In consideration of all which, he is entitled to the _aegis_ of that community to defend him from wrongs. He takes upon himself no allegiance to any other community, so owes it no obedience, and therefore {228} cannot disobey it. None other than his own sovereign can prescribe a rule of action to him. Each sovereign regulates the conduct of its subjects, and they may be punished upon the assumption that they have known the rule, and have consented to be governed by it; it would be a gross violation of the social compact if the state were to deliver up one of its citizens to be tried and punished by a foreign state to which he owes no allegiance, and whose laws were never binding on him. No state can or will do it. In the absence of the constitutional provision, the state of Missouri would stand on this subject in the same relation to the state of Illinois that Spain does to England. In this particular, the states are independent of each other; a criminal fugitive from one state to another could not be claimed as of right to be given up. It is most true, as mentioned by writers on the laws of nations that every state is responsible to its neighbors for the conduct of its citizens so far as their conduct violates the principles of good neighborhood; so it is among private individuals. But for this, the inviolability of territory or private dwellings could not be maintained. This obligation creates the right and makes it the duty of the state to impose such restraints upon the citizen as the occasion demands. It was in the performance of this duty that the United States passed laws to restrain citizens of the United States from setting on foot and fitting out military expeditions against their neighbors. While the violators of this law kept themselves within the United States the conduct was cognizable in the courts of the United States, and not of the offended state, even if the means provided had assisted in the invasion of the foreign state. A demand by the injured state upon the United States for the offenders whose operations were in their own country would be answered that the United States' laws alone could act upon them, and that as a good neighbor it would punish them.