are about a blow, and, 2ndly, because my sister was with me, who would have fainted at the sight of a blow. I have, &c. G. V. MACDONALD, Exon, H.M.'s Royal Body Guard of the Yeomen of the Guard, and late Captain 19th Regiment. Lord J. Russell. P.S.-My offence is simply against the railway people, and not against the police, so that they have no interest in detaining me. The Governor is as civil as his duty will permit, but I am much too proud to ask for any indulgence not willingly accorded. No. 2.-Lord Bloomfield to Baron Schleinitz. G. V. M. M. LE BARON, Berlin, September 17, 1860. I REGRET to be under the necessity of appealing to the Prussian Government to interfere in behalf and for the protection of a British subject, who appears to be unjustly detained in prison at Bonn, on a complaint of the railway officials of that place. Captain Macdonald, late of the 19th Regiment, and now an officer of the Queen's Household, arrived on the 12th instant by the train from Mayence, accompanied by his sister-in-law, her husband, nurse and child, at Bonn, when all the party got out of the carriage to get some refreshment, except Captain Macdonald. Some strange people got into it, and subsequently a lady and gentleman filled the carriage. Captain Macdonald pointed to the seats which had been occupied by the last comers, and told them that they were engaged. These last comers appear to have been Dr. and Mrs. Parow, of Bonn, and they refused to move, and upon Captain Macdonald's touching the gentleman lightly on the shoulder, and repeating his request, Dr. Parow become very insolent, and the guard of the train came up and endeavoured to pull Captain Macdonald out of the carriage. This, of course he resisted, whereupon several men dragged him forcibly out of the carriage, and treated the lady who accompanied him in a very rough and unbecoming manner. He was then, it appears, accused, before a police officer, of illtreating the railway officials, and taken off to prison, where he still remains. It seems that, according to the law of Prussia, an investigation of any similar case should take place before the Juge d'Instruction within 24 hours at latest after the arrest, and a warrant be issued for the further detention of the prisoner; and I have to observe to your Excellency that Captain Macdonald was arrested on Wednesday afternoon, and that up to Saturday evening no such warrant was issued, according to the information received by Mr. Crossthwaite, Her Britannic Majesty's Consul at Cologne, who had proceeded to Bonn to investigate the case, and, on requesting the Governor of the jail to produce the warrant ("Verwahrungs-Befehl") he was unable to do so, and replied that he had no warrant; that the prisoner was delivered to him by the police. I must, therefore, conclude that the detention of Captain Macdonald was illegal, and I have the honour to request that your Excellency will cause a full investigation to be made of this affair, and inclose for your information the copy of a letter which I have received from Captain Macdonald, giving an account of the occurrence, in which he states upon his honour that he never struck any of the railway officials, although he may, under great provocation, have slightly pushed them, and I have further to request your Excellency to cause steps to be taken that will lead to the early release of Captain Macdonald from his present state of confinement. I have, &c. BLOOMFIELD. Baron Schleinitz. No. 3.-Lord Bloomfield to Baron Schleinitz. M. LE BARON, Berlin, September 21, 1860. IN acknowledging the receipt of the note, dated this day, in which your Excellency informs me of the release of Captain Macdonald, I beg to express my cordial thanks for the promptitude with which you have been so good as to convey this intelligence to me. Since addressing to your Excellency my note of the 17th instant, I have received from Captain Macdonald a detailed account of the whole transactions in this case, including the incidents of the tria!, together with a protest against the proceedings in question, formally entered by him before Her Majesty's Consul at Cologne. I have the honour to inclose herewith, for your Excellency's information, copies of these documents. A perusal of the clear and lucid statement contained in them cannot but remove all doubt as to the nature of the proceedings of which Captain Macdonald has been the victim. The aggrieved party, both by the unwarranted seizure of the seats belonging to his companions and by the insulting language used by the intruder, Captain Macdonald is forcibly ejected from the carriage which he and his friends had occupied from Mayence, and to which, according to all rules of railway travelling, he possessed an undoubted right. The only charge that can be possibly brought against him is, that he attempted to resist this forcible ejectment; that this resistance, however, was of a merely passive kind, and unaccompanied by blows or other aggressive action, is not only vouched for upon his word of honour by Captain Macdonald himself, but is corroborated by the perfectly unbiassed testimony of two German witnesses. Not content with his ejectment, the violence of the railway officials continues after he is out of the carriage; he is thrown with force to the ground, and the ill-treatment, of which he is the object, is extended to his sister-in-law, the lady by whom he is accompanied. By the railway officials Captain Macdonald is handed over to the police, and lodged in the common jail, with all the ignominious formalities used in the case of an ordinary felon. Contrary to what I have been distinctly given to understand is the admirable safeguard provided by the Prussian law to protect individual liberty, and which renders all detention illegal after 24 hours, except upon the formal warrant of a magistrate, Captain Macdonald remains several days in jail without such warrant having been made out. After 6 days' incarceration he is at last brought to trial, and the opportunity afforded him of stating his case. It would be, of course, wholly irrelevant on my part to criticise the proceedings in a Prussian law court; but what, I may be allowed to ask, would be the impression left upon an unbiassed spectator by the scene enacted at Bonn on the 18th instant? A stranger, wholly ignorant of the laws of the country in which