I shall speak more particularly this evening, said the Professor, upon facts associated with the persons employed in the consular service; the selection, preparation and such other matter as may be of interest, leaving the duties of the service until the next lecture. Of course, this division is arbitrary, and is adopted merely as a matter of convenience. The data which I shall adduce may be found for the most part in the “Consular Regulations”, which anyone may purchase from the Superintendent of Documents in Washington. The Consular Service, as was said before, makes a small army of about 1,000 men. These men are chosen from all parts of the United States (aside from the foreigners in the service), and are sent to all parts of the world. They are above all things else, agents of trade—messengers of commerce. Yet they stand in so many relations to our government and people that it is doubtful if any other position in our modern civilization calls into service a greater versatility—a wider exercise of intellectual capacity. We shall consider the method by which these officers are chosen, then some reforms in that method which should have been adopted long ago, and which, it is hoped, we shall soon see in operation. But before describing these methods and reforms, let us notice briefly the _grade_, _rank_ and _classification_ of the service, likewise the definition of a few technical terms, in order that we may know exactly what we are talking about. There are three principal grades in the consular service, namely: (1) Consul General. (2) Consul. (3) Commercial Agent. These three are “full, principal and permanent consular officers as distinguished from subordinates and substitutes”. These latter include Vice Consuls General, Deputy Consuls General, Vice Consuls, Deputy Consuls, Vice Commercial Agents, Consular Agents, Consular Clerks, Interpreters, Marshals and Clerks at Consulate. The term consul, as applied to the second grade, has also a common, generic meaning, including every consular officer, and it is in the latter sense that we shall generally use it. In the same way the word consulate seems to waver in meaning, sometimes covering the entire region over which a consul has jurisdiction, i. e., the consular district, and sometimes implying only the official residence—the room or building in which the consul does business. The boundaries of the consulate—using the term in its broadest sense—are prescribed by the President, and are usually defined in the consul’s commission. The general rule is that all places nearer to the official residence than to any other consulate within the same country are to be included in a consulate just forming. These boundaries in most cases have long since been determined.