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motives for preventing those objects from being
defeated by the interference of a foreign state. Such
interference cannot take place without affecting his
power and dignity. The implied license therefore under
which such vessel enters a friendly port may reasonably
be construed, as containing an exemption from the
jurisdiction of the sovereign within whose territory
she claims the rites of hospitality'".
Wheaton (4th Edition p. 167) quotes from the
Report of the Royal Commission on Fugitive Slaves 1876,
p. 43 the following opinion of Lord Chief Justice Cockburn.
The rule which reason and good sense would,
as it strikes me, prescribe, would be that, as regards
the discipline of a foreign ship of war, and offences
committed on board, as between members of her crew
towards one another, matters should be left entirely
to the law of the ship, and that should the offender
escape to the shore he should, if taken, be given up
to the commander of the ship on domand, and should be
tried on shore only if no such demand be made".
We have set out these quotations at some length
as indicating the change in the attitude of international
jurists as to the reasons underlying this universally
conceded immunity, and the trend of modern writers
towards the opinion that it is a freely accorded waiver
by one sovereign state of part of its complete
sovereignty. If this opinion is the correct one it
necessarily follows that the guest state and the host
state have concurrent jurisdiction, but that, as a
matter of international comity, the jurisdiction of
the host state is postponed to that of the guest state.
Mr. Macnamara's proposition that the jurisdiction of
the visiting state is sole and exclusive is ono to
which we are unable to accede. On any other view of
the authorities the footnote to page 245 of Hall's
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