The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-06-24
SPIRIT or TzH PRESS.
Editorial Opinions Of the Leading Journals
upon Current Topios-Compiled Every
Day for the Evening Telegraph.
OUR DIPLOMATIC SERVICE.

Two interesting pieces of intelligence con-
cerning our diplomatic service come to us to-
gether-the one in the ordinary course of
Congressional events from Washington, the
other in somewhat more extraordinary
fashion from London.
Both the British Parliament and the Ame-
rican Congress are now discussing the diplo-
matte expenditure of the two countries re-
spectively. In the British Parliament this
discussion tends mainly to retrenchment and
reform. In the American Congress 1t seems
likely to result in exactly the opposite direc-
ton.
Mr.. Sumner, whom Senator Carpenter de-
scribed the other day as 'the be-all and the
end-all of the Foreign Affairs Committee,
has Just asked the Senate to give him cool
hundred thousand dollars year more for the
contingent expenses of foreign intercourse
and of our missions abroad, and the Senate
in the handsomest manner has agreed so to
do, by adopting an amendment to the Diplo-
matte Appropriation bill which raises the
sum allowed for such expenses from $50, 600
to $3.50, 900 year. At the same time this
most amiable body adopted another amend
ment providing for consul-general in
Liberia, and still another elevating our
representative in Japan from the humble
estate of a minister resident to the COM
paratively glorious position of an envoy
extraordinary. The comparatively glorious
position we say: for, while these changes are
announced as made in Washington, we learn
from London that for the first time in
our history we are to be favored
with the possession of q real live American
ambassador, in the blaze of whose effulgent
dignity even ENJOYS extraordinary will sub
side into very ordinary personages indeed.
Upon all which changes and propositions
there are certain things not untmely to be
said. To Mr.. Summers proposition for
raising the titular rank, and with the titular
rank the solid salary, of our minister to
Japan, we do not know that any valid objec-
tion can be made. Diplomacy still has in
Asia all the importance which it once had
in Europe, and the Asiatic relations of
the United States are yearly growing in
Importance. Questions of pomp and pre-
countries like China and Japan; and il
is matter not of Fictitious but of real con-
sequence that the representatives of the
United States should be enabled to maintain
at least an equal state and dignity in the eyes
of the native population with those of other
Christian nations. The cost of living, too,
in those countries, and particularly of living
after the European and American fashion, is
much greater than either in Europe or in
America. At the Chinese and Japanese sea-
ports the resident foreign merchants find it
necessary to enable their clerks and subordi-
mates to live in a substantial comfort and with
sort of social display quite beyond the reach
of our consuls and other official agents, for
whom, as well as for our diplomatic servants
in those parts of the world, more liberal
scale of salaries and of allowances might with
much advantage, we think, be adopted. This
might be done, without burdening the ma
tional treasury by abolishing the greater part
of our secondary and tertiary diplomatic posts
in Europe. If it were once understood, too,
that the diplomatic service of the United
States meant woodwork in dealing
with serious questions, legal and COM
mercial, in remote countries-it is
probable that the honors of that service
would come to be sought for by better class
of men than those who now snatch at them
as cheap and amusing way of making
foreign tours in pleasant lands at the expense
of their country and as the reward of their
devotion to party. But, while we approve
the elevation of our mission to Japan as a
step in the right direction, it strikes us that
the facility with which the Senate have voted
an addition of two hundred per cent. to the
amount Of our Contingent" expenses in di-
plomacy is more creditable to the iberality
than to the fidelity of that body. 1t is a
curious trait, however, of the leaders of the
party of great moral ideas that they make as
free with the, purse as with the personal
rights of their constituents - ,,---
If some part of this increased allowance is
to go towards accomplishing the purpose of
which Lord Clarendon has for the first time
informed us as couchant in the governmental
breast at Washington, we distinctly and most
emphatically call halt. There is no reason,
either in the nature of things or in the cir
cumstances of the moment, for ''raising the
mission to England to one of the first rank
or, in other words, for transforming our
minister at the Court of st. James into an
ambassador. This Transformation could have
but one practical effect-to give our repre-
sentative a slight social precedence at balls
and dinner parties over certain numbe,
of his colleagues. 1t would put him into
position practically absard, inasmueh as am
bassadors are technically supposed to ''pre
sent or dishgure" the very person of theil
sovereigns, while an American envoy has
as yet no sovereign to disfgure or present
If it be urged that several of the greater
powers of Europe are now represented by
ambassadors at courts where the United States
appear only in the person of minister, il
need only be said to be seen to be true tha
the importance of the United States is such
as to make the official rank of their represen
tatiye of no practical moment at all in civil
lied countries. All the reasons which max,
it worth while for MS to magnify our Legations
in China and Japan make it silly aud childish
for us to do SO in England or France
wherever MacGregor sits, there is the hea(
of the table" Spain has an ambassador il
London, end has had an ambassador there TO
ages; but what Gondomar was to Englant
centuries ago the plain envoy of the grea
republic now is-the one foreign representa-
tive whom il is the especial care of all en-
lightened Englishmen to treat with courtesy
consideration. andsattention. Nor is there
Il olC a1x x<Nlc xro1 in h