Some Evils of Our Consular Service

THERE have been occasional rumors — more or less vague and misty, it is true, but rumors nevertheless — of an intention to “ remodel ” the consular service of the United States. We are treated quadrennially to an abundant crop of Washington dispatches, in which various enterprising newspaper correspondents announce with becoming gravity that the administration proposes to make a “ few judicious changes ” in the consular personnel, — always, of course, with an eye single to the improvement of the service. It is given out that business efficiency will control the selection ; but when the record is made up, it is invariably seen, curiously enough, that there has been a slight confusion of terms. It is political, and not business efficiency which has prevailed. This is in no wise the fault of the parties or of the men who happen to be charged with their direction ; it is the fault of the system. The one controlling idea behind that system, if indeed such it can be called, is strangely suggestive of that pleasant bit of sentiment Alice was so often wont to meet with in Wonderland, — "Off with their heads.”

It would be impossible, within the scope of an article of this sort, to give anything like a comprehensive statement of the duties of a consular officer. Quite apart from the powers and privileges assigned to him by international law, our tariff laws impose duties of an unusual character. The proper and intelligent discharge of this work alone requires much special information, which can be acquired only by toilsome application. Every invoice must be produced before the consular officer by the manufacturer, exporter, purchaser, or some duly authorized agent. The consul is supposed to control this statement, to be in possession of the facts, and to be able to furnish the customs authorities with what our system calls for, namely, the market value of the goods at the place where they are manufactured or in the district where they are sold. He is required to have samples of the merchandise to be shipped. He is expected, in short, according to the beautiful theory of the law and regulations, to be in a position to check the enormous frauds which are being constantly and successfully perpetrated upon the revenues of this country. At seaport consulates the consul is vested with a sort of police control. He is charged with the settlement of disputes between master and seamen, and with the issuance of bills of health to vessels clearing for the United States. Destitute sailors must be cared for and sent home. Vast commercial and maritime interests, together with the public health, are within the keeping of the men who guard these posts. Questions are constantly arising, even at unimportant places, which call for decision of character and sound judgment. The effects and estates of American citizens dying abroad are entrusted to the consular representative, and must be managed by him for the benefit of the heirs. Reports upon industrial, commercial, financial, and kindred subjects are required to be made from time to time to the Department of State. These reports are issued monthly, and have a wide circulation. As all business men well know, when made by men having an accurate knowledge of a country, its language and resources, they are of great practical value. Every consular officer must have been impressed by the multitudinous inquiries, covering every conceivable subject, which deluged him during his term of office. In addition to these regular and legitimate duties, in many places, incessant and petty demands for information and assistance are made upon consuls by their traveling countrymen. To adjust all these endless difficulties calls for great tact, and oftentimes friendly personal relations with the local authorities. The performance of notarial acts is another function. Legal instruments, of whatever character, which are to be used in this country, must be attested by one of our diplomatic or consular officers. This enumeration is far from complete, but it suffices to show how infinite and varied a consul’s duties are. It shows, too, something else, and that is that no ordinary qualifications will enable their possessor to discharge his trust with success or even credit.

Prior to 1856 all officers were unsalaried. The law of that year, although it has been subsequently amended and extended, is still the foundation upon which our consular service rests. By this bill, salaries were attached to some of the principal posts, and there were various classifications made, which have since been adhered to; although it may be remarked in passing that they have long since utterly lost whatever significance they may once have had ; they no longer furnish any index to the real importance of a post. The substitution of fixed salaries for fees (of which, up to that time, no account had been rendered to the government) was a needed reform. Before this, the incumbents of posts like Liverpool, Aix-la-Chapelle, and Dresden enjoyed princely revenues, in no way commensurate with the services rendered. A few of these old-time fee-paid offices survived, however, and were flourishing less than two decades ago. They are all practically abolished now by the provision which requires official fees in excess of $2500 to be turned over to the Treasury. At present there are few real plums in the consular fruit basket, and their pecuniary value is derived from the class of fees known as unofficial.

