Page:The Practice of Diplomacy - Callières - Whyte - 1919.djvu/111

 manner in which he would expect return for a like insult to his own minister abroad.

It sometimes occurs that ministers abuse the right of free passage, which they possess for their own provisions and the equipment necessary for their establishment, to carry on a clandestine trade from which they draw large profits by lending their name to fraud. This kind of profit is utterly unworthy of the public minister, and makes his name stink in the nostrils of the King to whom he is sent as well as to his own prince. A wise minister may be well content to enjoy the large privileges to which he is entitled in every foreign country without attempting to abuse them for his own private profit, or by countenancing any fraud which is committed under the protection of his name. The Spanish Government was obliged a few years ago severely to regulate these privileges for all foreign envoys residing in Madrid, and the Republic of Genoa found it necessary to adopt the same somewhat humiliating precautions in order to prevent diplomatists from engaging in illicit traffic. The privileges conferred by the law of nations upon envoys abroad permit full freedom in their proper duty of labouring to discover all that passes in the council-chamber of his Majesty, and to take steps to form close relations with those best able to supply this information, but they are not to be