PROPER GRADE OF DIPLOMATIC REPRESENTATIVES 361 



at their respective courts. But since that period, by the practice of 

 governments, it has come to be recognized by them all that there 

 can be no rank or precedence among independent and sovereign 

 nations, but that all must stand on an equality in their negotiations. 

 For instance, at the Conference of Paris in 1856, one of the most 

 important in that century, the representatives sat at a round table 

 in the alphabetical order, in the French language, of their national 

 titles. In the Bering Sea Tribunal of Arbitration of 1893 the 

 United States had precedence over Great Britain because of this 

 order of arrangement. The same practice was observed at The 

 Hague Peace Conference of 1899. At that conference it was expressly 

 declared by the representatives of the great powers of Europe, " Here 

 there are no great, no small powers; all are equal, in view of the task 

 to be accomplished." 



The United States, when at its independence it entered the family 

 of nations, accepted the order prescribed by the Congress of Vienna 

 in 1815, which, with the addition made in 1818, recognized the com- 

 position of the diplomatic corps in four classes, to wit: ambassadors, 

 ministers plenipotentiary, ministers resident, and charges d'affaires, 

 with rank in the order named. For more than a century this country 

 sent abroad, as its highest diplomatic representatives, those of the 

 second class, and this practice was observed up to a recent date. 

 But the ministers plenipotentiary of the United States at the capitals 

 of the great powers of Europe where ambassadors were maintained, 

 have repeatedly complained that they were often humiliated and 

 their usefulness sometimes impaired by the lower rank which they 

 were assigned in the diplomatic corps, and this assertion gained 

 general currency and acceptance through the press. It is true that 

 ambassadors take precedence over ministers in the order of reception 

 and seating on public occasions, at entertainments, and, at some 

 European capitals, in order of their admission to interviews at the 

 foreign office. It certainly is not agreeable to a minister of the great 

 American Republic, who arrives first at the foreign office, to be re- 

 quired to step aside and give place to the representative of Turkey 

 or Spain and wait till the latter's audience is concluded with the 

 Secretary of Foreign Affairs, simply because he bears the title of 

 ambassador. Mr. Bancroft, the American minister at Berlin, when 

 subjected to this treatment protested against it, and Prince Bismarck 

 decided that the practice should not be continued. Other American 

 ministers who were made to suffer inconvenience or humiliation 

 from the custom might possibly, by firm or considerate remonstrance, 

 have obtained relief. The remedy uniformly suggested has been 

 to raise the grade of representatives at the capitals named to that 

 of ambassador; but the successive secretaries of state declined to 

 make the recommendation to Congress'. Such was the action of 



