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has been increased through additional awards by the Department of State subsequent to the completion of the commission's work, so that the total amount, including both American private claims and certain Chinese claims, the latter being $17,669.60, now aggregates $1,994,929.18. The maximum estimate required by this Government to meet the claims of its citizens and of certain Chinese under this heading was placed by the Department at $2,000,000; $1,994,929.18 having been paid out on this account, there remains in the Treasury Department an unexpended balance of $5,070.82.

November 19, 1902.

Legation transmitted to the Department final report of the commission. January 27, 1903.

Department congratulated the minister and Commissioners Bainbridge and Ragsdale on the successful termination of their joint labors. Amount of indemnity, principal, $24,440,778.81.

(Under the plan of amortization adopted this sum-carrying with it interest at 4 per cent per annum is payable in irregular annual installments, extending over a period of thirty-nine years, the last payment falling due in 1940.)

It is estimated that the maximum amount required by this Government to meet its expenses, incident to the relief of the legation in 1900, and claims of citizens and others, will be as follows (revised estimates):

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The expenditures of the War Department and the Navy Department, incident to the uprising of 1900 in China, are met in the ordinary

course.

Deducting from the amount at present in the Treasury Department the $5,070.82, which is the unexpended balance of the amount reserved for private claims, the remainder is $4,518,034.75. As the expenses of the military and naval branches of the Government in China in 1900 were included in the regular military budget of that year, it would appear from the above that the last-mentioned sum may be disposed of by Congress as it may see fit.

CONSULAR ADMINISTRATION OF THE ESTATES OF DECEASED NATIONALS

The case of Wyman, Petitioner (191 Mass., 276), printed in Volume I, page 520, of this JOURNAL, raises an interesting, not to say difficult, question concerning the jurisdiction of consuls over the estates of those of the consul's nationals who die in the foreign state from which the consul holds his exequatur. The books lay it down that the care of such estates is one of the well-established rights or duties (depending upon the view-point) with which a consul is vested or charged. The general law has, however, left the details of the consul's powers to be determined either by the respective national customs or laws, or by international agreement. Accordingly, not only are there no uniform settled rules that govern the question among all nations, but no one nation has a uniform rule that will apply to all its own consular affairs with its fellow nations. Indeed, a reading of the treaties suggests that each two contracting powers have met the various questions involved uninfluenced by the custom of other nations and in much the way that seemed to be required by the surrounding circumstances of the particular negotiations in progress, though, as the analysis will show, and as would be expected, it is possible to make a more or less general classification of the various consular rights and duties under the treaties.

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A number of reasons readily suggest themselves for the diversity of stipulation noted, but the one that appears to control the contracting powers in the making of these conventions is the degree of political development that obtains in the respective countries. Among the elements of this development that seems to have been most closely scanned are the stability of the respective governments, the legal systems obtaining in them, the respect entertained by the people for their government and legal system, and the efficiency and integrity of the executive and of the courts. Accordingly, the widest consular powers seem usually to be found in conventions made either by two powers very low in the scale of political development or between two powers that are polar in such development.

The following rough and incomplete analysis of some American treaties will serve to show the truth of this in regard to the jurisdiction conferred upon our own consuls, and also to indicate the general range and nature of such jurisdiction over the estates of the consul's deceased nationals, which jurisdiction may indeed at times be practically unlimited.

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It may be said, roughly, that under our treaties consuls may be empowered to administer upon the estates not only of intestates but of those dying testate. Moreover, they may have the right either to take charge of the estate and completely wind up its affairs, either under an appointment as administrator by a local court or by virtue of the treaty provision itself, or they may take charge of the estate temporarily, pending the appointment of an administrator by the proper local tribunal. administering such an estate the consul may be obliged to administer it according to the law of the foreign country or according to the law of the national's native state. Under some treaties the consul is authorized to appoint an agent to exercise his powers in these matters. Again, while the consul under most treaties may perform his duties unassisted, other treaties require that he shall call to his aid one or more disinterested fellow nationals of the deceased. Indeed, some treaties provide that under proper conditions nationals not consuls may officiate in the winding up of a decedent's estate. Other treaties do not permit the consul to administer upon the estate at all and allow him only to take charge of the estate pending the proper appearance of absent and even minor heirs. Perhaps the extreme is reached in those treaties which, at the same time that they provide that not only may a consul intervene and entirely wind up the affairs of an estate, but that any national may also, in the absence of a consul, exercise the same powers, provide, further,

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In the treaty with Germany the language of the entire section is identical except that in place of the words "consul or consular agents" the German treaty reads "nearest consular officer." The Netherlands convention is worded as is the German treaty, except that the local authorities are obliged to report to the nearest consular officer not only those cases in which the deceased national has no known heirs or testamentary executors by him appointed, but also "in case of minority of the heirs, there being no guardian."

It will be noted that the consular right under such a provision as that in the Austro-Hungarian convention appears to be only the right to be notified by the local authority of the death of his national, and his duty to be merely that of forwarding information to those of his nationals who are concerned.

The treaties with Belgium, Germany, Great Britain, Guatemala, Netherlands, Roumania, Servia, and Spain add to the rights conferred by the provision that appears in the Austro-Hungarian convention the following clause: "Consuls general, consuls, vice consuls, and consular agents shall have the right to appear, personally or by delegate, in all proceedings in behalf of the absent or minor heirs, or creditors until they are duly represented." This, doubtless, would be interpreted to give not only to the consul but to his agent or delegate a limited power of administration should such become necessary in the course of the exercise of the authorized powers. In the German treaty the words "consulsgeneral, consuls, vice-consuls, and consular agents" of the Belgian treaty (with which latter treaty agrees the language of the conventions with. Roumania and Servia) are changed to the "said consular officer," with which latter agrees the language of the treaties with Great Britain, Guatemala, and the Netherlands. The treaty with Colombia 12 step farther in one particular and is more restrictive in another: First, it provides that "They [consuls] may take possession, make inventories, appoint appraisers to estimate the value of articles and proceed to the sale of the moveable property of individuals of their nation; " but, secondly, they may do this only where there is no testamentary executor or heirs at law" (the qualifying word known of the other convention is here omitted).

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Secondly. Other conventions provide that the consular jurisdiction. shall attach only in those cases in which the consul's national dies intes

12 Consular convention, 1850, art. 3, par. 10, Treaties in Force, 1904, 206, 208.

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