and permitted the French negotiator to modify the plan in several important particulars before the convention was finally signed on July 29, 1784.

Although congress had changed its opinion as to the desirability of concluding a consular convention, and had even forwarded instructions to Franklin to delay signing, the convention when received was referred to Jay, then minister for foreign affairs, for examination. It was found to be objectionable in several respects in that it was not only not in accord with the plan agreed upon by congress, but gave to consuls jurisdiction over the vessels of their respective nations which would enable them to arrest and return to the home country any vessel, master or seaman, to regulate emigration, and to exercise powers of a judicial nature which belonged properly to the courts. Personally Jay was unfavorable to a consular convention, but in the circumstances he recommended the negotiation of a new treaty which, after much delay, was signed on November 14, 1788, by Jefferson, who had succeeded Franklin as minister. The convention was unanimously ratified by the senate the following year.

Jefferson returned to the United States and assumed the duties of secretary of state on March 22, 1790, and upon him fell the task of organizing a consular system. His work was attended by many practical difficulties. Although congress had for several years recognized the need of consular officers and provision for their appointment had been made by the constitution which had been lately adopted, there was no law or regulation which in any way outlined a consular system or set forth the nature of consular duties. Even the policy of providing salaries for consuls inaugurated when Palfrey and Barclay had been elected to serve in France, had been abandoned by the resolution of 1785, which, in opposition to the repeated protests of Franklin and Adams, had combined the diplomatic and consular services by conferring the title of consul general upon ministers and chargés d'affaires. The lack of any consistent policy on the part of congress was shown three months later when a consul was named for Canton, China, who was to serve without salary.

It was in this condition with no fixed method of appointment or compensation that Jefferson found the consular system when he assumed the direction of our foreign relations. The requirements of our commerce and shipping made it desirable to increase the number

of consuls without waiting for the enactment of laws, and in less than three months after Jefferson became secretary of state eight persons were appointed to consular offices, and by the latter part of August, 1790, sixteen consular officers, six consuls and ten vice consuls had been appointed. They were to receive no compensation, but were permitted to engage in trade.

Jefferson undertook to define their duties in his circular of August 26, 1790 (State Department, Foreign Letters, p. 399), addressed to the consuls and vice consuls of the United States. He directed them to report to him every six months in detail concerning American vessels that may have entered or cleared from their respective ports; to supply him from time to time with political and commercial information of interest to the United States; and to report upon all military preparations that might take place in their ports, and should war appear imminent, to notify American merchants and vessels in order that they might be on their guard. Consuls were authorized to appoint agents to represent them in the several parts of their districts.

At the beginning of the next session of congress, the president asked the attention of that body to the consular convention with France and the necessity for legislation to carry its stipulations into effect, and also to the importance of providing regulations for the exercise of consular jurisdiction, whether permitted by treaty or by friendly indulgence. Although a bill for the purpose indicated in the president's address had been pending in congress, the short session passed without anything being done, and it was not until April 14, 1792 (1 Statutes at Large, p. 256), that a law was enacted. This law, primarily for the purpose of carrying into effect the consular convention with France, was the first legislative attempt to define the powers and duties of consular officers. It authorized them to receive protests and declarations of captains, masters, crews, passengers and merchants who might be American citizens; to authenticate copies of documents; to take charge of and settle the estates of American citizens dying abroad and leaving no legal representative; to care for American vessels that might become stranded on the coasts of their consulates; to receive certain fees for authenticating documents and settling estates; to relieve distressed American seamen, and to require masters of American vessels under penalty of a fine to convey such seamen to their homes without charge on condition that the seamen should work

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during the passage; and to require the master of a vessel sold in a foreign port to provide for the return of the seamen thereon. The act also required consuls to give bond for the faithful discharge of their duties and obligations; permitted the payment of salaries of $2000 each to consuls in the Barbary States in case it should become necessary to appoint them; and authorized consuls to exercise such additional powers as might result from the nature of the office or from any treaty or convention under which they might act.

The duties of consuls in relation to seamen and vessels were enlarged by the act of February 28, 1803, and later acts, and the additional duty of administering oaths to exporters of merchandise upon which an ad valorem duty was collected in American ports was added by the act of March 1, 1823, but the act of 1792 continued for more than half a century to be the only law of importance in relation to consular officers.

