No. 403.
Mr. McLane
to Mr. Bayard.
Paris, July 31, 1888. (Received August 13.)
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your instructions Nos. 358 and 360 in reply to my No. 631, the former inclosing correspondence with Mr. Louis P. Twyeffort and the latter dealing more generally with the questions submitted by me concerning your instructions in your No. 343 relative to the regulations governing the issuance of passports.
Your instructions, as contained in these Nos. 358 and 360, shall be duly accepted for the government of this legation in the future, as, indeed, with a few exceptions, they have been in the past; but it is only within a recent period that passports have been required by any of the European powers except Russia.
I reported to you in my No. 643 one of these exceptions, where the applicant was well known to me to be a naturalized citizen of the United States, who had already received passports from the Department of State and from this legation, and who promised to write to the United States for his certificate of naturalization, but who was under argent necessity to leave Paris immediately.
It would not be respectful, I think, for me to press further upon your attention the views submitted in my No. 631 as to the propriety of authorizing me to exercise discretion in the matter of issuing passports to [Page 555] naturalized citizens who are unable at the moment to produce the technical legal proof of naturalization by a court of record, nor did I require instruction as to what was the strict legal proof of naturalization, and in my No. 6311 indicated the class of cases in which I thought my discretion might be exercised, I might, indeed, have called your attention more specifically than I did to the individuals who found themselves in Europe without their certificates of naturalization and without having the time to procure them from the United States to meet their present necessity.
I have, etc.,