THE LAST DAYS OF THE PASSPORT SYSTEM.
Tam Belgian and French Governments have taken the first steps towards mitigating the passport nuisance, by an agreement be- tween them that persons who are simply passing through either country shall be permitted to go without a visa of the passport, if they can produce tickets to prove that they have paid for their journey to a place beyond the confines of the country. The Con- tinental. Governments will probably be quick enough to perceive that they must by degrees, and perhaps not slow degrees, diminish the restrictions upon travelling involved in the whole of the pass- port arrangements ; for otherwise the Governments would be placed in the scandalous position of having to increase their re- strictions in order to keep pace with the increase or celerity of travelling ; while the momentum of the travelling force would trample down the restrictions. The passport system is possible, and in the narrow-minded sense useful, only in those countries where there is the least travelling. It is impossible and useless in those countries where it should be most needed. In Russia, which is not much more visited than the best parts of Africa, and is as little traversed by travellers as Central Africa, it is com- parativelyeasy to enforce passport arrangements ; and Russia ac- cordingly is at the present day the model country for passport obstructions. Not long since, a gentleman enumerated the checks which he had to surmount in leaving Moscow on his return to England. Seventeen processes had he to undergo, in- cluding three gazette announcements of his departure. Another "Northern Tourist" enumerates twenty-four stages on entering and leaving Russia, and on moving about from St. Petersburg to Moscow. The series begins with the visa of the Russian Consul- General in London; passes through the revision of the Police in Denmark ; of officers on board the guard-ship off Cronstadt ; on landing at St. Petersburg ; on submitting to the scrutiny of the Police in the district where the traveller resides ; on obtaining the certificate of the Danish Consul that the British passport is genu- ine; on undergoing cross-examination by the Secret Police on appearing at the Alien Office to be described in passport linea- ments for a pass to Moscow ; on taking a railway-ticket for Mos- cow; on leaving Moscow ; and so again at each stage backwards —twenty-four stages in all ; with an aggregate expense of about 4/. sterling in Government charges, official bribes, agency, &c. Never had an Englishman such a reduplicated opportunity of ful- filling the old Greek injunction "Know thyself,' in the number of times which he has to examine his own identity, his connexions incidents, circumstances, objects, and personal appearance. In the countenances of the scrutinizing police and passport officials, he sees reflected his own portrait, with the aspect of vagrant, smuggler, thief, swindler, brigand, assassin, and "patriot," if not " suspect" ; and he is challenged to reflect whether he really looks, or even is any one of those things. Cur bono ? Where is the'real check which the passport affords ? Before it can be of any practical service in restraining" dangerous characters" from going whither they please, it must be much more perfect in its machinery. Who does not know the passport portrait—the blanks filled up with average expressions, not of in- dividuals but classes ? In her satirical tale "La Canne de M. de Beaux," Madame Emile de Girardin describes a lady with a face of blank neutrality, by likening it to the official delineation. "She had one of those countenances superb to describe and not at all to look at ; that passport kind of beauty which captivates the vulgar,—' eyes large, nose aquiline' mouth small, face oval, chin round.' To make herself beloved through an ambassador as princesses are, Madame Poirceau might have sent her signale- ment, but not her portrait " ; so little is the portrait and the Passport description the same thing. Is the passport-officer an artist F Is he a Balza° or a Thaokeray, who conceives the charac- teristics of the countenance and dashes off a sketch which will enable you to know the man ? No; at the best he can discrimi- nate between the races of mankind, and even that faintly. In the PassPart portrait, you would barely know a Negro from a snub- nosed Englishman, except for the black skin, which the artist Could not overlook.
The apparent check which the description of the traveller af- fords is in. reality a facility for fraud. If a man contemplates an. illicit journey, what is his natural recourse ? He gets some other person, who is about as like to him as Stephen Kemble was like Henry the Eighth or any other fat man, to represent him at the passport-office ; Caussidiere, Lablaohe, and Daniel O'Connell, might have gone over Europe with each other's passports.
In progress of time, when Spain can get over her penury, Rome can surmount her religious scruples against steam carriages, Aus- tria harmonize finance and politics, Russia spread capital over her wastes, Europe will he covered with railways, possibly without even a break of gauge. It has been found, wherever railways have been established, that they create an extent of travelling never before witnessed in the same quarter. We shall have a lo- comotion of the human race which, in numbers and speed, will defy the passport-officer. It is easier to imagine a train waiting for the settlement of an affair of honour than stopping for a visa. The passengers waiting for egress at the gates of a station, as they wait at the theatre, will be too many and too hurried for the most strenuous of gendarmes ; they will be too multitudinous for the most discriminating of portrait-painters to portray. The "eyes large, nose aquiline, mouth small," &o., will degenerate into the most wonderful formula—a mere diagram of a sketch, and will be worthless ; unless, to counteract that degeneracy of the passport, the officers compel every man in the crowd to step in and have his photograph taken, "charge only one shilling." But imagine the patience of a travelling multitude detained at every station on a line across several independent states, compelled to step into a local Clauclet's in order to have the same portrait re- peated, whatever the charge might be ! The passport system is about to be reduced by the railway system to an absurdity, unless the Governments, with a prudent regard to their own dignity, an- ticipate the coming engine, and abolish the paltry barrier of the passport.
The treaties for the extradition of criminals are the natural substitute for the passport system. The more communication there is between the police of different countries, the more easy it will be always to identify "dangerous characters " ; and Govern- ments' will find it pay better, if they concentrate their precautions on the dangerous, and leave the safe herd alone—it they keep watch upon the wolves, easily traced to their dens, and don't trouble themselves about the sheep that wander peacefully over the plain.
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