3. Inconclusiveness as to international rights. § 1244. VIII. PRIZE MONEY AND BOUNTY. 1. Claimants of prize money. § 1245. 2. Proportions awarded. § 1246. 3. Bounty. § 1247. 4. Abolition of prize money and bounty. § 1248. I. COURTS. § 1222. The court of appeals in prize causes erected by the Continental Congress had power to revise and correct the sentences of the State courts of admiralty. United States v. Judge Peters (1809), 5 Cranch, 115, "The papers of the Continental Congress preserved in this Department have been thoroughly examined, and the only records of the board of admiralty which have been found relate solely to the proceedings of Congress. . . The adjudication of prize cases does not appear to have been made the duty of the said board; and as it was left to the courts, the establishment of which was recommended to the several legislatures in the United Colonies' by article 4 of the resolution of Congress forming the United States Navy (November 25, 1775), it was not subject to the interference of Congress except in cases of appeal (see article 6th, same resolution)." Mr. Brown, chief clerk, Department of State, to Mr. Wing, chief clerk, District courts of the United States possess all the powers of a court of admiralty, both instance and prize, and may award restitution of property claimed as prize of war by a foreign captor. Glass v. The Sloop Betsey (1794), 3 Dall, 6. Proceedings against the ship and cargo are to be had before the district court of the United States according to the laws of Congress and the usage and practice of courts of admiralty in prize causes. Lee, At. Gen., 1798, 1 Op. 85. The jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of the United States in prize cases is appellate only, and a claim can not for the first time be interposed there; but, where a case was disposed of in the district court without proper opportunity to claimants to appear, and the decree was affirmed by the circuit court, the case was remanded to the circuit court, with directions to allow a claim to be filed. The Harrison (1816), 1 Wheat. 298. The validity of the seizure and the question of prize or no prize can only be determined in the courts upon which jurisdiction has been conferred by the sovereign under whose authority the capture was made. Neither the President nor any military officer can establish a court in a conquered country, and authorize it to decide prize cases and administer the laws of nations. Jecker v. Montgomery, 13 How. 498. See Snell r. Faussatt, 1 Wash. C. C. 271. It was within the authority of the President, as commander-inchief, to establish courts during the rebellion in portions of the insurgent territory which were occupied by the national forces. The Grapeshot, 9 Wall. 129. Neither by the law of nations nor by the French-American treaty then in force had a French consul in Charleston in 1793 jurisdiction to condemn as legal prize a British vessel captured and brought into that port by a French frigate; and such act is not only a nullity, but justifies an appeal to the French minister to "interpose efficaciously to prevent a repetition of the error." Mr. Jefferson, Sec. of State, to Mr. Ternant, French min., May 15, 1793. See, to the same effect, Mr. Jefferson, Sec. of State, to Mr. Morris, min. This view was taken by the Supreme Court in Glass v. Sloop Betsey, 3 By article 28 of the treaty between the United States and Hayti of November 3, 1863, it is provided "that in matters of prize in all cases the established courts for prize causes, in the country to which the prizes may be conducted, shall alone take cognizance of them.' "The tribunal before which the Haytian Republic and her officers were brought was hastily improvised for the occasion and consisted of two commissioners specially appointed on the 21st of October, 1888, to examine the case of the Haytian Republic. It was in no sense 'an established court for prize causes,' as stipulated in the treaty, but had for its special and only authority the order of the provisional president, Légitime. Its proceedings had scarcely a feature of formality and regularity. The witnesses before it, whose statements were generally founded on hearsay and often palpably inconsistent with established facts, were not even sworn, and no opportunity was given for defense, although the reasonable delay of four days, two of which were holidays, was requested for that purpose and refused. "Such proceedings appear only the more indefensible when it is considered that the provisional president, Légitime, and his minister for foreign affairs now set up a violation of the municipal law of Hayti as the ground of the condemnation of the vessel and the imprisonment of her officers. The professed character of the commission was that of a prize court,' and it is so styled in your notes, to which I have the honor now to reply. The trial of an alleged violation of Haytian municipal law was thus wholly outside its competence. As the tribunal for the examination of such a charge its proceedings were thus not only confessedly without jurisdiction, but destitute of regularity, and also palpably violative of the provisions of the sixth article of the treaty of 1864, which guaranties to citizens of the