to the measure of protection to be accorded by the legation in the cases of Armenians who have become naturalized in the United States and return to travel in Turkey under the guise of Ottoman subjects. "The power of the agencies of the United States to protect American citizens in their just international rights can only be exercised in good faith and upon proof of the good faith of the party claiming protection. It is not to be abused by such duplicity as you report. As long ago as 1874 Mr. Fish said: 66.6 For a naturalized citizen may, by returning to his native country and residing there with an evident intention to remain, or by accepting offices there inconsistent with his adopted citizenship, or by concealing for a length of time the fact of his naturalization and passing himself off as a citizen or subject of his native country until occasion may make it his interest to ask the intervention of the country of his adoption, or in other ways which may show an intent to abandon his acquired rights, 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, 1874, paragraph 110.) "This Government does not hold to the doctrine of perpetual allegiance, nor does it contest the right of any citizen of the United States to voluntarily perform any act by which he may become a citizen or subject of a foreign state according to its laws. The return of a naturalized Turk to Turkey, as an Ottoman subject, under Turkish passport, and with submission to Turkish authority over him as a subject, clearly dissolves the obligation of his adopted country to protect him longer as a citizen, and the obligation can certainly not be revived by the assertion or admission of the individual that his reassumption of his original allegiance has been colorable merely and in bad faith, with deliberate intent to deceive. The agencies of the United States in Turkey can not be privy to such a deception." Mr. Uhl, Acting Sec. of State, to Mr. Riddle, chargé at Constantinople, See, also, Mr. Fish, Sec. of State, to Mr. Hall, May 3, 1869, S. Ex. Doc. The concealment of American citizenship, on the return of a naturalized citizen of the United States to his native country, is a circumstance which may affect his right to claim the protection of the United States. Mr. Gresham, Sec. of State, to Mr. Terrell, min. to Turkey, July 11, 1894, For. Rel. 1894, 733, 735. "Where you are satisfied that aliens, Russians or others, have acquired American citizenship with an obvious purpose of withdrawing themselves from their new allegiance and colonizing in Syria, you should meet any application on their part by informing them that their course is tantamount to a voluntary renunciation of right to protection as citizens while so establishing their domicile abroad.” Mr. Rockhill, Act. Sec. of State, to Mr. Khouri, No. 45, Sept. 29, 1896, 154 MS. Inst. Consuls, 35. A native of Turkey who had been naturalized in the United States "could not receive any protection from this Government in the event of his returning to his native country as a Turkish subject." Mr. Moore, Assist. Sec. of State, to Mr. Smith, June 8, 1898 229 MS. Dom. Let. 229. See, also, Mr. Hill, Act. Sec. of State, to Mr. Griscom, chargé, No. 354, Feb. 16, 1901, supra, § 475, p. 771. "Your dispatches Nos. 18, 20, 23, and 34, diplomatic series, of the respective dates of February 23 and 27, and March 1 and April 29, have been received. They report the case of Hajie Seyyah, stated to be in asylum' at your legation, and ask instructions in the matter. “Briefly, Mirza Mohamed Aly, otherwise styled Hajie Seyyah, a native Persian, appears to have been admitted to American citizenship by the fourth district court of San Francisco, June 11, 1875. Soon afterwards he quitted the United States, went to India, where he amassed some fortune, and thence returned to Persia, where he has invested his means in the purchase of two villages, aggregating some thirty families. He is a 'Mollah,' or Mohammedan priest of high rank. He has two wives, one of whom is a relative of the Shah. He appears to be domiciled in Persia, and to have fully adopted Oriental customs and life. He has never had an American passport, and until a very recent date would seem to have made no assertion of the status he acquired by naturalization in the United States. Having shared, to some extent, in the recent political agitation of a seditious nature, initiated by Malcolm Khan, and having had seditious publications addressed to him, he was some two years since arrested and imprisoned in various places for nearly twenty months. On his release he found his affairs involved, one of his villages having been robbed, fields taken from him, and debts due him withheld. "Seeking redress, restitution of the realty was effected, but he seems to have been unable to collect the moneys owing to him. At this juncture he sought your assistance in the recovery of these debts, alleging his American citizenship, and you addressed the prime minister asking that justice be done him. The minister denied your right to intervene, asserting that under Persian law, fortified by certain treaty provisions with Russia, which are held to constitute the measure of privilege under the most favored nation clause of our treaty with Persia, Hajie Seyyah's naturalization is invalid, because he emigrated without his sovereign's consent. Fearing arrest (for what cause is not shown), Hajie Seyyah appealed to you for shelter, and became an inmate of your legation, nominally as a salaried servant. As the result of several interviews had by you with the Persian authorities, orders have been issued permitting this person to return unmolested to his villages, but his status as a naturalized citizen and his asylum in your legation had been formally denied; and the relief reported in your No. 34 is unaccompanied by any admission in these regards. 