of our States have even gone so far as to enact statutes, conferring on their Chief Executives the power to deliver fugitives from justice to foreign nations. But, with the development and clearer comprehension of the powers of the National Government, the States have ceased to deal with the subject, and it is now generally admitted to belong exclusively to the Government of the United States. In one case, however, the United States has by treaty agreed that applications for extradition may be made and granted by State and Territorial governments. This is the agreement in the Treaty with Mexico, which provides that, for offenses committed in the frontier States and Territories of the contracting parties, applications for surrender may be made by and to the local authorities. But this provision does not preclude the exercise of supreme control in the matter by the National Government of either

country in any case arising under this special and exceptional stipulation.

It has been the almost uniform opinion of our constitutional lawyers that extradition can lawfully be granted by the United States only in pursuance of a statute or a treaty; and, as the only Federal legislation on the subject is that which has been adopted to execute our treaties, the Government declines to extradite fugitives from justice in the absence of a conventional obligation.*

Under similar circumstances it refrains from demanding the surrender of fugitives by other governments. In rare cases, in the absence of a treaty, an appeal has been made to the good will of a foreign government to deliver up a notorious offender. But, as foreign governments are likely to demand a promise of reci

The only departure from this rule was in 1864, in the case of Arguelles, an officer in the Spanish army, who was delivered up to Spain on a charge of slave-dealing in Cuba. But the time and circumstances of this transaction, and the fact that Arguelles was seized and taken out of the country before there was opportunity to test the legality of his detention in the courts, have prevented the case from being considered as a precedent.