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Levant

they continue strangers and sojourners as their fathers were--Doris amara suam non intermiscuit undam. Not acquiring any national character under the general sovereignty of the country, and not trading under any recognized authority of their own original country, they have been held to derive their present character from that of the association or factory under whose protection they live and carry on their trade '.' The first of the capitulations granted to England bears The date in the year 15792, and two years afterwards, in 1581, Company Queen Elizabeth established the Levant Company for the purpose of carrying on trade with the countries under the Ottoman Porte. In 1605 the company obtained a new charter from James I, and this charter, as confirmed by Charles II, recognized by various Acts of Parliament, and supplemented by usage, constituted the basis of the British consular jurisdiction in the East until the abolition of the Levant Company in 1825 3.

By the charter of King James, as confirmed by the charter of King Charles, the company was invested with exclusive privileges of trade in great part of the Levant and Mediterranean seas, and with a general power of making by-laws and appointing consuls with judicial functions in all the regions so designated.

The charter of King James was altogether in the nature of a prerogative grant from home, and was not founded on

1 The Indian Chief, (1800) 3 Robinson, Adm. Rep. p. 28. See also the remarks of Dr. Lushington in the case of the Laconia, (1863) 2 Moo. P. C., N. S., p. 183.

2 The capitulations with England now in force were confirmed by the Treaty of the Dardanelles in 1809, and are to be found in Hertslet's Treaties, ii. 346, and in Aitchison's Treaties, third edition, vol. xi. Appendix I.

3 The statements in the following paragraphs, as to the jurisdiction exercised by the officers of the Levant Company, are derived partly from a memorandum written for the Foreign Office by the late Mr. Hope Scott (then Mr. J. R. Hope), by whom the Foreign Jurisdiction Act, 1843, was drawn. [This memorandum, which at the date of the first edition of this book had not been published, is now printed as Appendix VI to Sir Henry Jenkyns' British Rule and Jurisdiction beyond the Seas.] See also the case of The Laconia; Papayanni v. The Russian Steam Navigation Company, 2 Moo. P. C., N. S., 161. As to the history of the Levant Company, see Mr. Bent's Introduction to Early Voyages and Travels in the Levant, noticed above, and the article on 'Chartered Companies' in the Encyclopaedia of the Laws of England.

Dissolution of Levant

Company.

any recital of concessions made by the various sovereigns in whose dominions it was to take effect. It did not expressly refer to any such concessions as the basis of a power to withdraw British subjects from the foreign tribunals, and such a power was apparently assumed even in cases in which those tribunals might, according to the local law, supply the legitimate forum. The charter merely provided that there should be no infraction of treaties.

The main strength of the coercive jurisdiction given by the charter appears, in Turkey at least, to have depended, on the one hand, upon the corporate character of the company and the power which it thus had over its own members, and, on the other hand, upon its exclusive privileges of trade which enabled it to prevent the influx of disorderly merchants and seamen.

The charter did not contemplate the exercise of any criminal jurisdiction properly so called, nor any of a civil character in mixed suits. These branches of the consular jurisdiction in the East are probably of gradual acquisition, and perhaps were not claimed at the time when King James and King Charles granted their charters.

1

The jurisdiction conceded by the Sublime Porte was exercised mainly by officers called consuls 2, who were appointed by the Levant Company, and whose procedure was regulated by by-laws of the Company made under powers very like those granted to the East India Company.

The Levant Company, with its exclusive privileges of trading and its indefinite legislative and judicial powers, closely resembled the East India Company; and the legal

1 The jurisdiction was exercised also by the ambassador, who was appointed by the Crown, but was until 1803 nominated and paid by the Levant Company. He continued to be chief judge of the consular court down to 1857.

2 Of course the use of the word 'consul' is of much older date; see Murray's Dictionary, and Du Cange, s. v., and the Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Consular Establishments, 1835. As to the French consuls in the Levant during and before the seventeenth century, see Masson, Hist. du Commerce Français dans le Levant, p. xiv.

