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 concerned, questions of commerce and navigation, as well as questions relating to the regular service of communication by post.

Such new Conventions shall be concluded in fifteen years, or sooner if possible.

. IV. The union of the United States of the Ionian Religious Islands to the Kingdom of Greece shall in no wise invalidate the principles established by the existing legislation of those Islands with regard to freedom of worship and religious toleration; accordingly the rights and immunities established in matters of religion by Chapters I and V of the Constitutional Charter of the United States of the Ionian Islands, and specifically the recognition of the Orthodox Greek Church as the dominant religion in those Islands; the entire liberty of worship granted to the Established Church of the Protecting Power; and the perfect toleration promised to other Christian communions,—shall, after the union, be maintained in their full force and effect.

The special protection guaranteed to the Roman Catholic Church, as well as the advantages of which that Church is actually in possession, shall be equally maintained; and the subjects belonging to that communion shall enjoy in the Ionian Islands the same freedom of worship which is recognized in their favour by the Protocol of the 3rd of February, 1830.

The principle of entire civil and political equality between subjects belonging to different creeds, established in Greece by the same Protocol, shall be likewise in force in the Ionian Islands.

Art. V. The Legislative Assembly of the United States of the Ionian Islands has decreed by a resolution passed on the	$7/19$th of October, 1863, that the sum of ten thousand pounds