20 NOVEMBER 1841, Page 11

BRITISH CONSULS.

Tax Times has been thundering against the nomination of the Can- ton &Liar to the office of Consul in Texas, and exhorting the Conservative Government to annul the appointment. Perhaps it may be permitted to suggest, without incurring suspicion of seeking to palliate that very questionable step of the late Ministry, that to revise the whole of our Consular establishment would at once pre- sent less the appearance of any thing personally invidious and con- fer a more certain benefit on the public. The Eenior appointment is not the only job in extremis of the defunct Administration in the Consular department. The ap- pointment of Colonel HODGES in the first place to Servia—a country of whose existence and whereabout the gallant Colonel seems to have been ignorant at the time of his appointment, and his rapid promotion, albeit inexperienced in the discharge of Con- sular duties, first to Alexandria and then to Hamburg, over the heads of experienced public servants, was followed up by the re- moval of Mr. LARKINGS at Alexandria, under a false pretence to make room for Mr. STODART, an aide-de-camp of "Lord pretence,

fighting Consul," as Colonel HODGES has been designated, and to the appointment of another of his followers, Mr. NIELD, to Seanderoon, although equally ignorant of the peculiar business of his office and the customs and language of the country. The nomination of Mr. FONBLANQUE to the post in Servia vacated by the Colonel, and still more, of Mr. RAINSFORD to the Consulship at Santa Fe da Bogota, (perhaps the Whig Member for the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright could throw some light upon the quali- fications of Mr. R.,) are appointments questionable in themselves under any circumstances, but positively indecent considering the time at which they were made.

This list might easily be extended by falling back upon Whig

appointments of Consuls, which, although they do not admit of being challenged on account of the period at which they were made, are quite on a par with the preceding in regard to the atten- tion paid to the fitness of the person for the office, the necessity of the office itself, or the rate of salary. And it might be further swelled by looking into the circumstances under which such Con- suls appointed by the Tories as have survived an interregnum of eleven years were placed in their offices. The crime of the Whigs in their conduct of this department has been that of adhering to the old system of considering not the fitness of the man for the office but the fitness of the office for the man. As the Whigs contrived to get into place by professing a wish to reform all such malepractices, it is quite just that a double odium should attach to them for having persisted in the same line of conduct they blamed in others ; and that the indecent display of the detected hypocrites, bundling up their swindled gains with a "We may as well take the profit since we must bear the shame," as they are about to be turned out of doors, should be indignantly commented on. But the public service is little helped by mere outpourings of virtuous indignation. The system is bad, and the system must be amended. Let Whig and Tory settle between themselves which is most to blame—what the public have an interest in, is security against the malepractices of both.

In 1835, the British Consular staff consisted of 11 Consuls-Ge- neral, 82 Consuls, and 48 Vice-Consuls, receiving salaries ; and of 261 Vice-Consuls unpaid, or receiving only the casual fees of office. The total amount of salaries paid to these officers in 1835 was 61,9501.; and the fees shared among the whole number amounted to about 12,143/. Considering the extent and value of British commerce, and the important functions of the Consulate, the num- ber of persons employed (except in the department of unpaid Vice- Consuls) does not seem excessive ; and the expense of the estab- lishment does not seem to exceed what the commerce of this coun- try might easily and willingly afford, if the Consular duties were adequately performed. One glaring fault in our Consular establishment is the utter want of

care to proportion the number of officials to the business to be trans. acted. If one Consul-General, three salaried and seven unsalaried Vice-Consuls, are deemed sufficient to look after our commercial in- terests in the Hanse Towns, five salaried Consuls, one salaried and two unsalaried Vice-Consuls, must be superfluous in the petty state of Columbia. In Spain and the Spanish Colonies' we have twelve salaried Consuls, one salaried and fifty-eight unsalaried Vice-Con- suls; in the United States, nine salaried Consuls, one salaried and sixteen unsalaried Consuls, appear to be found sufficient. The salaries, too, seem to be deterngned by no scale of proportion to the duties or responsibility of office. In 1828, there were at Port- au-Prince, in Hayti, a Consul-General and Vice-Consul, the former with a salary of 1,2501. per annum, the latter with 5001., for a port into which about 16 British ships, carrying 2,089 tons, might

-enter annually. The Consuls at Fiume and Venice have, the former 4001. a year, for taking charge of 4 small British vessels • carrying 144 tons—the latter 1,0001., for taking care of carrying 1,138 tons. These anomalies are necessary consequences of the - system hitherto acted upon by all parties in power—of consideriug the fitness of the office for the man, not of the man for the office.

