No. 411.
Mr. Bayard
to Mr. McLane.
Washington, October 29, 1888.
Sir: I have to acknowledge the receipt of your No. 684 of the 4th instant in relation to the decree of the French Government of the 2d ultimo, requiring foreign residents in the Republic to register themselves within fifteen days from the date of the decree, unless they should have done so previously. It is understood by the Department that the difficulties which it was anticipated the decree would produce for foreign residents in France have not been realized owing to an amelioration of the apparent requirements of the decree by the French Government.
It seems therefore unnecessary to enter into an elaborate discussion of the points mentioned in your dispatch, but it is proper to notice the suggestion therein made in regard to the question of domicil as connected with applications made to you for passports. Persons who have no intention of ever returning to the United States, or, what is the same thing, who do not know their own minds on the subject, are not, as you have been already instructed, entitled to the evidence of protection by the United States which is afforded by a passport. On the other hand, those who can not name a precise date for their return are not necessarily to be denied the possession of such evidence, for a distinction, which should be carefully borne in mind, exists between a fixed intention to return and an intention to return at a fixed dates. The existence of the former state of mind must be established by competent evidence, to your satisfaction, before you may issue a passport; the existence of the latter intention is merely cumulative evidence on the point.
Upon these conclusions, already fully communicated to you, it is not necessary to enlarge. The Department adheres to its former instructions upon the subject, and can not strike out of its printed passport applications those inquiries which go to test the question of abandonment of American citizenship.
But it is not to be understood that the Department in so instructing you intends to introduce any novel doctrines or to extend its instructions in any respect beyond the precise point involved—the issuance of passports by our legations abroad. While resolute in claiming for domicil all the rights attached to it by the law of nations this Department is equally resolut in insisting that the term “domicil” should not be enlarged so as to make it convertible with “residence.” Important reasons may be assigned for this, which will at once suggest themselves to you.
I am, sir, etc.,