Consular duties, like household duties, are very numerous; and about as
multiform as they are numerous. The mere mention of them, aside from any
description or dwelling upon particulars, would leave little time for
anything else to be said in the same lecture. We shall content
ourselves, therefore, with a cursory view, a glance over the whole field
of those duties, without stopping to distinguish between those of a
consul and those of a consul general, or of a seaport and of an inland
town.
The following classification will be found to be helpful and very nearly
comprehensive:
(1) Duties commercial.
(2) Duties in connection with customs regulations.
(3) Duties to merchant vessels.
(4) Duties in case of wrecks.
(5) Duties to officers, naval, diplomatic and departmental.
(6) Duties to seamen.
(7) Duties in regard to immigration and quarantine.
(8) Duties to citizens other than seamen.
(9) Duties judicial—in non-Christian countries.
(10) Duties to the State Department.
There are a few others, such as duties in regard to extradition, the
purchase and transference of foreign built vessels, etc., etc., which we
shall term miscellaneous.