e indistinctness that was
supposed to characterise the Communique, its general contents roused no
unanimous approbation. In the Swedish Diet in May 1903, during a debate,
serious doubts were rife, and it was emphatically declared that the
Consular Question must be solved simultaneously with the Foreign Minister
Question as resolved by the Diet in 1893. The Second Chamber (lower Home)
was more leniently inclined towards the negotiations, but it nevertheless
referred to the resolution of 1893.

Nor did it get a promising reception in Norway at first. It was known
there that one of the chief stipulations of the negotiations had been the
cessation of the agitation for a separate Minister of Foreign affairs.
Meanwhile after the publication of the Communique, the Norwegian Radicals
immediately expressed their opinions at their large meeting by again
solemnly entering this old claim on their party programme.

However when the agitation for a new election for the Storthing was
started later on in the year, there was a strong inclination towards
negotiating, and even BJOeRNSON, among others, warmly advocated the cause
of the negotiation programme, and that too, in opposition to the Radical
Minister BLEHR, who, though having introduced the negotiations, was
suspected of being but a lukewarm partisan to the cause. The party for
negotiation conquered, and was in the majority in the Storthing, though
not in great numbers. The issue could scarcely be attributed to the
Swedish proposal alone, but also in no slight degree to the miserable,
impoverished condition to which the country had been brought by the old
Radical government. Mr BLEHR resigned in the autumn 1903, after the
elections. Professor HAGERUP, the leader of the Conservatives, then
became Prime Minister at Christiania in companionship with D:r IBSEN as
Prime Minister at Stockholm. The old Radical party retired from the
leadership, but exercised, by its criticising, suspicious attitude, a
powerful influence on the progress of the negotiations, and that too, in
no favourable direction.

[Sidenote: _Negotiations on the basis of the Communique._]

In a joint Council held on 11th Dec. 1903, the Cabinets of both Kingdoms
were commissioned to resume negotiations on the Consular question, on the
basis of the Communique. They were carried on slowly during the Spring
1904, but it was not till May that the first official break in the
proceedings was made by Mr. HAGERUP presenting t