lowed to trade; but, as a pis aller, where a post did not justify a salaried Consul, a leading merchant, preferably an Englishman, should be found to take on the duties gratis. The salaries, they declared, fixed many years ago on no excessive scale, had been really diminished in value by rises in prices all over the globe, and "justice to an important branch of the public service therefore imperatively demands such a revision of the salaries and emoluments of the Consular Service as will place them in circumstances consistent with the importance of their duties, and at least, as a body, in no worse position than they occupied thirty years ago "-i.e., under Mr Canning's scheme. They recommended that a supply of young men should be selected by examination in England and sent to the Levant, where the duties were more important than elsewhere and the languages more difficult to acquire, to be trained as Consuls and interpreters, and eventually fill the consular posts. Similarly for the general service elsewhere they recommended the appointment of a number of "Consular Students from whom Consuls should eventually be chosen. A further recommendation throws light on the disdain with which it was customary to regard the homely slighted Consul's trade. "It is also advisable that the consular body should no longer be looked on as excluded from those honorary distinctions which are the proofs of the approbation of their Sovereign." One redeeming feature, and one only, the Committee discovered in the prevailing system. They expressed unreserved approval of the organisation of the small separate service quite recently instituted in China as the result of the opening of a few Chinese ports to trade after hostilities with Great Britain. This was, however, but a left-handed compliment to the Foreign Office, which had nothing whatever to do with the Chinese service, entirely controlled from our newly acquired settlement of Hongkong and under the direction of the superintendent of trade there. The reforms recommended by the Committee might have been effected, one would think, without delay. But not a bit of it. They took years and years and years. It is true that no more trading Consuls were appointed and better leave regulations were introduced before long, but salaries were only increased by infinitesimal degrees. Reductions were even made when the Foreign Office obtained control of the comparatively well-paid Consuls in China. The organisation of the Levant Service was postponed for twenty years, that of the General Consular Service until the twentieth century. During all these years, until the system of competitive examination was introduced, what of destitution. Occasionally out-at-elbows scions of noble houses were thus provided for, and not, we may be sure, in the worst posts. Literary men were sometimes given Consulates-e.g., Richard Burton, the distinguished Orientalist, and Charles Lever, the Irish novelist, who both adorned the British Consulate at Trieste, and both are said to have entirely neglected their duties. Indigent ex-diplomatists and Foreign Office clerks were not unknown; in fact, there is no single profession which at one time or other has not been represented in the Consular Service. was the class of men whom and found himself in a state successive Secretaries of State selected for Consular appointments? On the whole, though favour or caprice and not the qualifications of candidates governed the choice, it seems, choice, it seems, judging by results, that some discrimination was applied. Very few scandalous persons or absolute incompetents got appointments. One may even One may even say that those Consuls who appeared before the Select Committees made a good show, and evinced both education and ability. Until 1856, after which date a candidate had to be between twenty-five and fifty years of age, there was no age limit for applicants. Mere boys were occasionally given Consulships. Thus in 1816 Mr de Fonblanque was appointed Consul for the northern departments of France when "nearly twenty-two." Evidently he had influence, as had Mr Cowper, who informed the 1858 Committee that he was appointed Consul at Para immediately after leaving college. Ex-officers of the Army and Navy were often transformed into Consuls, so were functionaries of various branches of the administration at home. The great Mr Edmund Burke, before he had attained fame as orator, parliamentarian, and philanthropist, applied for the Consulship at Madrid, but was turned down. On the other hand, a Consulate was found for Beau Brummell after that Buck of the Regency had spent his fortune on cards and clothes It is pleasant to pass from reminiscences of the bad old times to the improved conditions of the present day. During the last fifteen or twenty years the Foreign Office has vastly modified its former attitude of contemptuous indifference towards the Consular Service, and now quite recognises it as a relation, albeit a poor one. The salaries of Consuls were little by little augmented; they no longer had to pay their office expenses out of their own pockets, and the leave conditions were made such as to render it possible for them to come home with reasonable frequency. In 1877 a special service was established for the Levant countries and Persia on the lines of that already existing in the Far East; and in 1904 the recommendation of the 1858 Com mittee regarding the organisation of a regular service for the rest of the world was at last put into execution. The emoluments of the Service, although certainly an improvement on the starvation wage of Lord Palmerston, did not attain a really adequate scale, in spite of the novel benevolence of the Foreign Office, until the requisite impetus was given by fresh blood from outside in the person of Sir Arthur Steel-Maitland, appointed in 1917 as Joint Parliamentary Under-Secretary