and France. The money was then paid by the debtor into the French Treasury. After the peace the Fleming again demanded his debt: the Frenchman defended himself by alleging the payment to the Royal Treasury. The Fleming replied that the payment had been fraudulently delayed. until the breaking out of the war: he was cast in his suit (r); but nevertheless the Frenchman was condemned to pay back so much of the thousand crowns as he should be proved to have expended for his own benefit.

The decision is remarkable, as showing that, even under the circumstance of the debt having been paid to the Sovereign of the debtor, the Court of the same Sovereign considered that the debtor was only relieved to the extent of the sum actually paid. The fraudulent mora of the debt ought certainly to have been, though it does not appear to have been, the subject of judicial investigation (s).

Cocceius (t), it should be observed, has mistaken the date of this affair, placing it in the year 1554 instead of 1349.

DLXVI. Towards the close of the fifteenth century Pisa and Florence were at war. The Pisan government compelled, by threats of punishment, their subjects, who were debtors to Florentine subjects, to pay their debts into the Pisan treasury. A Pisan debtor, who had so paid his debt, was nevertheless sued by his Florentine creditor for it; it was admitted that he had paid it under compulsion, having refused to do so as long as he was able.

Philip Decius, a Milanese jurist of the highest reputation, was called in to arbitrate or to adjudicate on the matter. Decius, in his Consilia, recites the premisses, and concludes: "Ex quibus omnibus concludo et indubitanter existimo, quod "Ludovicus (u) mediante tali solutione fuerit liberatus "(x).

(r) By an Arrêt in August 1349.

(s) Paponius, Recueil d'Arrêts Notables des Cours Souveraines de France, 1. v. t. vi. arr. 2.

(t) Diss. des Postlim. s. v. § 10.

(u) The Christian name of the debtor.

(x) Phil. Decii Consilia, c. xxv.

There are two other cases mentioned by Pfeiffer (y); but in one of them the debtor and creditor were both subjects of the State which made the order for payment into the national treasury, and the creditor had gone over to the enemy. This latter case is narrated by Baldus de Perusio, and it is clearly founded on the doctrine of Public Law that the Fiscus is the heir of confiscated property: the application of the principle to a matter of International Law is therefore only by way of analogy (z.).

DLXVII. In the year 1495, Charles the Eighth of France overran Italy, and replaced for a moment the House of Anjou upon the throne of Naples. During his brief tenure of that kingdom the French King bestowed upon his adherents all that he could lay hands upon. Amongst other devices for enriching the Angevin party, that of calling in debts due to the State from the opposite faction was adopted. Many of these debtors paid honestly the full amount of their debt. Some tried to drive a bargain to their advantage, paying only a portion of their debt, and obtaining a receipt for the whole. Some contrived to pay nothing, and obtain a written discharge from everything. Four months afterwards, when the French King, with the Angevins, was driven out, and Ferdinand, with the Arragonese, was restored, the question as to the validity of these payments and receipts was sharply contested. Among other jurists invoked to adjudicate or arbitrate upon it, was one summæ auctoritatis, named Mat

(y) P. 191.

(2) Baldus, Consilia, 1. ii. c. cxxviii. is cited by Pfeiffer (p. 192) as saying: "Debitor liberabitur sive coactus solverit sive sponte, quia in jus creditoris fiscus successerat, et ideo fisco solvi debebat quia fiscus habeatur loco hæredis."-L. ii. C. ad l. Jul. de In. Publ.

And Pfeiffer remarks that Baldus, in his lecture on Cod. 1. xix. De Furtis, observes: "Si debitor est compulsus per viam juris, prius cONfiscato creditore, tum certum est quod etiam antequam solveret, erat liberatus ab eo, quia translata erat in fiscum obligatio."

