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repeated every four years up to the time of the present administration, have made the term of the consul's service so short that, with the meagre pay allowed, first-class men cannot be secured. Very few of our consuls, either in South America or in the Orient, are acquainted with the language in which they are required to transact much of their business. In non-Christian countries, where consuls are charged with civil and criminal jurisdiction, and may not only try civil causes between Americans and foreigners but may sentence our citizens to fine, imprisonment, or even death, American consuls are not lawyers. Yet it is in many of the more remote and smaller places that the best opportunities exist for extending American commerce and furnishing facilities for American investments.
“Appointments to these places are often made for political reasons, and often on account of the needs rather than the qualifications of the men selected, but as the Committee on Foreign Relations states in its report for 1896, ‘To consider the offices merely as sources from which these partisan officeholders may derive four years of maintenance is as absurd as it would be to construct a navy to defend the country and to intrust its command to landsmen without experience for whom we might desire to provide a living and comfortable quarters.’ It is evident that a consular service thus selected is necessarily imperfect.”
Here we have the whole case in a nutshell: offices the performance of the important duties of which require special qualifications; and appointment to those offices, in great part at least, made for reasons of political or personal favoritism, without any regard to those qualifications. It can certainly not be said that the United States Civil Service Commission has overdrawn the picture. On the contrary, every person of experience in such things knows that with every change of administration consulates are among active politicians in greater demand than any other class of offices—in fact they seem to have a peculiar charm for people's imagination;—that almost every politician of any degree thinks himself fit to be a consul; that innumerable applications for consulships are made on the mere ground of, or claims for, recognition as rewards for party service, and that in a multitude of cases the main object of the applicant—not seldom frankly avowed—is to spend some pleasant years abroad in a respectable social position sustained by government pay, or to live in a climate more favorable to his wife's delicate health, or to be in a place where his daughters can get good music lessons cheap, etc., etc. I have in my time, when connected with the national government, and even as a private citizen believed to have some influence, myself been approached for
