Book III Diplomatic Privileges and Immunities, 8 Privileges and Immunities of Diplomatic Missions

8.1 The most fundamental rules of diplomatic law—that the person of the ambassador is inviolable and that a special protection must be given to the messages which he sends and receives from his sovereign—have been observed from time immemorial among civilized States. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the exchange of permanent ambassadors between the States of Europe gradually became general, it came to be accepted in state practice and by the writers on international law that even where there was evidence that an ambassador had engaged in...