The British Agent and Consul-General shall be at liberty to choose his own interpreters, brokers, guards, and servants, either from among the natives or others. His interpreters, brokers, guards, and servants shall be exempt from the conscription, and from payment of any poll-tax, forced contribution, or other similar or corresponding charge. In like manner, the Consuls, Vice-Consuls, and Consular Agents residing at the Tunisian ports, under the orders of the said Agent and Consul-General, shall be at liberty to choose, that is to say, the Consuls, each one interpreter, one broker, two guards, and three servants; the Vice- Consuls and Consular Agents, each _one interpreter, one broker, and one guard, and two servants_, not being in the military service, who shall likewise be exempt from the conscription, from the payment of any poll- tax, forced contribution, or other similar or corresponding charge. Four days after the Treaty of Kasr-es-Said, M. Barthélémy Saint-Hilaire (May 16th, 1881) wrote thus to Lord Lyons:— You wish first of all to place on record that I stated to you that the Conventions existing between Tunis and Foreign Powers would be maintained and respected. _I repeat this assurance to you_ with greater pleasure because, by a special Article of our Treaty with the Bey, the French representative guarantees the execution of all the Conventions of this kind which now exist. A week later Lord Granville promptly but courteously took note of these assurances in the following guarded language:— Her Majesty’s Government do not wish to lay too much stress on _inconsistencies of language_ in conversation, or on the various reasons which have been given at Paris and at Tunis for French intervention, first as a protection against the alleged designs of the Sultan for the Bey’s deposition, and secondly for the punishment of the turbulent frontier tribes. But it can hardly be doubted that the Treaty with Tunis goes far beyond any question of the security of the frontier, and amounts practically to a Protectorate, which they understood to have been disclaimed. Her Majesty’s Government, however, readily acknowledge the assurance repeated by M. Barthélémy Saint-Hilaire in his note of the 16th instant that all existing Conventions between Tunis and Foreign Powers will be maintained and respected, and this all the more readily because by the 4th Article of the Treaty with the Bey the French Republic guarantees their execution. Commercial and other rights and privileges will therefore remain undisturbed, in so far as they are guaranteed by Treaties, unless new Conventions, freely entered into, shall be substituted for the existing arrangements. _Her Majesty’s Government take note of this assurance, which they regard as an international engagement binding upon the French Government in the future_.