438 



CONSUL 



CONSUMPTION 



marriage of British subjects recorded in the books 

 of a British consul is a valid ceremony. 



Consuls in various foreign countries have special 

 powers regulated by what are called 'capitulations.' 

 They act as judges in consular courts to whose 

 jurisdiction all subjects of their nation are amen- 

 able, to the exclusion of the native tribunals. Such 

 privileges are enjoyed by English consuls in Turkey 

 and the Levant, Morocco and other parts of Africa, 

 China, Corea, Muscat, Siam, and the Western 

 Pacific. In Egypt there are mixed international 

 courts as well as consular courts. In Japan the 

 capitulations were abolished in 1895, and in Mada- 

 gascar when the island became French. 



The first care of every Levantine trader is to 

 obtain the protection of some foreign power, so 

 that he may set at defiance the local courts, and, 

 to some extent, the local executive authority. To 

 obtain letters of nationalisation as a British sub- 

 ject is rightly made somewhat difficult ; but this 

 is not the case with most other European nations. 

 The capitulations are especially injurious in Egypt, 

 where the native authorities and their English 

 advisers are constantly thwarted in their endeav- 

 ours to promote order and good government by 

 the ill-defined and jealously-asserted power of the 

 foreign consuls. 



Of late years attempts have been made to estab- 

 lish a body of trained men from among whom the 

 consular service in the Levant, as well as in China 

 and Japan, could be recruited, and student inter- 

 preterships have been founded. The student inter- 

 preters are selected by competitive examination 

 in England, and are sent to Constantinople or to 

 the far East, as the case may be, with a salary 

 of 200 a year. Their advancement ' depends 

 entirely on the ability which they may show after 

 their arrival at their destination, and on their 

 general steadiness and good conduct. ' 



Consuls who are permitted to trade are not 

 required to pass any examination, but members 

 of what may be called the regular service are 

 supposed to do so. The limit of age for appoint- 

 ments is twenty-five to fifty. 



In the United States, literary and scientific men 

 are frequently appointed to important consulships 

 abroad, Hawthorne and Bret Harte having, for 

 example, been consuls in Britain. In the British 

 service the names of Charles Lever, Mr Stigand, 

 Gifford Palgrave, and Sir Richard Burton are 

 modern examples of such appointments. 



The salary of British consuls varies from 2500 

 (chief -justice of the Supreme Court for China and 

 Japan ), to the nominal salary of many vice-consuls. 

 Among the more important posts are the consul- 

 general at Shanghai, 1600; consul-general at New 

 York, 2000; consul at Boston, 1200; New Orleans, 

 1100; Zanzibar, 2150; Honolulu, 1100; Sofia, 

 1200; Beyrout, 1250; Manila, 1100; Old 

 Calabar, 1200 ; the consul-general and judge at 

 Constantinople, 1600. The United States consuls 

 at London, Liverpool, Paris, and Rio Janeiro have 

 each, apart from fees, a salary of $5000 ; the consul 

 at Havana receives 6000. 



Consumption, in Political Economy, is that 

 department of the subject which treats of the use 

 of w.ealth. It is the converse of production, which 

 refers to the making or creating of wealth. As 

 production is the first stage in economics, con- 

 sumption is the last. Consumption is the chief end 

 of industry, for everything that is produced and 

 exchanged is intended in some way to be con- 

 sumed. Consumption is usually divided into two 

 heads reproductive and non-reproductive. Wealth 

 consumed in reproduction is simply Capital ( q. v. ). 

 Wealth consumed as capital, while it is the final 

 stage in one process of industry, becomes an item in 

 a further process of industry. A shopkeeper who, 



having made a thousand pounds in his business, 

 afterwards uses it in farming, proposes thereby to 

 apply his money to a new kind of reproductive 

 employment. Industry is to a large degree simply 

 a continuation of this process. Wealth which is 

 produced to-day will to-morrow be consumed in 

 fresh production. 



But consumption is pernaps more properly re- 

 garded as non-reproductive, as that use of wealth 

 which has no fresh production in view, or is simply 

 applied to the satisfaction of human needs. The 

 wants of mien, as well as the means of satisfying 

 them, have varied greatly at different periods of his- 

 tory, and do still greatly vary in different countries 

 and different states of society. As regards wealth 

 applied to consumption, we may recognise three 

 stages : ( 1 ) Necessaries ; (2) comforts ; (3) luxuries. 

 The commodities which were once a luxury are 

 now in civilised countries merely a comfort or even 

 a necessity. In the middle ages a linen shirt was 

 a luxury even at royal courts. In fact, nothing 

 perhaps so marks the development of comfort as 

 the general use of underclothing, whether woollen, 

 cotton, or linen. In the economics of all ages the 

 question of luxury has claimed great attention. 

 The extravagance of the wealthy was both in 

 ancient and medieval times considered so dangerous 

 to society, that Sumptuary Laws (q.v. ) were passed 

 to repress it, often without the desired effect. On 

 the other hand, the luxury, extravagance, and even 

 prodigality of the rich have been justified on the 

 ground that such expenditure was necessary to 

 provide labour for the industrial classes ; but this 

 notion is exploded among competent economists. 

 It should be clearly understood that consumption 

 should be both rational and moral, and that the 

 just and rational needs of men have the first 

 claim on society. 



As all wealth is produced in order to be con- 

 sumed, and as there can be no consumption with- 

 out production, it will be obvious how the great pro- 

 cesses of production and consumption are. correlated 

 to each other. If there be insufficient production, 

 consumption is checked and suffering ensues through 

 human wants not being satisfied. On the other 

 hand, over-production frequently tends to bring 

 about commercial crises. When the effective con- 

 sumption is unable to absorb the mass of com- 

 modities, the market becomes overstocked and the 

 industrial process is deranged. 



Consumption, DECLINE ( in medical language, 

 Phthisis, Tuberculosis), is a condition well recog- 

 nised by the laity as by the physician. Strictly 

 speaking, the name includes a group of affections, 

 but it is generally used to indicate pulmonary con- 

 sumption (phthisis pulmonalis) i.e. a more or less 

 rapidly advancing process of lung destruction, asso- 

 ciated with progressive emaciation and other char- 

 acteristic signs and symptoms. This is a disease 

 of grave importance, from its frequency and fatal 

 tendency. It has been estimated that consumption 

 is responsible for nearly one-seventh of the total 

 mortality of Europe. Consumption appears to 

 have committed its ravages from the earliest 

 times, and its distribution is probably universal, 

 though far from equal. Thus, statistics show 

 consumption to be less common in the Hebrides 

 and Shetland Islands than on the mainland of 

 Scotland, while the unanimous verdict of Ice- 

 landic physicians has been that consumption 

 occurs relatively seldom in their island. It is not 

 easy to propose any fixed rule regarding its distri- 

 bution. Latitude as such seems of less importance 

 than might be expected. The mean level of tem- 

 perature has little connection with its occurrence, 

 though apparently, in tropical countries, the course 

 of the disease is more rapid. The most probable 

 explanation of the comparative imnmmty of certain 



