“Article 1. Diplomatic agents are divided into three classes: That of Ambassadors, legates or nuncios; that of envoys, ministers or other persons accredited to sovereigns; that of chargés d’affaires accredited to ministers for foreign affairs”. Three years after the Congress of Vienna the Congress of Aix la Chapelle adds an eighth article, which reads as follows: “Article VIII.—It is agreed that ministers resident accredited to them” (to sovereigns, presumably) “shall form, with respect to their precedence, an intermediate class between ministers of the second class and chargés d’affaires”. Consequently the classification of our diplomatic officers is as follows: 1. Ambassadors. We do not send or receive legates or nuncios, as there are representatives of the Pope, and to do so would be contrary to our national policy respecting church and state. 2. Envoys, ministers or other persons accredited to sovereigns. This class includes that official with the ridiculously lengthy title of envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary—usually called minister “for short”. 3. Ministers resident, who are usually also consuls general. There are but four of these in our service, and as there is little justification for this grade it will probably some day be abolished. 4. Chargés d’affaires (pronounced shar-zha-daffair), who are not accredited to sovereigns, but to the minister for foreign affairs. It should be borne in mind that this classification has nothing whatever to do with the transaction of business. All diplomats have essentially the same duties to perform. It is merely a matter of precedence, which was considered much more important at the time of the Vienna congress than it is now. Indeed, there are good reasons for thinking that we have outgrown these distinctions and should straightway abandon them. This much, at least, is apparent to all—that the chief diplomatic officer at every legation ought to be an ambassador, thus making no invidious distinctions between countries. [Illustration: DIPLOMACY] As it is at present we send ambassadors to the most important countries, envoys extraordinary and ministers plenipotentiary to those that are next important to us, and so on. Thus there are five ambassadors; one each at London, Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg and Mexico respectively, thirty envoys extraordinary and ministers plenipotentiary, four ministers resident, and one who is classed as a chargé d’affaires. There are secretaries of legation at twenty-three different capitals, who in the absence of their chief may become chargés d’affaires exercising all the functions of a diplomatic officer. At fourteen different capitals there are military or naval attachés, sometimes both, and an interpreter at six of them. Legation, or embassy, formerly meant the particular business, the errand, so to speak, upon which the ambassador was sent.