LECTURE III - THE CONSULAR SERVICE—DUTIES.

Consular duties, like household duties, are very numerous; and about as multiform as they are numerous. The mere mention of them, aside from any description or dwelling upon particulars, would leave little time for anything else to be said in the same lecture. We shall content ourselves, therefore, with a cursory view, a glance over the whole field of those duties, without stopping to distinguish between those of a consul and those of a consul general, or of a seaport and of an inland town.

The following classification will be found to be helpful and very nearly comprehensive:

There are a few others, such as duties in regard to extradition, the purchase and transference of foreign built vessels, etc., etc., which we shall term miscellaneous.

DUTIES COMMERCIAL.

The most important of these—the one indeed which is now, as it always has been, of central importance in the consular service, is the one first mentioned—commercial duties. Owing to its importance I will quote in full from the Consular Regulations, pages 248-51, the list of subjects upon which the consul is expected to report to the State Department:

“1. Conditions of foreign commerce and internal trade, manufacturers, mechanical industries, agriculture, etc., especially—

“(a) Statistics of exports and imports, of shipping and of revenue and expenditure of the country; amount of public debts, national and local; rates of taxation, character of taxable basis, how taxation is levied and collected, amount of taxation per capita, etc.; value, actual value in exchange, and also as measured by the dollar of the United States; changes in purchasing power of the currency; banking—new systems, especially of savings banks and of banks as associations for lending money to agriculturists, mechanics, and factory operatives; public loans and the matters of finance affecting the industry or commerce of the country; commercial credits—rates and periods usually granted to foreign purchasers, and those expected from foreign shippers; trade usages and peculiarities; special demands of consumers as to demand and quality of goods or supplies already in use or capable of being introduced among them, with suggestions as to the best and most economical style of packing to conform to local requirements of sale and transportation.

“(b) Improvement of old and development of new industries, including inventions or discoveries, and the result obtained from the practical application of them.