diplomatic representatives, together with certain prerogatives of jurisdiction, the right of worship, and, to some extent, the right of asylum. These immunities extend to exemption from both the civil and criminal jurisdiction of the country to which they are sent, and protect their households and the effects covered by the consular residence. Their personal property is exempt from taxation, though it may be otherwise with real estate or movables not connected with the consulate. Generally, they are exempt from all personal impositions that arise from the character or quality of a subject or citizen of the country."

Consular Regulations of the United States (1896), § 75, p. 29.

Such extraterritoriality as consuls enjoy in the Mohammedan states, for example, is due to the fact that these states are not admitted to a full community of international law with the nations of Christendom, and not to the consular office. The institution of consuls originated in the mere fact of differences in law and religion, at that period of modern Europe in which it was customary for distinct nationalities, coexisting under the same general political head, and even in the same city, to maintain each a distinct municipal government. Such municipal colonies, organized by the Latin Christians, and especially by those of the Italian Republics in the Levant, were administered, each by its consuls, or proper municipal magistrates, whose commercial relation to the business of their countrymen was a mere incident of their general municipal authority. The authorization of a consul to communicate directly with the government near which he resides does not endow him with the diplomatic privileges of a minister.

Cushing, At. Gen., 1855, 7 Op. 342.

"Your dispatch No. 61, of the 16th ultimo, relative to the question of precedence which has arisen among the representatives of foreign powers of Tangier, has been received. In reply I have to state that every nation may consult its own pleasure in regard to the grade of its diplomatic or other representative in a foreign country. That grade must be presumed to be measured by its sense of the importance of its relations with the power to which the representative may be accredited.

"Consuls have diplomatic functions in the Barbary States. The United States consul is accredited to the Emperor of Morocco. His predecessors were accredited in the same way, and the consuls at Tripoli, Tunis, and in Egypt are respectively accredited to the heads of the governments of those countries."

Mr. Seward, Sec. of State, to Mr. McMath, consul at Tangier, Dec. 30, 1868, Dip. Cor. 1868, II. 172.

In extreme cases, where the privileges of a consulate are invaded, the flag of the United States may be struck by the consul, and all friendly intercourse with the authorities of the residence suspended.

Mr. Webster, Sec. of State, to Mr. McCauley, April 20, 1852, MS. Inst.
Barbary Powers, XIV. 132.

"According to the terms of the treaties confirmed by those of the exequaturs, granted by the Beys of Tunis to the consular officers in Tunis, the honors, privileges, and prerogatives they had a right to were the following: Right to put a flagstaff and flag on the consular house; right to have one or more janissaries appointed by the Bey; to be exempted from civil or criminal jurisdiction; to be exempted from custom-house duties upon personal effects for the consul and family; to have the right of refuge or inviolability of the consular house and official documents; right to the clause of the most favored nation; exemption from taxes upon the consular house. These privileges have lasted for centuries."

Mr. Chapelié, vice-consul at Tunis, to Mr. Uhl, Assist. Sec. of State, Feb. 12, 1895, For. Rel. 1895, I. 415.

With reference to the action taken by the consular body at Tunis, in regard to their having been invited collectively, through their dean, instead of individually, to attend a garden party given by the French resident, in his dual capacity as minister of the Bey, the Department of State said that, as the incident did not suggest any discrimination against the United States representative, there seemed to be no serious ground of complaint on the part of this government. (Mr. Adee, Act. Sec. of State, to Mr. Chapelié, No. 471, July 11, 1895, MS. Inst. France, XXIII. 129.)

In December, 1899, the consul at Smyrna sent his cavass to Magnesia, a place 30 miles distant, to recover certain merchandise which belonged to A. S. Avedikian, third dragoman of the consulate, and which had been sequestered by order of a Turkish court, without notice to the consul, in a building leased by Avedikian. The cavass proceeded to Magnesia, broke the judicial seals on the building, and entered into possession. Two days later some Turkish soldiers, acting under orders of the governor, entered the house and arrested him, took from him his arms, and sent him in custody to Smyrna, where after four hours' further detention he was released.

The United States legation at Constantinople protested against the arrest of the cavass and demanded the return of his arms, which was done. In reporting the incident, Mr. Griscom, chargé, said: ̧

"In regard to the arrest of the cavass, I would beg to point out that the injury to the government of the United States is serious. The cavasses are privileged persons, free from arrest under the Turkish law, whose function is to insure the safety of the persons

and property of the official representatives of foreign powers in the Turkish Empire. If they may be arbitrarily arrested and imprisoned, their value ceases.”

In a later report he said:

"In regard to the arrest of the cavass, I have had the honor already to submit to the Department the question of a demand for reparation. Although the prestige of our consulate at Smyrna has suffered and the cavass has been severely humiliated, yet I can not but feel that the offense received by the United States government is offset by the arbitrary action of the consul in breaking the seal of a Turkish court without first exhausting all diplomatic and administrative intervention. There is little doubt but that the incident could have been avoided had the consul referred the question to this legation at any time during the fifteen days that elapsed between the illegal placing of the sequester, December 10, and the breaking of the seals of the court, December 25. I would therefore respectfully suggest that the incident be dropped without further demands upon the Porte."

For. Rel. 1900, 924, 932.

3. PROTECTION DUE TO CONSULAR OFFICERS.

§ 704.

"As in war the bearers of flags of truce are sacred, or else wars would be interminable, so in peace ambassadors, public ministers, and consuls, charged with friendly national intercourse, are objects of especial respect and protection, each according to the rights belonging to his rank and station."

