Mr. Blaine to Mr. Reid.
Washington , December 2, 1889.
Sir: I have to acknowledge the receipt of your No. 94 of the 15th ultimo, in which you inclose a passport application of Mr. Frank R. Blackinton, a native citizen of the United States, and request instructions from the Department on the subject, the application having been refused.
It appears by the application that Mr. Blackinton was born at North Adams, Massachusetts, in 1851, and consequently is now thirty eight years of age. He left the United States in 1871, at the age of twenty, and has since generally resided abroad. He has, however, in the period mentioned been nine times in the United States, remaining for “a few months at a time.” He further deposes that his domicile is in the United States and that his legal residence is at North Adams, where he pays and has always paid real and personal taxes. These facts certainly indicate that although Mr. Blackinton has resided much abroad his domicile is in the United States, that he has not abandoned his American citizenship, and that he is entitled to a passport. The Department would therefore direct that a passport be issued to him without further question were it not for what follows in his application. The last clause of the form which is required to be filled up is—
That I intend to return to the United States within —— with the purpose of residing and performing the duties of citizenship therein; and that I desire the passport for the purpose of ——.
It is to be observed, in the first place, that no definite period is fixed during or at the end of which the applicant is required to declare his purpose to return to and reside in the United States, to perform the duties of citizenship therein. For reasons of business, or for other causes, the applicant may be unable to make a definite and positive statement on the subject. In such case the reasons why such a statement is not or can not be made should be disclosed for the judgment of the legation; and the fact, if it appear, that the applicant is domiciled in the United States, of which the payment of personal taxes here is evidence, and adheres to his American nationality, goes far to make out his case. But when Mr. Blackinton is asked to state his intention in respect to residing in the United States and performing the duties of citizenship therein in the future he replies “that at present I have no plan, intention, or desire to do so.” This statement is specific and unequivocal, and, whatever his purposes and his conduct may have been in the past, is a clear declaration that Mr. Blackinton does not intend [Page 169] to perform the duties of citizenship hereafter, and that, besides, he has no desire to do so. If this declaration is expressive of Mr. Blackinton’s purposes it seems scarcely consistent that he should ask the protection of the Government of the United States. The laws of the United States enjoin upon its authorities the recognition of the right of its citizens freely to renounce their allegiance, and this injunction the Executive is not at liberty to disregard. At the same time it is forbidden to issue passports to any but citizens of the United States, which has always been held to mean not persons who may be able merely to produce evidence that at a certain time they were citizens of the United States, but those who at the time they apply for the protection of the Government are its loyal citizens, bearing, in the language of the oath which they are required to take, “true faith and allegiance to the same;” when, therefore, a person declares that he has “no plan, intention, or desire” to perform the duties of citizenship, he by his own acts excludes himself from the class of persons who, in bearing “true faith and allegiance,” are entitled to the protection of the Government whose allegiance he renounces. It can not be said that a person bears “true faith and allegiance” when at the same moment he declares that he has “at present no plan, intention, or desire” to perform the duties of citizenship, which is about as broad and comprehensive a renunciation of those duties as could be expressed.
With this declaration before it, the Department finds itself unable to direct favorable action upon Mr. Blackinton’s application. If the Department had been left to gather this intention from antecedent facts, it would have come to a different conclusion, although no positive statement as to his future residence in the United States had been made; but it is superfluous to say that it is not admissible to resort to such inference to attribute to a person an intention to perform the duties of citizenship in the future, when he declares that he has neither intention nor desire to do so.
I am, etc.,