Current conservation and electric multipoles

New forms of the electric multipole operators are derived. We have uniquely and optimally isolated those components of the nuclear current density which are constrained by current conservation, and replaced them by multipole fields based on the charge density. This generalization of the work of Siegert is shown by means of a sum rule to have a very different structure from conventional forms which were designed to be effective in the long wavelength limit. The new form puts the electric and magnetic multipoles on the same footing: The current ebters only as the magnetization density, $\text{μ}\text{(x) =}\text{x × J(x)}\text{2}$.