Coll 29/44 'Appointment of Indian Medical Service and Department officers to be Vice-Consuls: procedure, etc' [‎45r] (89/153)

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Consular appoinman^a in one place" to use ka^or oox'b
expression, oooasioned no objeotions or inconveniences*
X'm appointment of tlxe ?irat .assistant as Consul, and of
tne -econi Assistant as Vice-Consul would therefore seem
a eiraole way of getting over the difficulty pointed out
by Hie Majesty’s H® si dent.
The alternative course of giving him the "local
rank" of secretary of Legation or Second Secretary in the
Idplomatic service would undoubtedly present the advantage
of adding something to the prestige of the Keoidency, an
end desirable in itself under existing circumstances in
Southern Persia, and of expnaaiaing the fact that the
functions of the Healdont and his staff are, unlike those
of their foreign colleagues, of diplomatic rather than of
a consular character, concerned as they are not merely
with the orotaction of British trade and interests in
Buahire and Fare, but with the political affairs of the
Arao states and indeed of the whole coasts of the Persian
Gulf* There would of course oe, 1 imagine, nothing
incongruous in attaching an officer with a diplomatic
character to a mission not technically diplomatic* Mr*
:*iget, now His Majesty’s Minister at Bangkok, was attached
for some time, when a secretary in the Diplomatic Service,
to the Agency An office of the East India Company and, later, of the British Raj, headed by an agent. at Zanzibar and almost the entire staff in
Cairo is diplomatio, although Egypt is not a sovereign
state and the chiefs of missions there are properly speaking
Consuls-General in an ottoman dependency.
whihe however there may be grounas for giving a
preference to one rather than to the other of the two
alternative suggestions made by His Majesty’s Resident, 1
am decidedly of opinion that the reasons advanced by him
for