HARBORING CONSPIRACY.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1211, 31 July 1884, Page 3

HARBORING CONSPIRACY.

Mr Henry Wade Podgers in the North American Review says:—" Justice to foreign nations as well as our own seems to require that we should so amend our neutrality laws as to make it an offence against the Government of the_ United States for persons within our jurisdiction to conspire against the laws and property of the citizens of a foreign state with which we araat peace, it also seems desirable that our extiadition treaties should include among extraditable offences that of conspiracy to murder. These offences we do not consider to be strictly Dolitical in their character. As to offences which may properly be called political, there can bo no doubt that a nation may properly harbor persons who, having committed them within a foreign state, seek an asylum in another. But we say, with President Wolsey, that such persons having sought an asylum, < may not, consistently with th« obligations of friendship between B>uu-l, be allowed to plot against the person of the Sovereign or against the institutions of their native country. Such acts are crimes, for. the trial and punishment of which the laws of the land ought to provide.' It becomes us to remember how expedient it is for the peace of the world that states should take a liberal view of their duties to each other, and should perform them with unhesitating fidelity. The dangers of the future to the nations of the earth lie in the conspiracies of dynamiters, of Communists, and Nihilists. Those engaged therein must be made to feel the severeity of the law, the majesty of which they have forgotten." _■