Partly because of the peculiar character of our revenue laws, and partly, no doubt, owing to the necessity of providing for the faithful, the number of offices of the lower grades has increased and multiplied of late years at an alarming rate. To many of these places salaries ridiculously inadequate have been attached. By the last annual appropriation bill, the compensation of seventyfive consulates was fixed at $1500. There are still others where the official income is only $1000, or where the fees are but slightly in excess of that sum. It will hardly be seriously contended that either of these amounts is sufficient, with the utmost economy, to defray the actual living expenses, especially when, as usually happens, the officer is accompanied by a family. The inevitable result is, in many cases, that men of slender means, who possess the requisite character and ability, have been debarred from accepting this sort of preferment. By some strange process of reasoning, men whose unfitness for public service is too notorious to make it safe to name them for a domestic berth, but whose backing is too strong to be ignored, have been pitchforked into the foreign service, and there allowed to masquerade as representative Americans, to the discomfiture of their countrymen and the contempt of foreigners.

Here, as in most other cases, the cheapest is not the best, and the experiment has proved a costly one in not a few instances. If the search-light of a vigorous and impartial investigation could be turned upon these low-salaried offices (and there the greatest abuses unquestionably exist), the disclosures would be so damning as to make imperative some immediate and radical reform. The extent to which petty peculation prevails will never be disclosed so long as officers are responsible only to a department hundreds or thousands of miles away. It is a very easy matter to find persons unscrupulous enough to lend themselves, for some trifling compensation or advantage, to the return of fraudulent vouchers. Under such a system detection is next to impossible.

There are a variety of methods in vogue, ingenious often, and questionable always, through which the losses of the government become the gains of some of its sworn defenders. Take the item of rent. The law provides that a sum equal to twenty per cent of a consul’s salary may be appropriated for the rent of an office devoted, in the words of the statute, “ exclusively to the business of the consulate.” Further, the regulations require that the office shall be central and accessible to its patrons. Many consuls combine office and residence, which is unobjectionable in itself, and then, by a species of manipulation which falls little short of legerdemain, contrive to make the official allowance cover the rent of both. It cannot be stated, of course, to what extent the government suffers by this convenient arrangement, but it is safe to say that a tabulated statement of those consulates combining office and residence, and setting forth the true amounts paid for each, would prove at least instructive. The writer knows personally of one case where, upon investigation, it was disclosed that the sum paid for consulate and commodious private residence was $350 per annum. Of this, $300 was charged to the government for “ office rent.” Nor is the office always conveniently situated or accessible. In his zeal to increase his income, more than one consul has hung out the government shield in the outskirts of a city, in a quarter remote from the business section. Mr. De B. Randolph Keim, who was sent out in the early seventies, by President Grant, upon a tour of inspection, mentions one curious case, in his report to the Treasury Department, where he found that an important European seaport consulate was “perched in the loftiest corner of an exceedingly lofty building, and was only to be reached by means of a ladder, or steps, so called, extremely long, and deviating but slightly from a perpendicular. The ascent of this communication with the consulate of the United States at - was a matter requiring the exercise of no small amount of skill, and the descent was certainly not without considerable hazard.” It is fair to add that in this case an inadequate allowance was somewhat responsible for the prevailing state of affairs.

Another favorite practice, no less fraudulent, is the returning of false vouchers for stationery and other office necessaries. This would not seem, at first blush, to be a very fruitful source of revenue. It is probably no exaggeration to say, however, that there is scarcely a consul who has not found evidences of this kind of jobbery on the part of some predecessor. Not very long ago, an old and experienced officer of the service was waited upon, shortly after taking charge of a new post, by a local tradesman, most anxious to dispose of a lot of stationery all stamped and ready for office use. Upon inquiry, it came out that this was only one of many like munificent orders given by the principal in charge some years before. This particular order was for three hundred dollars’ worth of stationery ; and as it was not filled before the thrifty incumbent of the office was relieved of his trust, his successor refused to sanction what had been only too palpably a job. In the end the dealer was glad to accept what the paper would have been worth as old junk without the headings, and that was about twelve dollars. Instances of this kind are by no means rare. Even the postage account is not overlooked. Taking the returns as a criterion, it would seem as if correspondence at some of the most obscure points could be disposed of only by an expert corps of stenographers and typewriters. One accommodating official, when it was suggested by the Department that eighty dollars for stamps during the quarter was somewhat excessive for a small post, promptly wrote to inquire whether forty dollars would be satisfactory. These are merely single illustrations of a list which might be sensibly enlarged ; but however instructive, it is hardly pleasant reading. The indirect drain upon the revenues which these corrupt and disreputable practices entail is in any event very considerable in the aggregate, even allowing for the great majority of offices which are conscientiously administered. In 1891 and 1892 the deficiencies in the contingent expense account amounted for each year to over $75,000, and had to be supplied by subsequent appropriations. Had anything like an efficient supervision existed in the consular service, neither of these items would have appeared in the deficiency bills for those years.

