try of his adoption, . . . so far resume his original allegiance as to absolve the government of his adopted country from the obligation to protect him as a citizen while he remains in his native land."

Consular Regulations of the U. S., 1874, § 110.

See, to the same effect, Mr. Fish, Sec. of State, to Mr. Hall, vice consulgeneral at Havana, May 3, 1869, S. Ex. Doc. 108, 41 Cong., 2 sess., 202.

"Persons who conceal their American nationality and represent themselves to be Ottoman subjects are not entitled to call upon this Government for protection."

Mr. Hill, Act. Sec. of State, to Mr. Griscom, chargé, No. 345, Feb. 16, 1901, MS. Inst. Turkey, VII. 513.

(3) AMERICAN BUSINESS INTERESTS.

§ 476.

"It is highly conducive to the beneficial developments of these relations that in selecting selling and other agents in a foreign land, our producing and manufacturing houses should be able to avail themselves of the services of such natives of the countries to be dealt with as have become citizens of the United States. In this way we obtain for ourselves the agent's knowledge of the language and other conditions of the country to which he is sent, while, from the fact of his naturalization in the United States, we have a political hold on him, and are able, to some extent, to guarantee his personal rights. Hence it is a common practice of our great producing and exporting houses to send to Europe, as well as to South America, agents who are natives of the country of their agency, but who have intermediately become loyal citizens of the United States. There can be no doubt that this practice has proved very beneficial to the country of the agency, as well as to the country from which the agent is sent forth. To limit such an agency to two years would greatly destroy its efficiency. By the rules of international law, as recognized by all civilized nations, an agent of this class may live and do business in the place of his agency (if his intention is to return to dwell permanently in the place from which he is sent) without acquiring a domicil, or being subjected to a citizenship in the place of his agency. Nor, so far as concerns citizenship, is this rule modified by the treaty between the United States and Ecuador."

Opinion appended to instructions of Mr. Bayard, Sec. of State, to Mr. Beach, consul-general at Guayaquil, May 1, 1885, For. Rel. 1886, 251, 253.

W., a citizen of the United States, had for a series of years resided in South America, as the representative of business interests in the

United States. During those years his visits to the United States were occasional and brief; but there was evidence that he always maintained his position as a citizen of the United States and that he paid an income tax to the United States. There was no proof of any renunciation of his allegiance to the United States or of his becoming naturalized in any of the foreign countries in which he had resided. As a matter of policy, therefore, as well as of international law, it was held that his domicil and nationality were in the United States.

Mr. Bayard, Sec. of State, to Mr. Roberts, min to Chile, March 20, 1886,
MS. Inst. Chile, XVII. 196.

S. was born in Bavaria in 1844; emigrated to the United States in 1865; and was naturalized in 1880. Immediately afterwards he went to Switzerland and settled down as manager of a manufacturing establishment, which was a branch of a house in New York. In 1887 he applied to the American legation in Berne for a passport, using for the purpose the prescribed form, which contained a declaration that he was residing abroad temporarily, but that he intended to return to the United States in two years to reside and perform the duties of citizenship there. The legation granted the passport, but, in reporting its action to the Department of State, adverted to the frequency of the cases in which persons, in a situation similar to S's, after making the usual declaration appeared again at the end of the two years and made the same declaration, and so on ad infinitum. In reply, the Department said that the rule as to loss of diplomatic protection by an apparently permanent abode in a foreign country did "not apply to citizens of the United States going and remaining abroad as agents of American business houses. It is as to these," continued the Department, "that one of your inquiries is put, and I have to call attention, in reply, to the wide difference between such parties as these and absentees whose continued residence abroad can be explained only on the ground of their desire to get rid of the obligation imposed on all good citizens of contributing by their services whatever is in their power to their country's prosperity. The agent abroad of an American house is open to no such charge. The continued presence of such agents at their scene of duty is essential to the maintenance of some of our great industries, and these agents, in living and working abroad in this way, are as much entitled to the protection of the Department, no matter how long they remain away, as if they were on a mere transient visit of inquiry. And, as I have previously had occasion to observe, this protection is applicable as well to naturalized citizens returning to their country of origin as to native citizens of the United States, since it is in many cases peculiarly for the interests of business houses to employ in a foreign land

agents familiar with the language and traditions of such land, and since, when such agency is avowed, there is as little ground for an inference of abandonment of American citizenship in one case as in the other."

Mr. Bayard, Sec. of State, to Mr. Winchester, min. to Switzerland, Oct. 12, 1887, For. Rel. 1887, 1073.

Mr. Winchester's dispatch is printed in the same volume, at p. 1069.

"If your client resides abroad as a member of an American firm, or as the necessary agent or factor of an enterprise originating and having its principal seat in the United States, and if he can truthfully aver his intention to return to the United States within a reasonable time, his case would be in good shape to make application to the embassy at London for a passport. In cases of representative business agencies abroad, the Department does not exact a declaration of intent to return at a fixed time, but it does require a declaration of a fixed intent to return sometime, which intent shall not be negatived by the obvious circumstances of the applicant's domicil abroad. Otherwise, in conformity with the admitted right of self-expatriation, the party must be deemed free to voluntarily abandon his American domicil and forego the duties of good citizenship, by permanent residence abroad, even though by so doing he absolves this Government from the reciprocal duty to protect him so long as he continues to withdraw himself from his natural allegiance.

