The Sun.
London, England, 1865-05-29 00:00:00

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The Extradition Treaty beween England
and America.

(From the Neto York Times, May 16)

The proceedings which were commenced before
the courts of England to procure the extradition of
Charles Windsor, the defaulting teller of the Mer-
cantile Bank, that he might be brought to this
country for trial and punishment, have resulted in
a failure, the Court of Queen's Bench, before whom
he was brought on a writ of habeas corpus, having
discharged him from arrest. •
The charge under which this man Windsor was
sought to be held for extradition was that of for-
gery. The forgery was alleged to have consisted
in making fraudulent entries in the books of the
Mercantile Bank, and the- provision of our revised
statutes was cited, which provides in part 4, chap. 1,
title 3, article 3, section 35 Every person who
with intent to defraud shall make any false entry,
or shall falsely alter any entry made in any book of
accounts kept by any moneyed corporation within
this State, or any book of accounts kept by such
corporation or its officers, and delivered or intended
to be delivered, to any person dealing with such cor-
poration, by which any pecuniary obligation, claim,
or credit shall be, or shall purport to be, discharged,
diminished, increased, created, or in any manner
affected, shall upon conviction be deemed guilty of
forgery in the third degree."

The counsel for the accused argued, not without
force, that the offence proved did not come within
the terms of this statute, but the court did not
allude to this point in rendering its decision. Its
decision was placed on the general ground that the
fact proved did not constitute forgery by the law of
England, and the case was not, therefore, one which
came within the provisions of the act passed to carry
into effect the provisions of the Extradition Treaty.
The English courts have taken similar ground
before. The point was argued in the case of the
crew of the J. C. Gerrity, and, if we are not mis-
taken, was directly involved in the case of Ander-
son, the fugitive slave. But our courts, we believe,
have held a contrary doctrine, having decided that,
if the facts proved brought the case within the laws
of England, the criminal should be taken to Eng-
land to be tried.
We have before alluded to the inconveniences of
a state of things in which the courts of this country
and of England hold opposite views of their duty
under the Extradition Treaty. Such ought not to
be the case. If the agreement between the parties
is thus differently construed by them respectively,
it is likely to be a cause of difference, instead of
binding them more closely together. And some
means ought to be taken by which these discrepan-
cies should be reconciled or removed.

One point in the decision of the Chief Justice de-
serves a moment's attention. He apparently made
a distinction between a law of the State of New York
and a law of the United States, implying that the
court would look at the provisions of the latter, but
not of the former. There was an intimation of
something of the same kind in one of the recent ex-
tradition cases in Canada, where it was argued that
as the treaty was made between the two nations,
the Canadian court would look only at the laws of
the United States to discover whether the St. Albans
bank robbers had committed any offence, and would
pay no attention to the laws of the State of Ver-
mont on the question.
It may be that the English courts will yet come
up to the point of maintaining that doctrine, though
they are not so likely to do so now as if the rebellion
had continued a year or two longer. But they ought
to understand that the criminal offences over which
Congress has jurisdiction are but few, and that over
all other offences the State laws are all that we have,
and arc just as much a part of the law of the country
as the acts of Congress. They should certainly leave
to our courts the question whether the law of a State
of this Union is a part of the law of this country.
"Where a State law is presented to them, and no law
of the United States on the same matter is shown,
they will do well to assume that it is a part of the law
of the country with which they made the Extradition
Treaty, and to treat it accordingly.