The creation of so many consular agencies is open to very serious objection. They have, broadly speaking, no valid or legitimate reason for existence, save perhaps — and this practice will not bear close scrutiny — in those cases where they help to increase the meagre salary of some consul. But the whole system, as it is at present conducted, is vicious and debauching in the extreme. The establishment of independent offices at most of the important points, in Europe at least, the excellent railway facilities which now exist everywhere, and the custom of permitting exporters to appoint agents living in the place where the consular office is situated render almost unnecessary these subordinate offices. Their total abolition, except in a few instances, would increase the efficiency of the service and improve its discipline. Upon this point there ought to be no room for two opinions.

The nature of these agencies is but little understood. They are created ostensibly for the convenience of local merchants at points where the trade with this country is too inconsiderable to justify a principal office. The usual method is to present a petition to the Department of State, signed by many residents of the place to be benefited by the establishment of the agency. This is nominally done in most instances. In reality, the consul within whose jurisdiction the agency is to be established, and to whose fostering care it is to be committed, is mainly instrumental in having the petition drawn up. It is another case where the cat’s accommodating paw pulls the chestnuts out of the fire for some thrifty monkey. The compensation is derived entirely from fees. The agent is allowed to retain a sum not to exceed $1000, while the supervising consul is allowed by law not more than $1000 for all the agencies under his charge, not counting, however, certain other emoluments of an unofficial character. Very often he actually gets much more. It becomes simply a matter of private arrangement between the agent and the consul, who appoints and dismisses his subordinate at pleasure, the Department seldom interfering. But this double drain upon the receipts is not all. The agent is usually an alien, knowing little of the spirit of our institutions. To him undervaluation frauds and blanket invoices are terms without meaning. He can have but little reason to protect and promote American interests. Willful disobedience of the regulations has no terrors for him. It would be inaccurate to say that the office means nothing; it may mean a great deal. Business and personal advantages may often he reaped by subservience to some powerful local magnate, whose interests are unalterably opposed to those of the remote foreign government which the agent represents. Indeed, it is no unusual thing to find the agent himself actively engaged in doing business with the United States. The anomaly of such a position was forcibly summed up by the lion. R. R. Hitt, in a recent debate upon the diplomatic and consular appropriation hill in the House of Representatives. Mr. Hitt’s long connection with the foreign service of this country entitles him to speak with authority. He said: “As a consular officer certifying invoices, he sees all the shipments and all the prices; in fact, all the details of the business of other business men who are his rivals. He is an authorized official spy. More than this, as he certifies to his own invoices, it is his interest to put the valuations or prices of goods of his own firm at the lowest possible figure, in order to have to pay a low duty ; in other words, his interests are directly hostile to those of the Revenue Department of the United States. It is a bad, it is an unbusinesslike principle to place a servant in charge of business where his interest is directly the reverse of the employer’s. We should have Americans to take charge of the business of their country.”

Hampered by such a system, it is small wonder that the conscientious consul comes, after a time, to understand that it is bootless to try to check the operations of the thieves who flourish on both sides of the water, and who have reduced undervaluation to a science. Strict supervision, under such circumstances, becomes as ridiculous as a farce in a comic opera. It is never really difficult to find an agent who will gladly legalize an improper invoice for the sake of the fee, and say nothing. Offices of this character have no right to exist. Wherever the fees are large enough to make an agency self-sustaining, it should be detached from the principal office, and an intelligent, progressive American should be put in charge of it. In the great majority of cases, the revenue interests of the government would be better guarded and a more economical administration insured by uniting the subordinate with the principal office. If this should be deemed inexpedient, at least something would be accomplished if the Department itself were to exercise a more direct control over the agent. Certainly, this would in great measure relieve these consular agencies of the stigma, now too often justly resting upon them, of being mere sources of “ revenue only.” But, unfortunately, the hope of improvement at this point is too remote to be seriously considered. The truth is, there is a practical obstacle which effectually blocks the way to all reform in this direction. That obstacle, already hinted at, is this: Each appointee is assigned to a post estimated to be worth so much a year, — say $1500 in salary and $1500 from agencies. If the office be taken in liquidation of some “claim,” the discontinuance of the agencies would be regarded as a breach of contract. This circumstance alone must prevent the wholesale abolition of these agencies, so worse than useless to the government, but so profitable to the supervising consul.