he finds himself, is brought up for trial upon a most serious charge, involving a possible penalty of two years' imprisonment. To make his case known to his judges, an interpreter is appointed, who turns out to be totally unacquainted with the language he is called upon to interpret. No witnesses are cited to substantiate the charge, the only evidence for the prosecution being that of the railway inspector, whose testimony, as that of the aggressor in the case, is necessarily totally valueless; whilst, for some unaccountable reason, Dr. Parow, the original cause of all the disturbance, who, if any one deserved the punishment due to the creators of such disturbances, is never even summoned before the Court. The Public Prosecutor, however, an officer of the Crown, endeavours by the virulence of his oratory to make up for the deficiency of his proofs, and not content with personal remarks of an apparently most severe kind upon the prisoner he includes in his passionate vituperation the whole class of British subjects resident or travelling abroad, and that in terms which, unless my knowledge of the German language wholly fails me, were singularly inconsistent with the dignity of a court of law. As might have been expected under the circumstances, the case breaks down. Captain Macdonald is found innocent of the charges brought against him; but, instead of the reparation for the gross ill-usage to which he had been subjected, on some ground as yet unexplained, the Court fines him 20 thalers and the costs; that is to say, for an offence as yet unspecified, but of so trivial a kind as to be measured by a minimum fine, a British subject is submitted for the space of 6 days to incarceration in a common jail, and to the treatment of a common felon. I feel that any comment upon transactions such as these would be entirely superfluous. Moreover, the long and intimate intercourse which has subsisted between your Excellency and myself, and the knowledge I have acquired of the high sentiments of justice and equity which animate your Excellency and the Government of His Royal Highness the Prince Regent, leave no room for me to doubt that you will, in the fullest measure, share the feelings of pain and indignation with which the perusal of these extraordinary proceedings has filled me, and I have the fullest confidence that your Excellency will, with the same promptitude which you have already shown in the case, hasten to obtain the reparation due to Captain Macdonald for the grevious injury he has suffered. Baron Schleinitz. I avail, &c. BLOOMFIELD. No. 4.-Consul Crossthwaite to Lord J. Russell.-(Rec. Sept. 23.) MY LORD, Cologne, September 21, 1860. WITH reference to my despatch of the 15th instant, I have the honour to report to your Lordship that Captain Macdonald was brought up for trial before the criminal police court at Bonn, on Tuesday last, and, although acquitted of the charge made against him, he had to pay a fine of 20 thalers and costs, or to suffer an imprisonment of 8 days. The fine and costs were paid, and Captain Macdonald was restored to liberty. A full report of the proceedings has been forwarded to Lord Bloomfield; and as there can be no doubt that the principles of international law have been violated in the person of Captain Macdonald, the Prussian Government cannot fail to do justice to this gentleman's claims. I transmit herewith a translation of an able advocate's opinion, respecting the four principal points of reclamation. I have, &c. Lord J. Russell. G. F. CROSSTHWAITE. (Inclosure.)-Opinion. IN the affair of Captain Macdonald, the following circumstances justify the English nation in claiming an indemnity from the Prussian Government: 1. That Captain Macdonald was kept in prison from 12th till the 18th of September, 1860, although a warrant signed by the Juge d'Instruction had not been delivered to him within 24 hours after his arrest, as required by the Prussian Constitution and the Rhenish Criminal Law. 2. That the State Procurator, Möller, did not instantly order the liberation of Captain Macdonald after the 14th of September, 1860, and even refused to the British Consul, who offered to deposit bail to any amount, to release the said Captain Macdonald, although he (the State Procurator) knew very well that no Juge d'Instruction was present at the examination, and that the prisoner could not be deprived of his personal liberty according to law. 3. That the State Procurator, Möller, has insulted the English nation (in general) travelling on the Continent. 4. That the station-master Hoffman, upon the one-sided request, and upon the assertions, founded upon untruth, of Dr. Parow, took upon himself to remove Captain Macdonald from the seat which was appropriated to him for the journey from Mayence to Cologne, instead of giving another disengaged place to Dr. Parow, whom he knew personally, and was, therefore, well aware that he only just got into the train at Bonn, and further, that he persisted in the rudest manner, and with the most brutal force, in carrying out his unjustifiable decision. No. 5.-Lord J. Russell to Lord Bloomfield. MY LORD, Your Lordship is directed to press for reparation for this gross outrage. Unless it is obtained, it is obvious that any British subject travelling by railway may be ejected capriciously from the carriage in which he is travelling, and, if he should resist, may be confined in a prison, with felons, for 4 days without trial or inquiry. It is impossible to believe that the Prussian Government intend to treat in this manner the subjects of a friendly Sovereign, still less that they can sanction their law officer in a calumnious attack on the whole British nation. Your Lordship is so well acquainted with all the particulars of this case that I leave it in your hands, requesting you to inform me when the Prussian Government have made up their minds as to the reparation they mean to offer. Lord Bloomfield. I am, &c. J. RUSSELL. No. 6.-Lord Bloomfield to Earl Russell.-(Rec. at Coburg, Oct. 2.) WITH reference to my despatch of the 22nd instant, transmitting the copy of a note which I had addressed to the Prussian Government on the subject of the late imprisonment of Captain Macdonald, I have now the honour to inclose for your Lordship's further information, in translation, a protest signed by some of the English |