4. Before a minister can expect to be acknowledged at a foreign court, he must produce a letter of credence, written by the sovereign who sends to the sovereign who is to receive him. This letter makes mention of the motive of the mission, the name and quality of the bearer, and prays the person to whom it is ad dressed to give lull credit to what he shall say on the part of his court. The form of these letters varies ac cording to circumstances, but commonly they are in the form of letters of council. One letter of credence may serve for two ministers sent at the same time, if they are both of the same order. Sometimes, on the contrary, one minister has several letters of credence ; this happens when he is sent to several sovereigns, or to one sovereign in different qualities.
5. Minister s to whom a negotiation is confided must also produce their full powers, specifying the degree of autho rity with which they are vested. These full powers are either general or special, as circumstances may require. A full power may be enclosed in the letter of credence ; but if it be separate from it, it is commonly drawn up in form of a letter patent. Ministers sent to a congress, without being furnished with letters of credence to any court, pro duce only their full powers, which they exchange with each other, and which answer the purpose of letters of credence. Sometimes the full powers produced at a congress are put into the hands of the mediators.
6. The minister who is to carry on a negotiation is fur nished with instructions ; these are to be his guide in his general conduct towards the court to which he is sent, and towards the ministers of other courts whom he may find there, and particularly in the manner of opening and con ducting his negotiation. These instructions, as well as those that it may he necessary to dispatch to him in the course of his embassy, being intended for himself alone, are not usually produced to the court to which he is sent, unless his own court orders him to do it, or unless he, from urgent motives, thinks himself justifiable in commu nicating certain passages of them. Sometimes he has two sets of instructions, the one public, and the other secret.
7. All ambassadors have now an undisputed right to the title of excellency ; but, of all ministers, they only have that right. If it is sometimes given to the envoys extraordinary of kings, and even to other ministers of the second order, it is because it is due to them in some other quality than that of minister ; or else it is given them out of mere complai sance.
8. The ambassador is distinguished from ministers of the inferior orders by many points of the ceremonial. This, however, depends so much on the particular usages of each court, that we can mention only such points as are most generally received : such is the right of going on visits, &c. of ceremony, in a coach and six, of ornamenting the horses withfiorhi, of being saluted with military honours, of being admitted to balls and feasts, and at court on all days of ceremony. Great courts grant less to ministers of the second and third order than the little courts do ; these some times yield as much to ministers of the third order as the former do to those of the second.
9. The audiences to which ministers of the first and se cond order are admitted in the course of their mission are either ordinary or extraordinary, and the latter are either private or public. These last take place when there is a notification to be made in ceremony, as also at taking leave.
10. All foreigners are under the protection of the law of nations ; but foreign ministers of the different orders enjoy a higher degree of inviolability than that insured to all fo reigners by the general law of nations, which extends no further than protection from injury. This inviolaniiity they derive from the dignity of the state they represent, and from the interest that every nation takes in the honour and security of those who are to transact its affairs in fo reign countries. The sovereign, then, must be careful to abstain from every kind of violence against the person of a public minister sent to his court ; and he ought to punish, to the utmost rigour of the law, and as crimes of state, eve ry act of violence committed against him by others: pro vided, however, that the offender commits such violence against the minister knowing him to be such, and provided he be subject to the jurisdiction of the sovereign. All the powers of Europe acknou ledge this inviolability in minis ters of all the orders, from the moment they enter their ter ritory till they quit it ; so that Christian states permit even the minister of an residing at their courts at the breaking out of a war, to return home in perfect security. The Turks only have preserved the barbarous custom of imprisoning foreign ministers on account of a rupture with their courts. In the course of a war, no minister can pass through, or enter in safety, the territory of an enemy, un less express permission has been first obtained.