INSTRUMENTALITIES FOR FOREIGN RELATIONS. 403 

 B. Application of Principles to Foreign Affairs. 



22,1. The Types of Agencies Conducting Foreign Relations. 



The instruments used for conducting foreign relations may be 

 classified as (i) national, military, naval, administrative, and judi- 

 cial officers ; (2) national and international political officers and 

 agents; (3) international administrative and judicial agencies. 

 Officers of the first kind are clearly national. They are the product 

 of national law alone and are accountable to national law alone. 

 Agencies of the last kind are just as clearly international. They 

 can be founded only by the agreement of nations, and can exercise 

 authority only in matters, as to which nations have agreed to be 

 bound by them. Officers and agencies of the second class, how- 

 ever, occupy a twilight zone. We may distinguish the offices in 

 the group which are primarily national from the agencies primarily 

 international. Thus a diplomatic officer or consul, though enjoying 

 certain rights, privileges and powers under international law, is 

 primarily a national officer, bound primarily by his national law 

 and policy. He can act only under express instructions. He is in 

 fact a delegate. On the other hand, the representative of a nation 

 sitting in a general congress or conference, such as the Hague or 

 Algeciras conferences, the Berlin or Versailles congresses or the 

 Assembly of the League of Nations, though theoretically occupying 

 a status similar to that of a diplomatic officer,^^ bound by his na- 

 tional laws and subject to instructions, tends to be in fact a repre- 

 sentative rather than a delegate. His judgments tend to be founded 

 upon an international point of view, developed by the discussions 

 of the conference itself, rather than by the instructions of his home 

 state. In the Senate discussion upon the character of the repre- 

 sentatives to the Panama congress in 1825, Senator Benton recog- 

 nized this distinction,^^ 



28 Scott, ed., Reports to the Hague Conferences, Intro., XIX. 



29 Benton, Abridgment of Debates, 8 : 463-464. We do not intend to en- 

 dorse Senator Benton's implication with reference to the power of the 

 Senate to consent to the appointment of such representatives. 



PROC. AMER. PHIL. SOC, VOL. LX., AA, MARCH 14, 1922. 



