Fewer articles, better observed, will better
promote our common interests. As to ourselves, we do not find the
institution of consuls very necessary. Its history commences in times of
barbarism, and might well have ended with them. During these, they were,
perhaps, useful, and may still be so in countries not yet emerged from
that condition. But all civilized nations at this day understand so
well the advantages of commerce, that they provide protection and
encouragement for merchant strangers and vessels coming among them.
So extensive, too, have commercial connections now become, that every
mercantile house has correspondents in almost every port. They address
their vessels to these correspondents, who are found to take better care
of their interests, and to obtain more effectually the protection of the
laws of the country for them, than the consul of their nation can. He is
generally a foreigner, unpossessed of the little details of knowledge
of greatest use to them. He makes national questions of all the
difficulties which arise; the correspondent prevents them. We carry on
commerce with good success in all parts of the world; yet we have not
a consul in a single port, nor a complaint for the want of one, except
from the persons who wish to be consuls themselves.
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