Mr. Olney, Sec. of State, to Mr. Sturtevant, Nov. 25, 1896, 214 MS. Dom.
Let. 158.

(4) REASONS OF HEALTH.

§ 477.

"It is presumed you will not deny that when a citizen of the United States goes abroad, without any intention to return, he forfeits, with his abandonment of his country, all right to the protection of its government. It is possible that, in going to the Fiji Islands, Mr. Burt may have purposed returning to his native country at some future period, but if this Department is not aware of any formal renunciation of his nationality on leaving for that quarter, it is equally unaware of any formal declaration of an intention to resume his abode in the United States and his allegiance to its Government. His purposes, therefore, are left open to inferIs there any case in which the Government may assume that a citizen who may have gone abroad has abandoned all intention to return home? There must be such in the nature of things. Sometimes such an inference is justified by the length of the stay of the citizen in foreign parts. If his absence should have been unduly protracted, thereby exempting him from the liabilities and burdens of

ence.

a citizen, and, especially, if, during the same period, events should have occurred appealing to the patriotism of all citizens to share equally in the common liabilities and burdens, when the occasion for such an appeal shall have passed, the party returns and asks help to avenge grievances there experienced during his country's agony at home, the duty of complying with such request is, to say the least, regarded as questionable.

You say that Mr. Burt bought a tract of land in a remote district of the Fiji Islands. If one thing more than another can justify the inference that a citizen who has left his own and continues a residence in a foreign country does this without an intention to return, it is when the person so leaving purchases, lives on, and works land in the foreign country. Mere travelers confessedly go abroad meaning to stay a limited time. Such, also, usually is the case with those who may go for scientific purposes: less so with those who go for objects of trade. When, however, a man buys, settles on, and cultivates an estate in a foreign country under such circumstances as those attending Mr. Burt's abode in the Fiji Islands, he may fairly be regarded as practically expatriated."

Mr. Fish, Sec. of State, to Mr. Hackett, June 12, 1873, 99 MS. Dom. Let. 205.

"It appears from your statement that you emigrated from the United States to Fiji in 1866, your object being to obtain a residence in a climate more favorable to your health. You there made considerable investments. In 1875 the Fiji Islands were annexed to Great Britain, and it appears that you suffered various injuries, both from the Fiji and the British Governments, which would entitle you to redress at least from the latter; and if you were a citizen of the United States, domiciled in the United States, you might in some contingencies sustain an appeal for the diplomatic intervention of this Department. Whether you still remain a citizen of the United States is a question which it is not necessary here to discuss. It is sufficient to say that your adoption of Fiji as a permanent home leads the Department to infer that you accepted a Fiji domicil. If so, your continuance in Fiji after British annexation makes your domicil British, and under these circumstances it is not thought that you can lay claim to the diplomatic intervention of this Department.

"It was held in a recent case that, if a domicil in New Mexico was proved to have attached to a British subject there resident, this excluded such party from the right to appeal to British intervention for redress for wrongs inflicted on the party in New Mexico. The same principle rules the present case.

"No doubt the grievances of which you complain entitle you to much sympathy, but, if domiciled in Fiji, your redress must now be sought from the British Government, either because it sanctioned such injuries or because it stands in the place of the Fiji authorities, by whom they were perpetrated."

Mr. Porter, Acting Sec. of State, to Mr. Burt, July 11, 1885, 156 MS.
Dom. Let. 232.

The United States subsequently presented to the British Government a claim for the alleged wrongful disallowance by the British colonial authorities, after the annexation of the Fiji Islands to the British Crown, of Mr. Burt's title to the lands above referred to. The British Government having referred to the letters of Mr. Fish and Mr. Porter, above quoted, the Department of State communicated to the British Government a memorandum in which the objections made in those letters were answered. In this memorandum it was stated that the observation made by Mr. Fish related to another and different case, namely, a claim made by Mr. Burt for property destroyed in Fiji by the natives before annexation, almost ten years before the disallowance of Mr. Burt's title by the colonial authorities. Besides, said the memorandum, Mr. Fish was not in possession of all the facts and circumstances that had since come to the knowledge of the Department. Among the circumstances were the facts that Mr. Burt had rendered important service to his country in the Mexican War and afterwards on the Pacific coast, and that through such service he incurred physical disability which would have rendered him unfit for military service in the Civil War, and that he went to the South Sea islands on the advice of a physician. The memorandum also cited the opinion of Lord Campbell in Beattie v. Johnson, 10 Cl. & Fin. 139, to the effect that a change of domicil does not necessarily effect a change of national character, and that "there may be cases in which even a permanent residence in a foreign country, occasioned by the state of health, may not operate a change of domicil." Moreover, said the memorandum, when the claim for the disallowance of Burt's title was presented, he was then and still continued to be a citizen of the United States domiciled in the District of Columbia. The same observations, said the memorandum, applied equally to the letter of Mr. Porter.

Memorandum accompanying instruction of Mr. Hill, Act. Sec. of State, to Mr. Choate, ambass. to England, Oct. 31, 1899, S. Doc. 140, 56 Cong. 2 sess. 55-57, 68, 70.

The rule that persons who take up an apparently permanent abode in a foreign country are not entitled to diplomatic protection, does not apply to persons who go abroad for reasons of health and remain