The Nature of the Consular Establishment

Abstract

Of those institutions which have come down to us from remote times, one of the most practical, and the one that, undoubtedly, has played its part most creditably, has been the consular establishment. In the course of its long and laudable history, questions of international law and policy of the gravest importance have been agitated in the chancelleries and in the courts, in reference to it-questions which, to our mind, comprise one of the most delicate chapters in the ever debatable sphere of international jurisprudence. Even at this late day, the question of the juridical nature and powers of the institution is constantly receiving the serious thought of the statesmen, jurists, and scholars of Europe. In the United States alone, of the Great Powers-due, perhaps, to our hitherto cultural and comnmercial insularity-has the study of this inmportant international agency been neglected in a measure short of inexcusable. Up to comnparatively recent times, the literature on the subject has been negligible, and the bench and bar have been left in almost complete darkness regarding the nature of an institution which, in our large commercial and industrial centers, has become a most important local administrative factor. The institution lhad its origin in, and deals primarily with, the necessities of commerce. The commercial interrelations of nations today have become more pronounced and involved than at any other period of the world's history, and the institution of consuls, which is charged principally with a general supervision of the commerce of a nation in foreign parts, should long since have become the object of systematic and intensive study at the hands of our legal scholars. It is to supply this deficiency in the literature of the law that the author has been for sonme time publicly writing on the subject.1