FRENCH PASSPORTS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume X, Issue 599, 31 July 1858, Page 3

FRENCH PASSPORTS.

(From the " Times," April 15.) It is assuriied across the r Channel that the Englishman must carry a passport, which he is bound to produce on any occasion, and which must tell the tale of his travels. Our public .'men weary and degrade themselves with the attempt to make this no inconvenience. The question is how to hit both these objects. So far, there is little prospect of our being able to do so. The Englishman dislikes a " ticket-of-, leave" altogether. He. dislikes it as he would dislike having to crawl,: or lick the dust, or make a certain number of obeisances, or observe a load of etiquette, in Siam, or China, or Madagascar. Nothing will reconcile him to it, for it admits of no compromise. Tell him that you have made it quite easy, that he has,only just to touch the ground once with his knee, only just to take,up a little dust and put his hand to his mouth, only just to bob once at ; the door and once before the footstool of his barbaric :Majesty, or that it will be enough if his Moonshee does all this for him, or that he has only to ask to be excused and make a trifling payment, it matters. not, he doesn't like the thing in any shape whatever. 7 He likes it still less when he is told that the very people before whom he is required to do these, humiliations, think them utterly absurd, and wonder at his compliance. It does not improve matters to be told that the personage who won't admit you without a label round your neck, thinks it an idle ceremony, and only retains it because his servants make it a pretence for some trifling extortion.

Let us see what relief is now promised the British traveller. If you reside in London or the interior you have now a greater variety of means of identification at your command. If you have no account at a bank, and are not of the same politics as the Mayor, and have no acquaintance with the county magistrates, you may resort to, a clerical friend. Should you be a Dissenter, it is enough to have the word of your minister that you are what you pretend to be. As it is possible you may.be a Churchman, and still on cool terms with your clergyman, you. may go to your solicitor, whom you are supposed to be always only too happy to consult. If you are afraid of having to pay' 6s. Bd., you may go to your physician or your surgeon., Even these, however, may expect 7 fees. What, then, remains ? A notary. Not one Englishman in a; hundred knows what a notary is. But, granting that among the i Mayor, the town and county magistrates, the physicians, surgeons, solicitors, clergy, Dissenting preachers, and notaries of your neighbourhood, you may find some one to vouch for you, you have still the further process of applying at the Foreign-office, obtaining the vises of the Foreign Consids, and having always to carry the document with you, and produce it when required. But the Foreign-office tells us it is going to do more. We are now to have our passport for 2s. instead of having to pay 6s. for at; and, should we happen to be on the coast, and in a hurry to cross over, we may get a Foreign-office passport at once, by applying to an agent.put there for the purpose. On the .other hand, the French Government is now .graciously pleased to permit British subjects living in France to travel from one town to another with a French passport, and in the or- | dinary case of British travellers they will be content with the vise" of the local Consul on 'the' Foreign-office passport, instead of requiring that of the Consul-General. All this proves the solicitude of the English and French officials to put on the. handcuff without hurting r the wrist, and at the prime cost of the instrument ; but it does not alter the main fact that you must have a passport. I . Indeed, we are not sure that the increased fa- ! cility of obtaining the passport, anywhere, any-

how, with anybody's voucher, will not give a pretence for a closer scrutiny of the document abroad. It will be known, of course, that, not' withstanding the signature of the Foreign Secretary, his armorial bearings, and his hi"h sounding titles, tlie document only means that somebody, or other, a doctor, solicitor, or Methodist preacher, vouches that a veritable John Jones did sign a paper bearing the signature "John Jone3." . The bearer may simply call himself "John Jones;" or, being really John Jones, may be a very dangerous character, either because he is in the habit of leaving his bills unpaid, or because he has a particular ani. mosity to emperors. Supposing it to turn out in \ two or three instances that the traveller, warranted by the licensed pastor of some eccentric denominationin the North of England, is not much the! better for it, we can easily imaginei 'the-;. French police turning round on our own Foreign-office and saying, "See what sort of men you;send.amongst us! What is the value of your voucher ? Were we not in the right to take care! of ourselves ?" Their arguments, of course, go to the absurdity of the system, but that is just what the French do not choose to observe. Iv sober truth, all the names and vises. of a passport, though it has travelled half round: Europe, only endorse the first voucher; and,, in the instance we have supposed, the French, Belgian, Austrian, Prussian, and Russian vise's, as well as the names of our Foreign Secretary, and for the French Consul-:General in London, only testify to the original allegation of the Rev. Simon Snuffle, minister of Ebenezer Chapel, at some place with an unpronounceable name, that the document was originally given to a man bearing the name subscribed to it. The whole pyramidof authorities rests on this point, which is really worth nothing; and the earth on an elephant, the elephant on a tortoise, is not a greater absurdity. Is it possible that this state of things can last long? If, as our own Foreign Secretary tells us, the present system is a delusion, we don't see how the improved one can be any thing else. The passport is worth nothing, and its greater cheapness and facility of acquisition -will not make it worth more. The object, of course, is well intended, and we have to render our honest thanks for the trouble which Lord Malmesbury has taken to get over the preliminary difficulties of a passport. Nothing that he can do, however, —nothing even that he is able to promise on the part of the French Government—can mitigate the inconvenience of the passport after the moment of its delivery from the Foreign-office on the payment of 2s. It must still be vised in London, still at Boulogne, still at Paris, still almost everywhere abroad, still taken from you, still kept you know not where, still liable to be lost, still filling your pocket, still a pretence for extracting more francs, thalers, carlines, and paulines, still a badge, of ; degradation and, still after all of no use whatever.