for the Foreign Office and Head of the Department of Overseas Trade, who had not only the acumen to see that it was bad policy to starve any branch of the public service, but also the energy to carry through a scheme to rectify the situation. Thanks to the vigour of this gentleman, who must ever occupy a prominent niche in the hagiology of the Consular Service, the pay of all ranks was immediately raised to what, though not a lavish, can be considered a satisfactory amount. Nor was this all. The claim of the Consul to be housed, long recognised in the case of the diplomatist, was now acknowledged, and an allowance allotted for the purpose, with an additional allowance to meet the cost of hospitality and other non-personal expenses which his official position entails. Salaries and allowances are now as follows: The Service appears to offer On the other hand, the small attraction for eligible youths, nor does a spirit of entire contentment reign amongst those already in it. Although a Consul has a fair living assured him and a comfortable pension to look forward to, there are no prizes within his reach such as the diplomatist may expect to win. The permanent position of poor relation is not one to which an able and ambitious young man aspires, and unless a fair prospect of attaining something better than a Consulate-General is held out to him, he may be expected to give the Consular Service the cold shoulder. It would be different if all the Foreign Office services were amalgamated, as has been done in the case of the Foreign Office itself and the Diplomatic Service. The difference between the Diplomatist and the Consul is now one rather of nomenclature than of principle, to such an extent do their functions often overlap. In the very rare cases where fortuitous circumstances have enabled a Consul to break down the barrier set up between the two, he has been a striking successwitness the careers of Sir William White at Constantinople, and Sir Ernest Satow and Sir John Jordan in the Far East; and there seems no ground for supposing that the interests of the country would suffer were diplomatic posts bestowed occasionally on members of the Consular Service who have proved their capacity. younger members of the Diplomatic Service could not but benefit greatly by occasional excursions into the more roughand-tumble atmosphere of a Consulate to obtain an experience of men and things denied them in the guarded seclusion of a Chancery where their early years are wont to be spent in a round of trivial routine. The question is no new one. In 1842 no less a personage than Mr Disraeli brought forward a motion in the House of Commons to the effect that "It appears to this House that great inconvenience and injury to the public welfare have arisen from the civil affairs of Her Majesty in foreign countries being carried on by two distinct services; and that with a view to advancing those commercial interests which at this moment so much occupy our consideration, it is expedient that measures should be forthwith taken to blend the Consular with the Diplomatic body." The motion was not adopted, and when the idea was again discussed before the Select Committees of 1858 and 1861 the Foreign Office representatives expressed repugnance to anything of the sort. But with a more progressive atmosphere now prevailing, it is permitted to hope that favourable consideration may be accorded in the end to this as to other salutary reforms which were at first rejected with contumely. HIGHROAD AND TOW-ROAD. BY EDMUND VALE. ALL August and all of September, save those four days that were not yet spent, it had rained in Manchester. It was not raining now, but it looked as if it might do so at any moment. Anyhow I determined to take my chance with the weather and go to Wales on my bicycle, visiting en route a town in the Potteries, where I had last heard of my faithful batman who had served me three years in France. I was swayed, moreover, by the fact that in the neighbourhood of Tunstall was a certain canal tunnel, famous all over the system of inland waterways for its ghost. I had heard many accounts of this apparition, and I had a great desire to visit the site of its activities. Every one I had ever spoken to about it was agreed that its name was Kit Crewe, but opinions varied as to whether it was a man, a woman, a dog without a head, a white mare, or a snatching hand. As the superintendent of the Bridgewater Canal had been good enough to grant me permission to cycle along the towpath of that waterway if I chose, I determined to avail myself of the privilege for a short distance. The Bridgewater Canal is the oldest of our inland navigations, and has a romantic his tory. "It were all through a woman as this canal come about," I have been told more than once. "T' Dook were jilted by t' gurl 'e were keepin' company wi'. And 'e were that took aback that 'e built this ere canal just to show yon woman what oo could do." There is perhaps more than a modicum of truth in this tradition, the fact being that the Duke was attached to the youngest of the three famous beauties, the Gunning sisters. This lady, who had secretly married the Duke of Hamilton Bridgewater. with a ring of the bed-curtain half an hour after midnight, and a short time later had been left a widow with a title, money, and power to add to her attractions, was no doubt much sought after. She became engaged to the Duke of But the Duke was of a rougher stuff than Cupid's thralls should be made of, and required his own way, so the engagement was broken, and instead of becoming Duchess of Bridgewater she presently became Duchess of Argyll. The Duke, no doubt a little mortified, forswore gallantry, and came down to his estate in Lancashire, where he threw himself into the business of developing the collieries on his land. And owing to the genius of Mr Brindley, wheel |