'Muscat Dhows Arbitration. In the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague. Grant of the French Flag to Muscat Dhows. The case on behalf of the Government of His Britannic Majesty.' [‎34r] (76/208)

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The Ottoman Regulations of 1863 and 1865,
referred to both in the British and the French
Cases, are relevant only as showing the determi
nation of the Porte to put an end to the abuses
of protection which then existed, and of the
admission of the European Powers that the
attitude of the Porte was consistent both with its
territorial sovereignty and with international law,
and the fact that these laws were not made retro
spective is of no probative value in the present
case, in which the question is whether certain
persons are or are not now properly claimed by
France as proteges.
It may be observed that, under the
Ottoman Law of Nationality, a native of the
Ottoman Empire is presumed to be an Ottoman
subject unless he can prove to the contrary, the
onus probavdi lying not on the territorial authority,
but on the person claiming the privilege of
exemption from its jurisdiction, and the inter
national Award between Greece and Turkey, set
out at p. 91 of the British Case, is an even
stronger and more authoritative international
recognition of the limits which should be placed
on extra-territorial jurisdiction in Oriental States.
As a matter of negotiation, distinct from a
question of fact or of international or municipal
law, the recognition of the claim of a certain
limited number of persons to be proteges of the
claiming Power might be conceded as a means
for determining a controversy, but such concession
would be the price of peace, and not an admission
of the justice of the claim, and it was as a matter
of negotiation that the Porte made the concession
in question, and not in affirmation of any rule of
international law.
It may be added that in the long history of the
Capitulations in Turkey very many Treaties had
been made, and very many usages and abuses
had grown up in the course of centuries ; while
as between Muscat and France the extra-terri
torial rights granted to France in Oman, what
ever they may be, cannot be dated back beyond
1844. And while the situation in Turkey was
complicated by the presence of a very large
Christian population of numerous sects (each sect
allowed by the Porte in many matters to be
governed by the laws of its Church), perpetually
invoking the sympathy and protection of France
or Russia or some other European Power, the
population of Oman is in the main Arab and