No. 467.
Mr. Bayard
to Mr. Coleman.
Washington, July 10, 1888.
Sir: Your No. 631 of 22d ultimo has been received. You therewith submit the application of Charles Stein for a passport, said application being accompanied by an original passport, No. 24717, dated March 27, 1866, and signed by Mr. Seward, then Secretary of State, in which the bearer is described as “Charles Stein, who is lawfully liable to military duty in this country, and who has declared his intention to become a citizen of the United States.”
No evidence is furnished that Mr. Stein has since been naturalized. You state that you find no warrant of law for the issuance of a passport, [Page 647] so modified, to a person who has only declared his intention to become a citizen, and you accordingly ask instructions in the premises.
During our civil war, and when persons of foreign origin, domiciled in the United States, or who had taken out their first citizen-papers were subject, to military service, a statute was enacted providing:
That so much of the act approved the eighteenth of August, eighteen hundred and fifty-six, entitled “An act to regulate the diplomatic and consular systems of the United States” as prohibits the granting of passports to any other than citizens of the United States, shall be, and is hereby, repealed, so far as that prohibition may embrace any class of persons liable to military duty, by the laws of the United States. (Act March 3, 1863, section 23, 12 U. S. Stats., 754.)
Mr. Stein’s old passport was issued in conformity with that provision, and is not a certificate of citizenship, but merely a permit to leave the country. This special enactment was repealed by the act approved May 30, 1866 (14 U. S. Stats., 54), which further provided as follows: “And hereafter passports shall be issued only to citizens of the United States.” This is the existing law (section 4076, Revised Statutes), and under it no passport can be issued to a person who has merely declared his intention to become a citizen.
It is observed that Mr. Stein’s old passport bears the following indorsement:
Renewed at the American legation at Berlin June 15, 1869, for one year from date, good for Russia.
Alexander Bliss,
Secretary of Legation.
As the statute under which the original passport was issued had been repealed for more than three years, that indorsement, so far as it purports to renew the said passport, is wholly without authority of law and void. A note to this effect should be made opposite any record of such “renewal” which exists in your legation.
I am, etc.,