While congress had failed to make provision for anything in the nature of a consular system, Jefferson before his retirement had established general rules in accordance with which appointments were made and consular business conducted. In harmony with the views long before expressed by Franklin, Adams, Jay and himself, he adopted the principle that none but American citizens should represent the United States as consuls. If it was found that no American citizen was available at a port where it was desirable to appoint a consular officer, a reputable foreign subject was chosen and made vice consul. As with the exception of consulates in the Barbary States no salaries were provided for these offices, the Americans available for appointment were as a rule engaged in mercantile or other pursuits.

In the appointment of merchant consuls, the United States had merely followed the practice of some of the continental nations, and was forced to contend with conditions much less favorable than those with which the older European nations had to deal. By reason of long continued foreign intercourse, many subjects of those nations resided in foreign ports, were well established in trade, and were men of influence and responsibility. Commercial interests suffered little when confided to their care, and official remuneration bore a less important relation to their usefulness as consular representatives. But it was different with the United States. The nation was new and our people had few prosperous commercial houses permanently estab

lished abroad. The government was therefore unable for the most part to select from among its citizens in the various foreign ports persons whose circumstances enabled them to hold the office of consul and to discharge the duties in an efficient and satisfactory manner for the slender and uncertain emoluments derived from fees. A large majority of the persons appointed desired the office of consul for their own personal benefit. When an American citizen undertook to establish himself abroad in some commercial occupation in a port where the United States was not represented by a consular officer, it was usual for him to seek the prestige with the consequent aid to his business enterprises which his appointment as consul would afford. With the help of influential friends, whose solicitations it was not easy to resist, he was generally able to bring about his appointment. It was not unnatural that in many cases men so appointed should have regarded the office primarily as an aid in building up a profitable business often at the expense of other merchants in the port over whom the office of consul gave them undue advantage. Not infrequently their business ventures proved unsuccessful, and the emoluments of the consular office far below what they were led to expect. Alone in a foreign land amid such difficulties as these it is not strange that some of them were forced to resort to means of eking out a livelihood which injured and frequently destroyed their official usefulness.

The growth of the trade and the development of the commercial intercourse of the United States with foreign countries were accompanied by new duties and responsibilities for consular officers. In its desire to promote the interests of shipping, congress was gradually enlarging consular jurisdiction over shipmasters and seamen, and in conferring these additional powers, without at the same time providing more effective means of exercising control over consuls, great opportunity for misconduct was afforded. Moreover, there was no uniform rule as to the manner in which these services were to be performed or the fees that should be charged for them. Some consuls charged one fee and some another, and the fact that the fees belonged to the officers collecting them gave encouragement to the growing practice of charging as large a fee as could without too great difficulty be collected and led to endless controversies with masters of vessels and citizens in foreign ports.

The unsatisfactory conditions impressed those in authority with the necessity for a law to place the consular service upon a more dignified basis and make it reasonably amenable to administrative control. The early advocates of reform directed their efforts toward the accomplishment of three things: (1) a revision and extension of the schedule of fees; (2) a more precise definition of the duties and powers of consuls; and (3) the substitution of salaries for the unsatisfactory and inadequate compensation derived from fees.

As early as 1816 a fruitless effort had been made by the secretary of state to have fixed salaries for at least the more important consuls, but it fell to the lot of Mr. Van Buren, secretary of state in 1830, to begin the series of reform movements which were to continue for so many years and finally result in the enactment of the general law of 1856. On February 10, 1830 (Senate Report No. 57, 21st cong., 2d session), and again the following year he called attention of the senate committee on commerce to the necessity of at least defining the fees to be collected by consuls. He described existing practices which he said produced great inconvenience and embarrassment to consuls, led to unpleasant collisions between them and their fellow citizens and to endless criminations and recriminations on both sides which tended to injure the national character of the United States in the estimation of foreigners, and to bring the consular system into disrepute. Before preparing his recommendations Mr. Van Buren had obtained reports from many of the consuls, and with his communication of February 1, 1831 (Senate Report No. 57, 21st cong., 2d session), he transmitted a report from Daniel Strobel, then consul at Bordeaux, who compared the American system with the systems adopted by foreign nations, and pointed out that Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal and Russia, at that time the principal commercial nations, had succeeded in greatly improving their consular systems by reducing the number of fees, paying their consuls by fixed salaries, and prohibiting them from engaging in trade.

At the beginning of the next session of congress, President Jackson called the particular attention of that body to the desirability of speedily revising all the laws relating to consuls, and announced his purpose of communicating at a later date a full report upon the subject from the secretary of state. (Richardson: Messages and State Papers, vol. ii, p. 554.) Meanwhile, Mr. Van Buren had been succeeded by