If the Minister for Foreign Affairs should learn that a Consular employé has not acted with good and worthy behaviour towards the authorities of the country where he is employed, or that he has participated in political demonstrations, or secretely, or openly encouraged or supported attacks on the existing Government, or else behaves in a way that may have a disturbing effect upon the good relations between the United Kingdoms and the Foreign Power concerned, then the minister has humbly to give notice of it to the King in Joint or in Ministerial Cabinet Council whereupon the matter is submitted to the King’s consideration in the Cabinet Council of the country concerned.
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§ 16.
If a legation should find a Consul guilty of a proceeding or a neglect alluded to in § 11, or if a Consul should be prosecuted for a crime affecting his civil repute, the legation, if finding it justified by circumstances, has to suspend the Consul from his office; and the matter should immedately be reported both to the Minister for Foreign affairs and to the Consular administration concerned.
A Consul thus suspended from his office, must not again come into office until the King, after hearing the Minister for Foreign affairs, has resolved upon it.
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8.
Extracts from notes made, in consequence of the Swedish Government’s draft of laws of the same wording by the Norwegian Cabinet Council, on January 11, 1905.
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To § 8. It is stated here that, when. in a matter being dealt with by the Consular administration, the Foreign Minister has given a Consul an order, it is for the Consular administration to observe that, from its side, no order conflicting with it is given to the Consul. It is difficult to understand what is meant by this paragraph, which is without a parallel in the present Consular statutes which do not direct any similar injunction to the Norwegian Consular department. To judge from reference to § 4, it does not seem to have been intended to give the Foreign Minister the right, in whatever be which matter being dealt with by the Consular administration, to stop the function of the latter and to assert his own authority instead; for this would be equivalent to instituting a relation of subordination that no Governmental department can submit to. The intention, then, can only be supposed to have been the following: — to try, in a consular matter, that has assumed a diplomatic aspect or that is simultaneously subject to a consular and a diplomatic treatment, to prevent the Consular administration from arbitrarily trespassing upon the province of the Foreign Minister. It stands to reason that this must not occur. But just because it stands to reason, the precept is superfluous. And what is of more importance: it is calculated to excite indignation. For, as it is obvious that an interference of the said kind must be a manifestation either of want of judgment or of disloyalty, it should be admitted that it is not very appropriate to give in a law, even in an indirect way, an expression to the thought that such qualities may prevail in the department concerned.
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