'File 35/85 I A 8. Muscat: French Flag Question' [‎190r] (386/512)

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ARGUMENT.
The facts above stated indicate the acts by
Trench officials which form the ground of com
plaint by the Sultan and the British Government.
It remains to consider their juridical quality.
The Sultan of Muscat, like every other inde
pendent Sovereign, is entitled to police his own
territorial waters for the enforcement of his own
laws and to secure compliance with his Treaties
with foreign Powers, and this sovereign right
includes that of enforcing Quarantine Regulations
and suppressing the Slave Trade. In the absence
of special Conventions, no foreign Power is
entitled to exercise any police powers at all in
the Sultan's waters; and the Sultan is further,
as an independent Sovereign, entitled to exercise
full jurisdiction over all persons within his terri
tory, except so far as by Treaty, usage, or
sufferance he has conceded to a foreign State the
privilege of exterritoriality for its subjects or for
persons whom he recognizes as proteges of such
foreign Power.
Among Christian Powers the privilege of ex
territoriality is conceded only in favour of the
Heads of foreign States, their Diplomatic Repre
sentatives, and foreign public vessels.
In the case of Oriental Powers in Asia and
Africa, Capitulations and Treaties have been made
with Christian Powers, admitting within the ter
ritories of such Oriental Powers a special Con
sular jurisdiction over subjects of the Christian
Power there resident, and, de litre gracieux, over
subjects of other Christian Powers which have
no Consuls in the Oriental State, and also to
a qualified and varying extent over the subjects of
the Oriental Power in the service of subjects of
such Christian Power.
The history of the privileges of the latter class
has to a very great extent been a history of
their abuse, and in the Ottoman Empire—the
most considerable of the Mussulman States—
the rights of a Christian Power to take Ottoman
subjects under its protection were restricted
by Regulations of 1863 and 1865, fully
accepted by Christian Powers as constituting
the reasonable limits for such protection;
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