of interest; but the most valuable of them all is the small, portable writing desk upon which Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence. It was deposited with the Department by President Hayes, with the following letter from Mr. Jefferson:

Th. Jefferson gives this writing desk to Joseph Coolidge junr as a memorial of affection. it was made from a drawing of his own, by Ben Randall, cabinet maker of Philadelphia, with whom he first lodged on his arrival in that city in May 1776 and is the identical one on which he wrote the Declaration of Independence. Politics, as well as Religion, has its superstitions. these, gaining strength with time, may one day give imaginary value to this relic for it's association with the birth of the Great charter of our Independence.

It has been the custom of the Department for many years past to have the portrait of each Secretary painted and hung upon the walls of the diplomatic reception room. Paintings of the earlier Secretaries have also been acquired, until the collection is complete, beginning with Thomas Jefferson. Before noticing a few of these better portraits, it is proper to speak of the best work of art in the Department's possession. This is the profile life-sized bust in marble of James Madison, which hangs in the Secretary's office. It was executed in 1792 by Giuseppe Ceracchi, an Italian sculptor of renown, who came to America soon after the Revolution and executed busts of Washington, Hamilton, and others. This bust was bought from the Madison estate by J. C. McGuire, Esq., of Washington, and bought by the Department from the McGuire estate when Thomas F. Bayard was

Secretary. Ceracchi had a scheme for a great monument to Liberty. Madison wrote of him, April 30, 1830:

The Ceracchi named was an artist celebrated by his genius, and who was thought a rival, in embryo, to Canova, and doomed to the guillotine as the author or patron, guilty or suspected, of the infernal machine for destroying Bonaparte. I knew him well, having been a lodger in the same house with him, and much teased by his eager hopes, on which I constantly threw cold water, of obtaining the aid of Congress for his grand project. Having failed in this chance, he was advised by me and others to make the experiment of subscriptions, with the most auspicious names heading the list; . . . . but just as the circular address was about to be despatched, it was put into his head that the scheme was merely to get rid of his importunities, and, being of the genus irritabile, he suddenly went off in anger and disgust, leaving behind him heavy drafts on General Washington, Mr. Jefferson, etc., etc., for the busts, etc., he had presented to them. His drafts were not the effect of avarice, but of his wants, all his resources having been exhausted in the tedious pursuit of his object. He was an enthusiastic worshipper of Liberty and Fame; and his whole soul was bent on securing the latter by rearing a monument to the former, which he considered as personified in the American Republic. Attempts were made to engage him for a statue of General W., but he would not stoop to that.1

Coming to the portraits, that of Henry Clay by Edward Dalton Marchant, bought from Mrs. Marchant September 29, 1890, under a special appropriation by Congress, is one of the best. In urging its purchase upon Congress, Secretary Blaine said, in a letter to 1 Madison's Works, IV, 71.

the chairman of the Library Committee of the House of Representatives, April 25, 1890:

It is, in my opinion, very desirable that the Department should be enabled to purchase these portraits for its gallery of Secretaries. . . The portrait of Mr. Clay is, as I have previously said, perhaps the finest portrait of him in existence; and that of Mr. Adams, I am sure from my own recollection of him, is a faithful likeness.

June 20, 1890, Mr. Blaine wrote to Senator Hale:

The portraits of Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams, offered for sale as former Secretaries of State, are the best that have ever been seen in the Department. I am very anxious to have them purchased.

The portrait of John Quincy Adams, to which Mr. Blaine alluded, also by Marchant, was bought at the same time with the Clay portrait, $2,500 being paid for the two; but by some action of which there is no record the Adams portrait was subsequently moved from the Department and hung in the office of the (then) Legation at London, where it is now. The two portraits painted by George Peter Augustus Healy of Alexander Baring (Lord Ashburton) and Daniel Webster, were executed, the former in 1843 and the latter in 1848, in commemoration of the negotiations by them of the Webster-Ashburton treaty, which defined the northeastern boundary of the United States. Nearly forty years later, in 1883, Mr. Healy painted the portrait of Elihu B. Washburne. In 1891 the Department acquired the interesting portrait of John Quincy Adams by Jean Baptiste Adolphe Gibert of Rome, which was painted probably somewhere

about 1830, when Gibert visited Washington. Daniel Huntington's Fish and Frelinghuysen are also noteworthy portraits. In addition the Department has one of Charles Willson Peale's portraits of Washington, a work which was much approved of at one time, but is supposed to have been marred when it was cleaned and repaired in 1840. It was bought when John Quincy Adams was Secretary of State.

1 Descriptive Catalogue of the Collection of Portraits in the Department of State, 1900.

CHAPTER XIII

THE DIPLOMATIC AND CONSULAR SERVICE

HE management of foreign affairs being the most

important of the regular duties of the Department, the supervision of the diplomatic and consular service is its chief duty. The general rules which govern the foreign service are found in the works on international law and particularly in the American digests; but two special publications have been issued by the Department of State for the guidance of its agents abroad-the Diplomatic Instructions and the Consular Regulations.

The Diplomatic Instructions were formerly only a printed circular. When John Quincy Adams was Secretary of State in 1820 he conceived the idea of having two sets of instructions for diplomatic officers— general instructions applicable to all, and personal instructions applicable to a particular mission or officer.1 The general instructions were to include: "their correspondence with each other; their deportment to the sovereign to whom they are accredited, and to the Diplomatic corps of the same Court; their relations with the Consuls of the United States in the same countries; their duties with regard to granting passports; to insist upon the alternative in signing treaties, and to decline accepting the presents usually 1 Diary, V, 143.