If a crime is of a notorious nature, affecting the government, an ambassador may be sent home, and his sovereign required to punish, or deliver him up, as we read of the Gauls having done to the Fabians. But, as we have before occasionally observed, all human laws are framed upon such principles, as, in cases of extreme necessity, to admit of equitable relaxations, among which the privileges of ambassadors may be reckoned. But these extreme cases of necessity may, according to the law of nations, as will be seen hereafter, in discussing the effects of just and solemn war, prevent punishment in CERTAIN cases, though not in ALL. For it is not the act of punishment itself, which is objected to, either in respect to time, or manner, but the exemption is created to prevent the greater public evil, which might arise from the punishment of the offender. To obviate therefore any imminent danger, if no other proper method can be devised, ambassadors may be detained and interrogated. Thus the Roman Consuls seized the ambassadors of Tarquin, previously taking care to secure their papers, to prevent the evidence, which they might afford, from being destroyed. But if an ambassador excites and heads any violent insurrection, he may be killed, not by way of punishment, but upon the natural principle of self-defence. The Gauls therefore might have put to death the Fabii, whom Livy calls violators of the law of nature. V. Mention has before been frequently made of the exemptions, by which ambassadors are protected from all personal constraint and violence, and it is understood that all powers are bound by a tacit agreement, as it were, from the time of admitting an ambassador, to respect these exemptions. It MAY and indeed sometimes DOES happen, that one power gives notice to another that no ambassador will be received, and if one is sent, that he will be treated as an enemy. A declaration to this effect was made by the Romans to the Aetolians, and, on another occasion, the Vejentian ambassadors were ordered to leave Rome, with a menace, if they refused to comply, of being treated in the same manner as the Roman ambassadors had been treated by their king Tolumnius, who had put them to death. The Samnites too forbade the Romans to go to any council in Samnium, under pain of forfeiting their lives, or, at least, their personal safety.