wegian people have made a
unanimous demand for the establishment of a separate Norwegian Consular
service and have with equal unanimity asserted that the decision of this
matter, as lying outside the community established between the countries
through the Act of Union, should be reserved to the Norwegian
constitutional authorities. For the treatement of this matter the
Norwegian Storthing has appointed a special Committee and in the
immediate future, this committee will prepare a motion that, in the
present sitting of the Storthing, a bill be to passed with regard to the
establishment of a separate Consular service.

Inasmuch as the scheme propounded in Joint Cabinet Council should be
based on the supposition that the further advancement of the Consular
question should, for the present, be deferred Norway's approval of such a
supposition would, in the opinion of the Department be equivalent to
giving up of the Norwegian people's unanimous desire to now see a just
right carried through which is due to Norway in her capacity of a
Sovereign realm and is secured in her Constitution, and for a reform
requested with cumulative force by the development and the conditions of
industry, instead of entering into negotiations between the countries,
which, after renewed experience, may unfortunately be apprehended to
prove fruitless or at best, to delay the realisation of the matter.

For there is no denying the fact that the scheme for negotiations now
propounded is nothing new, but that similar schemes in the earlier
history of the Union have repeatedly been tried in vain. The three
Committees affecting the Union and made up of Norwegian and Swedish men,
that in the past century, after previous treatment in 1844, in 1867, and
in 1898 propounded schemes for new regulations concerning the mutual
relations of the countries did not lead to any positive result. The
report of the first Committee was in 1847 subject to a treatment on the
part of the Norwegian Government, but was afterwards not favoured by the
Swedish Government; the report of the second Committee, which did not
give expression to Norway's equality in the Union was rejected by the
vast majority of the Storthing in 1871 and in the third Committee no
proposal of a future arrangement could obtain plurality among the
Norwegian and the Swedish members.

With regard to the last-mentioned Committee we beg leave to draw
particular attention to the fact, that all the Swedish mem