PASSPORTS IN FRANCE—QUESTION. (Hansard, 18 July 1864)

§ SIR WILLIAM FRASER

said, he wished to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether passports are required by British subjects travelling in France? The subject would, no doubt, be interesting to the large body of persons who were about to travel on the Continent. Looking to the tone of the articles which appeared in the German papers, he did not think Englishmen going to Switzerland would be likely to go through Prussia—they would, no doubt, much prefer going through France. Some time ago a notice appeared in the Moniteur, which stated that the subjects of Her Majesty would not be required to produce passports when travelling in France. This very liberal notice not only showed the kind feeling of the Emperor of the French, but it was also a most politic statement, for it induced large numbers of Englishmen to take the route through France to the Continent; but, notwithstanding the notice to which he referred, cases had occurred of British subjects being seriously molested in consequence of not having passports. He could mention several such instances. One English gentleman while travelling in the South of France, on arriving at the chief town of a department, was asked by the gendarmes for his passport. He replied he was a British subject and he understood a passport was not required. The demand was repeated: he made the same answer, and calling his servant pointed to his baggage, which bore his address in London, Notwithstanding this, he was forcibly removed and marched along a hot road in the South of France, in order to be brought before an official—he supposed the sous préfét of the department. This gentleman stated 1652 that there was no charge against him, he was dismissed, and he found his way back to the hotel. Complaint was made to the English Ambassador, who, he believed, communicated with the Government of the Emperor; but the gentleman in question had, he believed, received no apology or redress from any one. He did not bring forward this particular case as a grievance, but he had heard of many others, and that for one case that obtained publicity many were probably never heard of. The answer of the French Government might be—"True, a British subject needs no passport in France; but how are we to know that a traveller is a British subject?" He admitted the force of that dilemma. They had all read the description of Britons by the Irish poet— Pride in their port, defiance in their eye, I see the lords of human kind pass by. But if foreigners might be pardoned if they did not recognize the travelling Briton by this description, for the haggard individual, generally accompanied by females, who was seen wandering about railway stations of a morning in a state of listlessness, hardly bore any of the poet's marks of a Briton about him. Still he did not think that he ought to be exposed to the risk of being detained for some hours for not having a passport when he had been told that no passport was necessary. He believed that if a communication were made by the Foreign Office to the French Government it would be a convenience to a large number of persons. The Government of the Emperor having notified that British subjects required no passport, the onus probandi was, he thought, thrown upon the French officials to show that a British subject was not what he professed to be, instead of the onus being upon him to show that he was a British subject. He trusted that some arrangement would be come to for doing away with this source of inconvenience to English travellers in France.