Consuls are not allowed to give their names as business references, nor to report the financial standing of houses in their districts. Such requests should be referred to banks or business agencies. “Consular officers are not authorized to indorse notes or bills of exchange, nor in other ways to become responsible pecuniarily for American citizens or others who have no personal claims upon them.” Such transactions are not a part of the official duties of a consular officer. He is “not authorized to lend money to indigent citizens of the United States or others, nor to incur expenses or liabilities for any persons except seamen of the United States, in the expectation of reimbursement by the Government”. Consular officers are forbidden to solemnize marriages. A marriage may be solemnized in the presence of a consular officer as a witness, and in that case it has certain peculiarities, as will be seen from the following: According to international law the mode of solemnizing marriage conforms to the law of the place where it is performed. But there are many conceivable circumstances which might make this undesirable, and in such cases it is declared by the statutes that “marriages in presence of any consular officer of the United States in a foreign country, between persons who would be authorized to marry if residing in the District of Columbia, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, and shall have the same effect as if solemnized within the United States”. In all such cases the consul must give a certificate to each of the parties and forward a copy to the Department of State. In case of the death of an American citizen abroad, it is the duty of the consul to take possession of his estate, provided there is no other legal representative, and provided, also, the laws of the country so permit,—to inventory the same with the help of two merchants (Americans, preferably), to make collections and to discharge the debts due from the estate, to sell at public auction such part as is of a perishable nature, and at the expiration of one year the remainder, and finally to transmit the proceeds to the Treasury of the United States to be held in trust for the legal claimants, who, however, are at liberty to appear at any time and take charge of the proceedings and the estate themselves. This applies to personal property only—real estate being administered according to the laws of the locality. In the absence of a treaty covering such points the consul is to proceed in the above manner unless it is known that the local authorities are unwilling, for “he should avoid the appearance of opposing or disregarding actual local requirements”. The same proceedings as the above are followed in case a citizen dies on the high seas “on either an American or a foreign vessel, and his effects are brought within a consular district”. JUDICIAL DUTIES—IN NON-CHRISTIAN COUNTRIES.