Equally prolific in abuses is the custom of nominating citizens of the country in which the office is placed to be what is known as “ merchant consuls.” These officers are put in charge of posts to which no salaries attach, and where the fees are next to nothing. The same objections apply to them, and with equal force, as to alien agents. They enjoy most of the prerogatives of a regular consul, and share few of his responsibilities. Their acts are entitled to full faith before our law. However honest their intentions, their allegiance to their native country and their sympathy for their own countrymen render their services of doubtful utility. There are over a score of officials of this stripe now in the service. Five are in Spain alone.

No prevision being made by law for the separate salary of a vice-consul, who acts principally in the absence of his chief, this post is generally filled by some local merchant, speaking English more or less indifferently, who is willing, for the added social or business prestige, to serve for a trifling consideration. As he is of course a resident, and therefore seldom changed, he comes in time to acquire a knowledge of the routine work, which easily makes him indispensable to the nominal head, who is pretty sure to find himself literally helpless amid the confusion of strange duties transacted in a stranger tongue. Nevertheless, this system, despite the drawbacks which will immediately suggest themselves, has worked surprisingly well. The history of very few offices, however, is entirely free from the malversation of an unfit vice-consul. Unfortunately, the opportunities of such an official for doing harm have not always been curtailed with the canceling of his commission. Thus, it was recently reserved for the principal officer at a metropolitan centre to make the rather startling discovery that he was competing with a dismissed vice-consul, who had abstracted a seal from the office, and was doing a thriving notarial business on his own account at “cut” rates. Some years ago, it was officially reported that a number of American vice-consulates, no allusion to which was made in the State Department register, had been discovered in Egypt, much as the Aruwhami dwarfs, mentioned by Herodotus, were discovered in Central Africa by Stanley. It was also alleged that a profitable traffic had been conducted in these offices, and that they had been sold for sums ranging from $1000 to $5000.

Any comprehensive system of reform must include some method which shall provide for the training of a number of American vice - consuls. A more careful apportionment of the clerical allowance, together with the additional amount which might be saved by a more economic expenditure of the contingent expense appropriation, would be quite sufficient to pay salaries to a number of capable young men who would be attracted to the service — even if the compensation were small — if there were any hope of retention and ultimate promotion. This suggestion has already been made, and is worthy of consideration. Such a plan, once adopted, would furnish the nucleus and means of gradually putting the service upon a stable basis.

Frequent and angry outcries have been made against the consular rules, which are supposed to hamper trade. In an article which I have recently seen, the regulations were denounced as “ oppressive and irrational.” However oppressive they may be to some people, they are not irrational, if the ad valorem system is to continue to be, as it has been, an important feature of our revenue legislation, and if the legalization of invoices is for the purpose of assisting customs officers. When traced to their source, most of these lamentations proceed from persons who are vitally and pecuniarily interested in promoting greater “ freedom ” of trade. There unquestionably exists cause for complaint, but it comes from making a hard-and-fast set of rules fit, like a Procrustes bed, all classes of goods, whether ad valorem, specific, or free. There is, for example, no good reason why exportations coming plainly under the last two heads should be attended by the same requirements as those which ought properly and justly to accompany the legalization of ad valorem goods. To enforce strict compliance with the provision requiring goods to be invoiced before being shipped, as is the case with sugar, for instance, when that commodity is reasonably certain to be on the free or specific duty list, and when the different lots that may go to make up one shipment are likely to come from widely diverging points, is at once absurd and farcical. To attempt to carry out the law in a case like this simply encourages successful subterfuge, which brings the whole law into contempt. If some latitude and discretion were allowed consular officers in these matters, it would be productive of less friction and more respect.

Very different is it, on the other hand, with the average manufactured article. If the contention of some importers and their alien allies be conceded, it does away at one stroke with the great majority of inland consulates. To allow the exporter to consolidate in one invoice at Hamburg, we will say, goods made in Prague, BudaPesth, and Chemnitz would reduce the whole theory of consular inspection of goods to inanity. The consul at the seaport would, in practice, have no other resource than to accept unqualifiedly the statements made to him by a person whose interest it was to get his goods through the New York custom house at the minimum duty. As well abolish the empty form of requiring invoices at once, and save the incident annoyance and expense.