This false principle has also filled our Consular offices with in- -competent persons. The duties of a Consul—where he has any- thing to do—are numerous, and often delicate, requiring peculiar acquirements and experience. "A British Consul," says CIIITTY, "in order to be properly qualified for his employment, should take care to make himself master cS the language used by the court and magistracy of the country where be resides, so as to converse with ease upon subjects relating to his duties. If the common people of the port use another, he must acquire that also, that he may be able to settle little differences without troubling the magistracy of the place for the interposition of their authority ; such as accidents happening in the harbour, by ships of one nation running foul of and doing damage to each other. He is to make himself ac- quainted, if he be not already, with the law of nations and treaties, with the tariff or specification of duties on articles imported or ex- ported, and with all the 'municipal ordinances and laws." The duties of the Consul, enumerated by this author, are—" to pre- vent smuggling, and consequent hazard of confiscation or detention of ships, and imprisonment of the masters and mariners"; " to protect from insult or imposition British subjects of every descrip- tion within his jurisdiction "; " when insult or outrage is offered by a British subject," to " order him to give immediate satisfac- tion, and if he refuse, to resign him to the civil jurisdiction of the magistrate, or to the military law of the garrison, nevertheless always acting as counsellor or advocate at his trial, when there is question of life or property," &c. ite. It would be superfluous to ask by what experience or study have some of the parties created Consuls by the moribund MELT1OURXE Administration been pre- pared for the discharge of such difficult functions. But British Consuls quite as incapable are to be found in many foreisn ports. There is scarcely a British merchant who has travelled but can bear witness to this fact. The heads of departments in the office of the Board of Trade can tell what ieliance is to be placed upon their reports. Consuls are required to transmit to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, at the end of every year, a return of the trade carried on at the different ports within their consulates; and to send quarterly accounts of the market-prices of agricultural produce in each week of the preceding three months, with the course of exchange, and any other remarks considered ne- cessary for explaining the state of the market for corn and grain. The Tamboff report, which Lord STANLEY has been so belaboured for quoting, is no unfair specimen of the manner in which these duties are executed. These observations relate to the salaried Consuls—most of them British subjects, possessed of the average character and intelligence of the middle classes of this country : much harsher language would require to be used respecting no inconsiderable proportion of the 261 honorary Vice-Consuls- especially such of them as are natives of the Barbary States, the Levant, and even Spain and Spanish America. The last general defect of the British Consular establishment that it is necessary to notice at present, is the utter want of any in- structions for the Consuls, either as to the extent and nature of their functions or the manner in which they are to discharge them. Holland has its Groot Placaet-boeh ; Venice had its Codice della Veneta Mercantile Marina ; Sweden, Denmark, (in 17490 France, (in 1669, and again in 17590 the United States of North America, (as soon as their national independence was recognized,) have all compiled special instructions for the directions of their Consuls : but British Consuls are left without a guide. A sea-captain, who has bungled one or two voyages of discovery—a lad whose father, finding him unfit for business, exchanges his Parliamentary influ- ence for a Consulship to his son—the travelling toady of a young nobleman, who fancies he can make a good job of excavating and selling antiquities—all or any of them are sent to their special des- tinations with the very explicit direction to guide themselves by "the law of nations" and the practice of the office. And yet, in addition to the ordinary duties of Consuls, these officers are in some countries invested with a very extensive jurisdiction over Bri- tish subjects. Not the least of the many evils that have been oc- casioned by not supplying British Consuls with specific instructions, and confining them strictly to the peculiar duties of their office, is the conversion of the majority of our Levantine Consuls into meddling, mischievous, political intriguers.

The kind of reform necessary in this department of the public service is sufficiently obvious. It is partly personal, partly a matter of organization. There are Consuls whose removal is im- peratively called for on account of their inefficiency or positive mischievousness. And care ought to be taken for the future that none but competent persons are appointed to the office. But even these precautions will be insufficient unless a code of regulations be compiled for the use of British Consuls; the appointments redis- tributed, with a view to dispense with superfluous officers, and insure their presence wherever they are necessary ; the salaries remodelled ; and a certain order of promotion from less to more important situations instituted, in order to stimulate to the dis- charge of duty. The main object of such reforms would be to pro- cure men fit for the office, and to let them know what they have to do. By a judicious subordination of Consuls and Vice-Consuls to Consuls-General, the agency of resident natives, which has hitherto

been an almost unmixed nuittince, might to a limited extent be made available with a view to economy. And some guarantee for personal aptitude might be obtained by exacting from candidates for office proofs of a certain degree of acquaintance with general jurisprudence, international law, and languages, rind some practical experience in mercantile transactions. A man must be educated as a lawyer, physician, or divine, before he is allowed to practice in any of these departments ; but in England, -skill in legislation, di- plomacy, and all departments of public business, is supposed, as Dogberry says of reading and writing, to "conic by nature."