United States access to the ordinary courts of justice, and full opportunity to defend their rights and interests before them. "A prize court is not a court of criminal jurisdiction. The condemnation of the vessel and cargo' (Bates, Attorney-General, 10 Opin. Atty. Gen'l, 453) in a prize court is not a criminal sentence. No person is charged with an offense; and so no person is in condition to be relieved and reinstated by a pardon.' "To such proceedings as those of the special Haytian commission above described, it is the opinion of the Department that the doctrines set forth in your note of the 19th instant, in relation to appeals from the decisions of prize tribunals, have no application. Such rules can be held to apply only to the procedure of regularly established courts acting within the limits of their competency, and from whose decisions appeals are provided for. It can not be admitted that the decrees of an extraordinary commission, which assumes to act in disregard of treaties and the law of nations, must stand unquestioned as a subject for judicial review, or that the persons who have been deprived of their property or of their personal freedom by such decrees are bound to seek judicial relief. Those doctrines apply only to the regular and formal proceedings of the established judicial courts of a country, acting according to recognized principles of justice. In other cases relief and redress may be obtained by direct appeal to the government of the individuals whose rights of person and property have been invaded." Mr. Bayard, Sec. of State, to Mr. Preston, Haytian min. Nov. 28, 1888, The Haytian Government was required to release the ship and pay an The United States not having acknowledged the existence of a Mexican Republic or State at war with Spain, the Supreme Court does not recognize the existence of any lawful court of prize at Gal veston. The Nueva Anna and Liebre, 6 Wheat. 193. The proceedings of a prize court of the Confederate States are of no validity in the United States, and a condemnation and sale by such a court do not convey any title to the purchaser, or confer upon him any right to give a title to others. The Lilla, 2 Sprague, 177. II. JURISDICTION. 1. COURTS OF CAPTOR'S COUNTRY. § 1223. Process was issued by the United States district court at Philadelphia for the seizure of the French privateer Cassius and the arrest of her commander, Samuel Davis, in a suit for damages by the owner of an American vessel and cargo which the Cassius had captured on the high seas and carried into Port de Paix, where they were condemned. Though it was alleged that the Cassius was fitted out in the United States in violation of their laws, and that Davis, her commander, was a citizen of the United States, the Supreme Court issued a writ of prohibition to the district court, on the ground that the trial of prizes made by French cruisers on the high seas and brought within the French jurisdiction belonged of right and exclusively to the French tribunals, and that French cruisers and their officers ought not to be held to answer in the United States for such transactions. The writ observed that the libel did not allege that the Cassius was fitted out either by the French Republic or by Davis, or that she was at the time the property of that Republic, or that Davis was concerned in the fitting out, or that he was retained in the French service in the United States. United States v. Richard Peters (1795), 3 Dall. 121. The reporter, in a note to this case (p. 132), says that the libel for damages was accordingly superseded; “but an information, Ketland qui tam, etc., was immediately afterwards filed in the circuit court against the corvette, for the illegal outfit in violation of the act of Congress, and the vessel being thereupon attached, an application was made to Judge Peters, to discharge her on giving security, but. the judge was of opinion, that he had no power as the district judge, to make such an order in a cause depending in the circuit court. The French minister, then deeming (as I have been informed) this prosecution to be a violation of the rights and property of the Republic, delivered a remonstrance to our Government; and, converting the judicial inquiry into a matter of state, abandoned the corvette, and discharged the officers and crew. See 2 vol., p. 365. Ketland qui tam versus The Cassius." The exclusive cognizance of prize questions belongs in general to the capturing power, and the courts of other countries will not undertake to redress alleged marine torts committed by public armed vessels in assertion of belligerent rights. This applies to privateers, duly commissioned. L'Invincible, 1 Wheat. 238. The court of admiralty of the State of Delaware had, in accordance with common-law doctrine, jurisdiction of a prize made at Whitehall landing, in Little Duck Creek, in the body of Kent County. W. B. v. Latimer, Delaware Court of Errors, 1788, 4 Dall. App. I. The power of the courts in the United States to adjudge prize cases is dependent upon legislation by Congress. The Mary and Susan, 1 Wheat. 46. The legislation of the United States in reference to prizes is to be found in the following statutes: (1) Act in respect to right of salvage in |