The respective consuls and vice consuls may establish agents in the different ports and places of their departments, where necessity shall require; these agents may be chosen among the merchants, either national or foreign, and furnished with a commission from one of the said consuls. It shall be their business, respectively, to render to their respective merchants, navigators, and vessels, all possible service, and to inform the nearest consul or vice consul of the wants of the said merchants, navigators, and vessels, without the said agents otherwise participating in the immunities, rights, and privileges, attributed to the consuls and vice consuls, and without power to exact from the said merchants any duty or emolument whatever, under any pretext whatever. ARTICLE IV. The consuls and vice consuls, officers of the consulate, and in general, all persons attached to the consular functions, shall enjoy respectively a full and entire immunity for their persons, their papers, and their houses. The list of the said persons shall be approved and inspected by the executive power of the place of their residence. They shall be exempt from all personal service and public offices, from soldier's billets, militia, watch guard, guardianship and trusteeship, as well as from all duties, taxes, impositions, and charges whatsoever, except the real estates of which they may be proprietors, which shall be subject to the taxes imposed on the estates of all other individuals. They shall place over the outward door of their house the arms of their sovereign, without this mark of distinction giving to the said house the right of asylum for any malefactor or criminal, so that in case it should happen that any malefactor or criminal take refuge there, he shall be instantly delivered up on the first requisition, and without difficulty. ARTICLE V. Generally, in all cases whatever, which concern the police or administration of justice, where it may be necessary to have a juridical declaration from the said consuls and vice consuls respectively, the governors, commandants, chief justice, public bodies, tribunals, or other officers whatever of their respective residence there, having authority, shall be bound to inform them of it, by writing to them, or sending to them a military or civil officer to let them know, either the object which is proposed, or the necessity there is for going to them to demand from them this declaration, and the said consuls end vice consuls shall be bound on their part to comply faithfully with what shall be desired of them on these occasions. ARTICLE VI.