Nor does it seem as if the personal presentation of invoices by the shipper or his agent were an act calculated to imperil the comity of nations. It is no hardship to the exporter himself, because he has the alternative of appointing a responsible agent. If it is expedient to require an oath, it is certainly worth while to have it taken in the manner prescribed by universal law and custom. The mail or an irresponsible messenger would hardly do for this purpose. This is not affirming that there are not some grave defects in the present customs administrative act. Experience has shown, I think, that some of the requirements regarding the declarations accompanying consigned goods have proved vexatious and ineffective. Indeed, the whole consignment system is sadly in need of a legislative overhauling. The shipper, who is generally the owner of the merchandise and a foreigner, states distinctly in his declaration that he is willing to accept the prices which he gives in his invoice. If he is telling the truth, he ought to be glad to have a consul or an officer of the customs publish to everybody who handles such goods the place where they are to he had, and the price which is demanded. If he is telling a deliberate falsehood, he ought to be prevented from doing business on consignment, because his principal object is then to cheat our customs revenue. If the prices in consigned invoices are secret, how can any one prove that an American citizen is not willing and anxious to pay even higher ? As it is at present conducted, systematic consignment is systematic fraud on our revenue, and systematic injustice to all honest merchants importing into the United States. If the secrecy now surrounding invoices of this class were abolished, and consuls were authorized to disclose prices and samples to legitimate buyers, or collectors of customs were required to make public at stated periods these consignments, omitting perhaps all names, the undervaluations now encouraged under this system would die in three months. To revise the administrative act, nevertheless, along the line of least possible inconvenience to the exporter would be fatuous in the extreme.

But no amount of captious criticism of the regulations, no matter how instructive, can do anything more than expose surface defects. The real trouble lies deeper, and the single word “ spoils ” lays it bare. It is this system, prolific of so much evil at home, which has also worked untold injury abroad. When this is remembered, all the contradictions, all the absurdities, all the vagaries, which have marked the history of the consular service become clear. That an inferior class of men should have been selected to represent us has followed as a necessary sequence. There have been, and are, many notable exceptions, and none more conspicuous than the lamented consul-general at Berlin, William Hayden Edwards ; but in the last analysis it must be conceded that, in its personnel, our service suffers by comparison with that of other countries. Incompetency has done much to discredit and impair it; venality and its sinister accessories have done the rest. The new consul who inquired of the predecessor whom he was relieving “ what in h—l an invoice was, anyhow,” showed at least one merit, — a commendable tendency to acquire useful definitions. Some officers have not always regarded their work or their instructions so seriously. Several years ago, a consular officer learned that invoices belonging to him were being legalized regularly at a neighboring consulate. He thereupon wrote a friendly official note to his colleague, calling attention to the irregularity. The reply came, expressing regret, but explaining that he (the colleague) had no means of knowing whether certain places were in his district or not. Somewhat puzzled, the consul, whose receipts had suffered by this encroachment, suggested a reference to the large map of the district, which had been supplied a short time before by the Department for the express purpose of settling just such claims. It then came out that the colleague did have some faint recollection of such a map, which hung on the office wall upon his arrival. He later remembered that it had struck him as being “ pretty,” and he had consequently carefully shipped it home to a friend as a souvenir. Worst of all, these examples present no isolated cases. A catalogue of these edifying incidents might be compiled, and it may safely be set down that as long as the consular service is freely made a political Botany Bay, so long will it continue to be a storehouse of grotesque incidents.

It is one of the few hopeful signs visible, in connection with the foreign service, that it has of late attracted the attention of solid and patriotic business men. The Boston Chamber of Commerce has taken the matter up with much earnestness, and so have other commercial organizations. Agitation in this direction, if it is not arrested, can accomplish much, and, if systematic, may impel Congress to action. The National Board of Trade, at its recent meeting in Washington, adopted resolutions in favor of a non-partisan service, and appointed a committee to advance the reform. All this is encouraging, and out of it may come something tangible. If the viceconsuls and more important agents could be placed within the classified list and fixity of tenure guaranteed by law, many of the sore spots now only too painfully apparent upon the body of our foreign service would be at once effectually healed. There are no practical obstacles in the path of this reform which a friendly Congress may not brush aside.