See also Hugo Lehrbuch, Des Heutigen Römischen Rechts, s. 68,

note 2.

thæus de Afflictis (a). His conclusions on this important subject are here given in his own words:-" Prima conclusio, "quod illi debitores regum de Arragoniâ, qui fuerunt in "morâ solvendi dictis regibus pecuniam debitam in genere, "et jussu regis Caroli et suorum officialium solverunt ipsis "donatariis, non sunt liberati, et tenentur solvere dictis regi"bus, veris creditoribus. Secunda conclusio sit ista, quod "illi debitores qui non fuerunt in morâ solvendi dictis cre

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ditoribus, sed jussi fuerunt ab officialibus regis Franciæ, "quod solvant illis Gallis, virtute largitatis regis, et ipsi "fecerunt, quidquid eis fuit possibile, ut non solverent, et "realiter eis solverunt propter jussum pœnalem, et isti sunt "liberati. Tertia conclusio sit ista, quod si debitor fuit in “morâ, sed erat infra tempus purgandi moram, et infra illud "tempus sit exactus ab illis Gallis jussu magistratus, tunc "solvendo Gallis perindè habetur ac si non esset in morâ, "et sic erit liberatus. Quarta conclusio sit ista, quod debitor, qui solvit Gallis illam pecuniam debitam regibus de Arragoniâ virtute jussus magistratus, cui non potuit resis"tere, et pecuniam illam debitam post diem solutionis fa"ciendæ erat solitum, quod ipsi debitores penes se retinebant pro expensis, occurrentibus in administratione officii nomine regio, si ipsam pecuniam Gallis solverunt, sunt liberati, "etiam quod fuerint in morâ. Quinta conclusio sit ista, " quod illi debitores, qui solutionem probant per confessionem "Gallorum publicam vel privatam, ita, quod non probant "veram numerationem pecuniæ eis factam, non sunt liberati, "sed debent solvere veris creditoribus, quantumcunque "ostenderint dictum jussum. Sexta conclusio, quod illi debitores, qui se concordaverunt, et non ostendunt veram "solutionem in totum vel in partem, non sunt liberati. "Exitus rei approbavit istas conclusiones "(b).

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DLXVII. A.

In 1860 it was holden (c) by an English

(a) Decisiones Neopolitana Antiquæ et Nova, Dec. 150.

(b) Matth. de Afflictis, Decisiones Neopolitana Antiquæ et Nova, Dec. 150, Pfeiffer, pp. 196, 197.

(c) Wadeer v. The East India Company. 7 Jurist, N.S. 350 (1860).

Court of Justice, that if a foreign Power takes prisoner an enemy, and thereby obtains possession of documents establishing his right to a debt due from another to him in his private capacity, the prisoner is entitled to relief; and the circumstance that the foreign Power is also the debtor will not alter the right, but if such documents are the property of the prisoner in his sovereign character, and are taken possession of by the conqueror in the exercise of his 'sovereign and political rights, a Court cannot interfere.

CHAPTER VI.

THE CASE OF THE DEBTS AND DOMAINS OF HESSE-CASSEL CONFISCATED OR ALIENATED BY NAPOLEON THE

FIRST.

DLXVIII. THE instance of the payments made to the first Napoleon by the debtors of the Prince of Hesse-Cassel furnished the last occasion, upon which these principles of International Law respecting the extinction of public debts by payment of them to a conqueror were invoked for practical application. The case of the purchasers of the (1) Debts, and of the (2) Domains of Hesse-Cassel during the interval between 1807 and 1813 has, from the importance of the principles involved in its discussion, taken its place among the causes célèbres of Public and International Law (a).

(a) The reader should consult Pfeiffer's two works :

1. In wiefern sind Regierungshandlungen eines Zwischenherrschers für den rechtmässigen Regenten nach dessen Rückkehr verbindlich? (1819).

2. Das Recht der Kriegseroberung in Beziehung auf Staatscapitalien specialler Theil (Cassel, 1823)—both for the arguments and the accumulation of valuable authorities upon the general question; but upon the application to the particular case of Hesse-Cassel, the reader must remember that the author wrote at Cassel, and was "Kurfürstlich Hessischer Oberappelationsrathe." He wrote naturally under a strong, though, very likely, unconscious, bias for the Prince of Hesse-Cassel. See too Zachariah, Ueber die Verpflichtung zur Aufrechtshaltung der Regierung des Konigreichs Westphalen. Heidelberg, 1817.

For a list of other writers, see note, p. 484, vol. iv. of Rotteck and Welcker's Staats-Lexikon, tit. Domainenkäufer. The authors of this Lexicon remark that no German or Dutch writer or jurist out of the territory of Hesse-Cassel impugned the validity of the transfers and alienations made during the period of the government of the Bonapartes, i. c. Napoleon and Jerome.