difficulties which arose when the East India Company extended the exercise of its legislative powers beyond the staff of its factories illustrate the technical difficulties which arose or might have arisen under the jurisdiction exercised by the consular officers of the Levant Company. But, as the East India Company grew, the Levant Company dwindled, and in 1825 it was formally dissolved. The Act which provided for its dissolution (6 Geo. IV, c. 33) enacted that thereafter all such rights and duties of jurisdiction and authority over His Majesty's subjects resorting to the ports of the Levant for the purposes of trade or otherwise as were lawfully exercised or performed, or which the various charters or Acts, or any of them, authorized to be exercised and performed, by any consuls or other officers appointed by the company, or which such consuls or other officers lawfully exercised and performed under and by virtue of any power or authority whatever, should be vested in and exercised and performed by such consuls and other officers as His Majesty might be pleased to appoint for the protection of the trade of His Majesty's subjects in the ports and places mentioned in the charters and Acts.

tion of

The intention of the Act, doubtless, was to transfer to the Difficulties arisconsular officers appointed by the Crown all the powers ing from formerly vested in the consular officers appointed by the dissoluLevant Company. But it soon appeared that the dissolution Levant Company. of the company materially increased the difficulty of the task imposed on the consuls. The authority which had previously supported them was gone, and the prescriptive respect which might formerly have attached to the powers conferred by the charter was disturbed by the necessity which had now arisen of testing those powers by the recognized principles of the English constitution.

In 1826 the law officers of the Crown threw doubts on the legality of the general powers of fine and imprisonment, and of the power which had previously been held to be vested in the consuls of sending back British subjects in certain

cases to this country, and thus the coercive character of the jurisdiction was greatly shaken.

Moreover, the Act of George IV had made no provision in lieu of the company's power of framing by-laws, and no method had been devised for meeting the difficulties arising out of a strict adherence to English jurisprudence and out of deviations from it by the consular tribunals.

And, lastly, the criminal and international jurisdiction had gradually assumed a form which the new state of affairs rendered in the highest degree important, but the exercise of which transcended such authority as the company's consuls might previously have claimed.

In 1836, eleven years after the dissolution of the Levant Company, an Act (6 & 7 Will. IV, c. 78) was passed to meet these difficulties. It recited that by the treaties and capitulations subsisting between His Majesty and the Sublime Porte full and entire jurisdiction and control over British subjects within the Ottoman dominions in matters in which such British subjects are exclusively concerned was given to the British ambassadors and consuls appointed to reside within the said dominions, and that it was expedient for the protection of British subjects within the dominions of the Sublime Porte in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and likewise in the States of Barbary, as well as for the protection of His Majesty's ambassadors, consuls, or other officers appointed or to be appointed by His Majesty for the protection of the trade of His Majesty's subjects in the said ports and places, that provision should be made for defining and establishing the authority of the said ambassadors, consuls, or other officers. And it went on to enact that His Majesty might by Orders in Council issue directions to His Majesty's consuls and other officers touching their rights and duties in the protection of his subjects residing in or resorting to the ports and places mentioned, and also directions for their guidance in the settlement of differences between subjects of His Majesty and subjects of any other Christian Power in the dominions of the Sublime Porte.

The Act of 1836 was a complete failure, and remained a dead letter. Its language and machinery were in many respects defective and open to objection.

Act of

British extra-territorial jurisdiction in the Levant was Failure of derived from two main sources: the authority of the Sublime 1836; its Porte and the authority of the Crown of England. The causes. charters of James and Charles ignored one of these sources, and used language which seemed to treat the jurisdiction exercised by the consular officers of the Levant Company as resting exclusively on the prerogative of the Crown. The language of the Act of 1825 was sufficiently general to include, and was perhaps intended to include, authority derived from the Porte and from the consent of other European Powers, but the Act makes no specific reference to either of these sources. The Act of 1836 erred in the opposite direction. Its language was so framed as to countenance the theory, always disavowed by the English Government, that British ambassadors and consuls were in respect of their jurisdiction delegates of the Porte, instead of being officers of the Crown exercising powers conceded to the Crown by the Porte.

Again, the preamble, by referring specifically to the capitulations, and to cases in which British subjects were exclusively concerned, tended to discredit those important parts of the jurisdiction which had arisen from usage or which related to cases affecting foreign subjects under the protection of Great Britain.

Usage had played an important part in the development of British jurisdiction in the Levant. At the outset that jurisdiction, as has been seen, did not include criminal jurisdiction, properly so called, nor civil jurisdiction in suits of a mixed character. But by 1836 the subject-matter of this jurisdiction appears 1 to have included, either generally and constantly or in some places and occasionally

(1) Crimes and offences of whatever kind committed by British subjects;

(2) Civil proceedings where all parties were British subjects; According to Mr. Hope Scott.

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