President Fillmore, annual message, Dec. 2, 1851, Richardson's Messages,
V. 118.

See, to the same effect, Mr. Webster, Sec. of State, to Señor Calderon de
la Barca, Spanish min., Nov. 13, 1851, 6 Webster's Works, 507.

As a consul is not a public minister, a riot before his house by a tumultuous assembly, requiring him to give up certain persons supposed to be resident with him, is not an offense within that section of the act of April 30, 1790, which prescribes the punishment for any infraction of "the law of nations, by offering violence to the person of an ambasardor or other public minister." (Bradford, At. Gen., 1794, 1 Op. 41.)

Insults by a foreign government to a consul, or encroachments by it on his rights, will justify a demand that in addition to other redress "the flag of the United States shall be honored with a salute."

Mr. Seward, Sec. of State, to Mr. Harvey, Nov. 29, 1861, MS. Inst. Portugal, XIV. 221.

The search of the person of a foreign consul, his imprisonment, and the carrying off of his archives by the general in command of the United States Army in a captured city is a violation of the law of nations, for which the government of the United States considers itself bound to apologize and to give all other suitable redress.

Mr. Seward, Sec. of State, to Mr. Van Limburg, June 5, 1862; same to same, Aug. 20, 1862; Sept. 4, 1862: MS. Notes to Netherlands, VI. 195, 207, 214.

Dalton's Case.

With reference to the case of Mr. Dalton, a citizen of the United States, and United States consul at Ciudad Bolivar, Venezuela, who was reported to have been arrested and for three days imprisoned by order of President Guzman Blanco, the Department of State said: "Mr. Dalton belongs to a class of consuls authorized to transact business. If he does, he is for all purposes of such business subject to the same treatment as any other American resident engaged in trade in Venezuela. He is manifestly subject to no less favorable treatment, although he may have no specific personal exemptions or privileges by reason of his office. But if he, a consul, has been subjected to treatment to which no American citizen under the treaty can be, that is, to imprisonment in virtue of an executive order without trial or opportunity for legal defense, then the fact of his being known as the representative of a friendly power might be deemed to aggravate the injury committed."

Mr. Frelinghuysen, Sec. of State, to Mr. Baker, min. to Venezuela, May 12, 1884, For. Rel. 1884, 585.

It afterwards appeared that Mr. Dalton, being ill at the time, was not arrested, but that his son was taken and imprisoned, apparently as a "substitute." A question was raised as to the American citizenship of Dalton, jr. (Id. 586–597.)

Cincinnati.

Complaint having been made by the German government that the German imperial consul at Cincinnati, Ohio, was German Consul at interfered with in the discharge of his duties by a certain person who used misleading advertisements and displayed the German flag before his office so as to create the impression that he was a German consul and thereby obtain money from misguided German subjects, the matter was referred to the Attorney-General of the United States, who expressed the opinion that the case did not come within the provisions of section 4062, Revised Statutes, and that it would be necessary to resort to the local law for a remedy. The matter was then brought to the attention of the governor of Ohio, with a reference to the consular convention between the United States and the German Empire of December 11, 1871, which provides that consular officers "shall not in any event

be interfered with in the exercise of their official functions, further than is indispensable for the administration of the laws of the country." The difficulty appears to have been amicably arranged by the local authorities, the person against whom the complaint was made having disclaimed any intention to create erroneous impressions · and having abstained from the further use of the signs in question.

Mr. Bayard, Sec. of State, to Gov. Foraker, May 18, 1887, 164 MS. Dom.
Let. 197; same to same, June 27, 1887, id. 492; Mr. Bayard, Sec. of
State, to Baron von Zedtwitz, Oct. 1, 1887, MS. Notes to Germany,
X. 524.

Riot at Mollendo.

March 25, 1893, a mob at Mollendo, Peru, excited by anti-Masonic feeling, attacked the Masonic hall, at which a funeral was at the time being held, and, after driving out the participants, sacked and burned the building. In the attack on the hall, the office of Mr. Meier, the acting consul-general of the United States, which was near by, incidentally suffered, and Mr. Meier himself was wounded in the leg with a bullet. It was stated that there was a squad of police present, but that it looked on without interfering with the acts of the mob. The minister of the United States at Lima, in response to his telegraphic report of the occurrence, was, on April 6, 1893, instructed to protest against the lack of protection to the consul on the part of the authorities, and, in the event of the circumstances being found to be as he had reported, to ask that reparation be made for the injury inflicted on the person and property of Mr. Meier; that regret be expressed, and that the offenders be promptly prosecuted. Before this instruction was received the Peruvian government, acting upon a presentation of the circumstances by the American minister, had voluntarily expressed its regret, promised reparation, and stated that measures had been taken to punish the guilty. The apparent inaction or connivance of the local police was explained on the ground that the smallness of their number rendered tom powerless to contend against the crowd; but the subprefect was suspended from his duties and submitted to trial in order that the question of his conduct and responsibility might be properly determined. In view of this voluntary action of the Peruvian government a formal protest was not presented. In June, 1893, the case was finally settled by Peru's paying the sum of 2,000 soles, in full discharge of all claims of Mr. Meier for damages resulting from injuries to his person and his property.

Mr. Gresham, Sec. of State, to Mr. Hicks, min. to Peru, tel. April 6, 1893,
For. Rel. 1893, 510.

See, also, For Rel. 1893, 511-514, 515-524.