When, however, we come to consider the case of the consuls themselves, we meet a serious difficulty, and one that is very generally lost sight of by many earnest and well-meaning friends of consular reform. The Constitution provides that the President “ shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate shall appoint, ambassadors, other public ministers, and consuls.” Here, then, the President is vested with a constitutional right which no congressional enactment can change. Reform at this point, if it comes at all, can come only from within the Department itself. In other words, the initiative must be taken by the Executive. It must be left to him to prescribe the conditions under which appointments shall take place ; and no matter how excellent those conditions, his successor could of course amend them, or abolish them altogether, if he saw fit. It may be safely asserted, nevertheless, that if regulations governing the appointment, promotion, and removal of officers in the consular service were once put in force, whether at the instance of the President himself or at the suggestion of the lawmaking branch, they would be permanently retained in some form. The tide of public sentiment would set too strongly to be resisted.

The bill recently introduced by Senator Morgan obviates this constitutional difficulty by providing that the President himself shall be a member of the commission to be appointed to remodel the foreign service. This would give all the force of departmental regulations to the recommendations of such a commission. The bill itself (which is not understood to emanate from the Senate) contains many crudities, but it is right in principle. It may not become a law, as it ought to do in some form, but the interest taken in the whole subject by no less a personage than the chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs is an encouraging omen.

Undoubtedly, the highest efficiency would be obtained by a competitive examination, with reasonable safeguards which would allow the appointing power a proper latitude in the selection of candidates from the eligible list. This failing, the next best thing would be the substitution of a mere pass examination, and the assignment of a quota by States, in much the same manner as appointments at West Point and Annapolis now take place. In discussing this precise point at the recent meeting of the National Board of Trade in Washington, Mr. Theodore Roosevelt said : —

“ I would divide the consuls, as far as may be, into grades, according to their salaries and the importance of the duties they have to perform. Then it should he provided that no men could be appointed to any higher grade save by promotion from the one immediately below it, and that before promotion he must serve a minimum period of, say, a year in that grade. Then, before receiving his appointment, he should be required to undergo a rigid examination — non-competitive — at the State Department upon his knowledge of foreign languages, and to test his fitness not merely for the low post he is seeking, but his fitness to enter a service where he may by diligence and industry rise to the very highest positions. ”

The suggestion of a non-competitive examination has much to commend it. Tact, discretion, sound judgment, and good manners cannot be scientifically measured by any scale of percentages, and some such system as this would obviate the objections which are sure to arise to a purely competitive examination. The examinations might be conducted under the direction of the Civil Service Commission, already established for that purpose, or take place under the supervision of a board selected by the State Department. It would perhaps be imprudent at first to put all consulates — especially those of the highest grades — under the operation of a civil service law. Fully two thirds, at least, of the present offices might still be advantageously placed within the classified service, and many of the unimportant posts ought, logically, to be reduced to the rank of vice-consulates, a system which other countries have very generally followed.

There is danger, though, that in striving to attain perfection in this matter the visionary may obscure the practical. Reform rhetoric may impressively hurl anathemas at the head and front of the present offending system. It may burn endless incense at the shrine of an ideal service, and still the desired reform be several æons away. The history of most changes for the better has been marked by piecemeal concession wrested from stubborn resistance. If the way of the transgressor is hard, the path of his critic is even more thorny. It is vain to hope that any topsy-turvy scheme will commend itself to our doubting Salons. The time is not ripe. It is to be feared that there are still too many political mortgages to be honored by drafts at the expense of a good-natured public.

