HC Deb 22 February 1861 vol 161 cc809-14
MR. DIGBY SEYMOUR

said, he rose to call the attention of the House to the Report of the Select Committee of 1858, on the Consular Service, and to ask the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, What steps have been taken to carry out the recommendations of that Committee? He need hardly remind the House that the Committee which sat in 1858 on the Consular Service, contained among its members many hon. Gentlemen, Members of that House, who were eminently qualified to discharge their duty and to throw light upon the question. That Committee was presided over by the hon. Member for Pontefract (Mr. M. Milnes), who had the advantage of having visited many of the places where complaints were made against our consular system, and who, likewise, brought into the Committee the experience of deep study into the whole intricacies of the question. The Committee had likewise the benefit of the assistance of the hon. Member for Horsham (Mr. S. Fitz-Gerald), who exhibited that ability which distinguished him, both in and out of office, in investigating the details of the consular office. The Committee arrived at a conclusion which they embodied in five Resolutions. First they recommended the establishment of such a system of consular education and promotion as might tend to prevent the employment of any but British subjects as consuls, vice-consuls, or interpreters in that portion of the world comprising Northern Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Levant. They had before them them evidence of the great benefit arising from the education given to young men for the Oriental secretaryships and the indefatigable efforts made by Russia to ensure the appointment of proper persons to take care of her interests generally. The Committee were unanimously of opinion that it would be wise to adopt a system of consular studentship for young men, who should go through a preliminary examination for the discharge of the onerous and important duties devolving upon the consular service in the East, especially upon the Grecian shores of the Mediterranean, the Levant, and various portions of the Ottoman Empire. He hoped the noble Lord would assure the House that he was determined, while he was Foreign Secretary, to pay attention to the recommendations of the Committee. The Committee next recommended the prohibition of all consuls to engage in trade, or to accept commercial agencies (except in such cases as the Foreign Office might especially determine to be advantageous to the public interest, with a view to the opening or development of any new trade), and the appointment of respectable persons already engaged in commerce as British Consular Agent in places where the presence of a salaried British officer was not required. With that narrow and limited exception the Committee recommended the prohibition of all consuls to engage in trade. Under the lax system which prevailed, opportunities were offered to consuls to make their profit out of the distress of British shipping, and they departed from that which ought to be the first element of their duty, and to which their attention should be first directed—namely, the relieving the necessities of the British merchant and the British shipowner. Upon this subject much light was thrown by the evidence of Mr. Mitchell, the proprietor of The Shipping Gazette, a paper well-known as the able and accredited organ of the British shipping interest. There was also another evil which was very much complained of, namely, that our consuls abroad who were engaged in trade had opportunities in times of war, from their official position, of obtaining priority of information upon various matters, which gave them an undue advantage over other merchants not so favourably situated. The next recommendation was the diminution of the number of vice-consuls at present in Europe, with a view to the gradual abolition of the license to trade. The fourth was a recommendation of great importance, and it was very desirable that the House should know whether the noble Lord was prepared to carry it out; it recommended such an organization of the Consular Service as might divide its members into separate classes, receiving salaries adequate to their position, and without any further reduction than that of the income tax; any augmentation for special service or peculiar circumstances to be made in the way of a special allowance. The Committee proposed that the first class should consist of consuls-general, the second of consuls, the third of vice-consuls, and the last of consular students. They held out the hope to students that by industry, knowledge, and ability, they might rise from £100 a year to the office of consuls-general. With regard to the division into first and second-class, it might be that second-class places might have first-class men, and the object of the Committee was that the consuls should be classified—not so much with regard to the importance of the locality as to the ability of the men. The last recommendation of the Committee was the appropriation of all fees — except in the case of unpaid consuls—to the public account; the expense of the office being regulated and defrayed by the Government. The House would see that nothing was of greater importance than that if the consuls were