Where by treaty a foreigner is entitled to seek redress in the courts of the country in which his alleged injury has been received, his Government is not permitted to convert his wrong, whether real or imaginary, into a national grievance. Should an English subject be as- saulted in our streets, defrauded by his debtor, or falsely imprisoned by a police officer, his (government could not demand of ours redress for his sufferings. Were these two principles to be disregarded, and were Governments to insist on sitting in judgment on the contracts their sub- jects might form with foreign powers, or on the quarrels in which they might be involved abroad, it is very evident that the peace of the world would be perpetually dis- turbed. Yet these principles, as we shall see hereafter, have been set at naught in many of the claims preferred by the American Government on that of Mexico.
But the subject of these claims is so important in itself, and so indicative of the determination of the Cabinet at Washington to provoke a war with Mexico, as to demand a separate chapter.