But what is most sadly needed, no matter what the system of appointment, and what ought, moreover, to be easier of realization than any other project, is some responsible system of supervision. It is a singular and astounding fact that so important a branch of the public service has been so long allowed to drift and shift for itself. The Treasury, the Interior, and the Post Office departments — which are by no means conspicuous for adhesion to civil service rules — all have their inspectors. No department with any regard for the public interest could dispense with them. This is undisputed. Take a conspicuous case in point. The early history of our Indian agencies is filled with accounts of scandalous jobs and corruption of the most flagrant type ; and it was not until a system of inspection was adopted that these irregularities were arrested. If the teachings of experience have made mandatory this system of checks upon domestic officers, who are constantly exposed to the criticisms of a vigilant press, how much more necessary becomes the supervision of officers who are far removed from such wholesome restraint! No plan which could be devised is more feasible or would result in more lasting good. A few inspectors, judiciously chosen, would not only much more than pay for themselves by checking reckless extravagance and waste, but they would vindicate the wisdom of their selection in a way not to be measured by dollars and cents. Their existence would first of all insure the keeping of the consular records and accounts in an intelligent and orderly manner, which is now not always the case. Some of the gaps to be found in the archives of many offices can scarcely be accounted for on any theory of natural depravity. The knowledge that an inspector might drop in at any moment, without the ceremony of a formal notice, would put a stop to the almost incessant globe-trotting expeditions of many excellent gentlemen, who now go abroad for the purpose of educating their children, of studying art, of taking a vacation at the public expense, — in short, for every conceivable object save that for which they were commissioned. These men have no compunctions about returning grossly inaccurate quarterly statements of the time during which they were absent from their posts, while they are drawing their salaries with the usual punctuality and dispatch. The real work is of course done by some poorly paid clerk, to the great detriment of the interests of all concerned. But the inauguration of a system of inspection would do something more. It would elevate the morale of the service, and bring about a certain esprit de corps, as nothing else could. This could be accomplished, even with all the raw material with which inspectors would be condemned to work (so long as the present method of appointment prevails) ; for it is an interesting and instructive fact that there are at the present moment scarcely more than a dozen officers (thirteen, to be exact) — and they are usually filling unimportant posts — who have seen beyond a decade of service at the places where they are now stationed. If we include the exceeding few who have been transferred, it would be found that there are probably not over a score who have served continuously for the period mentioned. And this in a service of over three hundred members.

It is nothing that many able and conscientious officers, who have taken their families abroad at considerable expense, have been obliged to return after a brief term of service, and just as they were beginning to be of some use to those who sent them. The pathetic hardships of these removals are well known. They are of too common occurrence to excite much interest, whether the victim be at home or abroad. It is evident that what there is of sentiment in all these customs — which ought to be un-American, but, unfortunately for us, are everywhere recognized as being distinctively American — does not quicken the public conscience or arouse a righteous indignation. Something else is needed, and it will not be supplied until the American people can be persuaded to look into their accounts to see how needlessly they are being plundered. So long as human nature is as it is, so long will even importers, who so often have, as Lowell said, “ no fatherland but the till,” with the aid of their alien allies, resort to every device to enter their goods at the lowest possible figure. These devices may not always be dishonest, but there is a pretty well grounded belief in the public mind that undervaluations on no petty scale have taken place in the past. There is nothing to indicate a cessation of these practices in the near future. The aggregate amount lost to the government in this way is almost incalculable, but some idea of it may be gathered when it is remembered that an increase of only two and a half per cent in invoice valuations at the little industrial centre of Crefeld alone would result in an annual accession to the customs receipts of $150,000. It is beyond any mere conjecture that an addition of at least live per cent could be brought about and maintained at many posts by competent and trained officers. On this basis, then, the conclusion is irresistible that the entire expense of a first-class foreign service could be more than defrayed by the amount now actually lost every year through incapacity and ignorance.

In the interests of public economy, in the interests of American commerce, which has the right to be represented by intelligent men in foreign countries, and last of all in the interests of our own good name as a people, it is high time that we should dispense with an antiquated and a worn-out system, and substitute something more in harmony with modern ideas. Foreigners of an observing and a critical turn of mind never fail to record something about that which Mr. Bryce calls the “ patriotism and demonstrative national pride ” of the American people. It is not a little strange that a nation of which this is so freely said has not long ago grown restive under abuses which have fastened themselves with “ hooks of steel ” upon its system of government. With our natural and well-defined hatred of an official caste and bureaucracy, it is perhaps not surprising that attempts have been made to defend the spoils system. But there is one branch of the public service where no apology can be made for its toleration, because none is possible on any conceivable ground, and that is the consular service of the United States. Permanency and stability are the imperious needs of that service. Divorce appointments and removals from the present miserable exigencies of partisan politics, remove them from the “ cockpit of faction,” and it can no longer be said in reproach of the American consul, as was once said of our average minister, that he “ fleeth as a shadow, and hath no abiding place.”

Albert H. Washburn.