allowed to take fees they should account for those fees to the public, and not put them into their own pockets. He passed now to the year 1858—when the Earl of Derby was in office—and when the hon. Member for Horsham (Mr. Seymour FitzGerald) had an official opportunity of showing the sincerity of his zeal for consular reform. Nor was that hon. Gentleman long before be exhibited, in a practical manner, that zeal in the cause which he had shown when out of office. He held in his hand an important document, which was arranged in a lucid and logical manner. It contained a report of Mr. Murray, who was of the Foreign Office, and had placed himself in communication with the consuls abroad. That gentleman had informed himself thoroughly on the subject, and possessed a large amount of official experience. He made a Report to the Earl of Malmesbury on the subject. That Report was referred to a sub-committee of gentlemen, amongst whom was the hon. Member for Horsham. The Committee agreed to a number of proposals and gave their reasons for them. They began by advising that no consul should be allowed to trade, with the single exception pointed out by the Committee of 1858, to which he (Mr. D. Seymour) had referred. They then proposed that no fees should be appropriated by consuls to their own use. They then recommended that they should be paid by salaries from the Treasury. They recommended, further, that power should be given to compensate for the distinguished and useful services of those officers abroad. They recommended that the notarial and legal functions of the consuls should be extended, and that the fees should be arranged according to the commercial character of the country and the commercial charges of the port where they were exacted. That all fees should be paid into the Treasury; and that no fees of any description should be taken from any ship in a foreign port. They also recommended that in lieu of this deliverance of the shipping interest from those consular exactions there should be a tonnage tax of one penny upon British and Foreign vessels clearing out or entering into any port of this kingdom. He found by a Minute of the present Board of Trade that those recommendations had been summarily dismissed, and upon grounds that had not been as jet placed before the public. The incidence of that penny, however, so far as foreigners were concerned, would be simply a matter of retributive justice. France had adopted a similar principle, and she exacted a much larger amount. Well, the Earl of Derby went out of office, and with him, he was sorry to say, the hon. Member for Horsham, and the noble Lord (Lord John Russell) came in. He had read a correspondence which had taken place between the noble Lord, the Board of Trade, and some officials of the Foreign Office, the result of which was to show that the noble Lord had made some great and salutary changes; he had raised the pay of some offices, such as that of New York, where the importance of the place made it necessary that the position should be filled by a man of high ability. In other places he had provided for the reformation, and in others for the extinction of the offices altogether. Upon those points he had no complaint to make—quite the contrary; but lie would come to the Minute issued by the right hon. Gentleman, the President of the Board of Trade, dated the 16th December, 1859, and purporting to be a memorandum of the official Committee. In that document he submitted to the House there was something like an overruling of the recommendations of the Select Committee. When the House recollected who sat on that Committee, that the representative for Liverpool (Mr. Horsfall) sat upon it, that the noble Lord the Prime Minister sat upon it, and other gentlemen of large official and commercial experience, it struck one at the first blush that it was strange such a Minute should go forth to the world without any explanation. It declared that it was not desirable that a tonnage duty should he levied upon ships for the purpose of defraying the expense of the consular establishments; that it was not desirable that consuls should be restricted from trading; and that it was not expedient to assimilate the British consular system to that of France. He (Mr. Seymour) emphatically entered his protest against those decisions, which had given dissatisfaction and disappointment to the commercial world. When the Committee laid down a recommendation which the commercial community throughout the kingdom were united in supporting, he protested against the an nulling of that recommendation without some explanation, at least, of the grounds upon which that decision was arrived at. There was also in the Minute a decision unfavourable to the training of young men in the knowledge of foreign languages with a view to tit them for the consular office, except where it was thought desirable to dispense with the aid of native interpreters. Now, to open the office to young men who might be qualified to fill it, was one of the most popular recommendations of the Committee, and he deeply regretted it should have met with so unfavourable a reception at the hands of the right hon. Gentleman. In conclusion, he trusted the noble Lord would be able to give a satisfactory reply upon the subjects which he had brought under his notice.