Note 6 — Chapter II

The general feeling of disgust and bitterness with which all travellers, who are natives of Great Britain or of the United States, speak of the vexations they are compelled to undergo from the formalities and exactions to which they are subjected in obtaining signatures to passports on the continent, need not be dwelt upon. Much ill blood, more delay, not to speak of expense, are created by the insolence and legalized robbery of official persons, into whose hands the defenceless traveller falls in the fulfilment of these formalities. Passports are the alpha and omega of a man’s trouble on a continental journey.

In some particular cases, it may even be affirmed that the exercise of consular authority in reference to passports amounts to actual illegality. Captain B., an Englishman, in the winter 1836-7, was about to leave the Sardinian States, and made his arrangements accordingly, but neglected to settle a debt which he had contracted at a shop kept also by an Englishman. The creditor immediately went to the English vice-consul, and requested he would not deliver the captain’s passport until the bill was paid: and it was accordingly stopped, although Captain B. had taken his passage by the steamboat. This case is by no means singular; for many English consuls consider themselves justified in acting in the same way under similar circumstances. Now, the question at issue is—has a consul a right to do this? The answer will be found in the fact that no such right is known to the English constitution, and that, therefore, the conduct of the consul is unconstitutional and illegal. The British government has no power over the movements of an individual, except under the warrant of a magistrate. English legislation knows nothing of passports, except as a usage resorted to by foreign governments, to which British subjects must submit while they are within the range of their operation. But the consul, as a British officer, cannot recognize a passport otherwise than as a formality exacted by the government of the country in which he resides; he cannot, without laying himself open to a serious responsibility (which it is a great pity he should not be made to discharge) employ a passport as an instrument for the detention or arrest (for such it amounts to, in fact) of any free-born subject of Great Britain. Even the British consul at Havre did not feel himself authorised to stop Mr. Papineau’s passport on his way to Paris, although Mr. Papineau was denounced as a traitor and an outlaw by the British government.

Captain B.’s creditor ought to have applied to the Piedmontese police, and not to the English vice-consul, who was a native of the place. And this is one of the crying evils of our consular system. Instead of appointing meritorious half-pay officers, or other deserving gentlemen, born in Great Britain, to such offices, we frequently bestow them upon inhabitants of the place, who are bound by religious, social, and domestic ties, to prefer the interests of the country in which they live to those of the country which they represent, and who hold in much greater fear and respect the local authorities of the neighbourhood than the distant authority to which they owe no allegiance beyond that of official forms, which they can in most cases violate or misrepresent with impunity. Our consular system is open to many objections, but this is one of the most palpable and disgraceful.