66 Hajie Seyyah has expressed a wish to return to the United States. "Two distinct and somewhat conflicting questions appear to be involved-Hajie Seyyah's claim to protection as an American citizen, and his claim to enjoy asylum against process of Persian law. As to the first, the uniform rules and precedents of this Government make Hajie Seyyah's claim to protection as a bona fide citizen of the United States extremely doubtful. He quitted this country soon after having been naturalized, and has lived abroad, latterly in his native land, some seventeen years, without manifesting his American citizenship or performing its duties. His domicil, interests, membership in a purely oriental hierarchy, mode of life, and polygamous marriage suggest no affiliation with the social organization of this country. Were he within the jurisdiction of the United States, he would be amenable to criminal process for bigamy. "All the circumstances of his case suggest a merely colorable acquisition of American citizenship for the purpose of evading the obligations of his original Persian allegiance, and were he an applicant for a passport as a citizen of the United States you would be unhesitatingly instructed to decline its issuance. "You make the point that the question whether Hajie Seyyah is in fact a Persian subject, is the vital issue in the case. The effect of naturalization under the laws of the United States, is no wise dependent upon or affected by the laws of the alien's country. So far as we are concerned, it is perfectly immaterial whether Hajie Seyyah had or had not the Shah's permission to emigrate, if he be lawfully admitted to American citizenship; and his rights would be effectively respected in the United States and protected in a third country. But when he voluntarily returns to his native country, presumably knowing the law thereof in this regard, he becomes the subject of a conflict of laws. The legality of his naturalization in the United States is not to be questioned except by allegation of fraud in its procurement, which does not enter into the present case. "The claim of the Persian minister that the naturalization here is not valid, because lacking the prior consent of Persia, can not be admitted, but on the other hand and in the absence of a treaty of naturalization, its validity may not be practically enforceable in Persia against the counter claim of that Government, that under its law the man has not lost his original allegiance. "The emigration treaty of July 3, 1844, between Russia and Persia, which the minister invokes, has no relation whatever to the naturalization of Persians according to the laws of the United States; for the widest expansion of the favored-nation doctrine could not make a treaty between two foreign states the measure of the validity of a judicial act done in the United States in conformity to our municipal law. "To sum up, I have no hesitancy in regarding as unworthy the claim of Hajie Seyyah to be protected as a person who has bona fide conserved the rights and discharged the reciprocal duties of American citizenship, however lawful be the act of his naturalization." Mr. Gresham, Sec. of State, to Mr. Sperry, min. to Persia, May 17, 1893, Mr. Sperry, in communicating this decision to the Persian prime minister, made any use of these rights." (For. Rel. 1893, 500.) 2. OFFICE HOLDING. § 479. "When an alien is at the very time of his naturalization, and for years before has been, a resident and office-holder in the country of his origin, when after his naturalization he puts his certificate in his pocket and returns to the country of his origin, and continues to reside there in business and holding office, the President feels it to be his duty to afford to such a citizen only the measure of protection demanded by the strictest construction of duty, namely, that he shall receive from the hands of the Government under which he is holding office the measure of protection which it affords to its own citizens or subjects." Mr. Frelinghuysen, Sec. of State, to Mr. Lowell, min. to England, April 25, 1882, For. Rel. 1882, 230, 231. In this case the naturalization was performed under § 2166, R. S., relating to the naturalization of persons who have served in the armies of the United States. With reference to the foregoing extract, it is to be observed that Mr. Frelinghuysen, as appears by the text of the instruction, construed § 2166 as requiring the court to grant naturalization, without regard to the time when the service was rendered, and without regard to the fact that the applicant had meanwhile "abandoned the country and was in business in a foreign land, and holding office there with every apparent purpose of remaining there permanently.". Mr. Frelinghuysen declared, indeed, that an act of naturalization under such circumstances, which were those of the case before him, was "only just within the letter" and wholly outside the spirit and intent of the naturalization laws." But, as he considered it to be within the letter, he seems further to have held that there should in consequence be allowed in such a case, after naturalization, a latitude of action not enjoyed by persons admitted to citizenship under other provisions of law, and amounting to an exemption from the ordinary presumptions with regard to the renunciation of adoptive nationality by return to and residence in the land of origin. That this was assumed to be so seems to be indicated by the decision in another case in the same instruction, presenting similar features as to residence and office-holding in the country of origin, but where the naturalization was granted under the ordinary conditions. In this case it was held that the most the United States could do was to insist that the person "should have a right to return to the country of his adoption, leaving the question of damages for future discussion." "When a naturalized citizen resumes his residence with his family in the land of his origin, and goes into business there, and becomes an office-holder, and takes active part in political discussions, if it turns out that his action gives offense to the local government, and he is thrown into prison, the laws and interests of the United States do not require us to do more than insist that he shall have a right to return to the country of his adoption, leaving the question of damages for future discussion. "Such is understood to have been the course pursued by the United States during the late civil war. In September, 1862, the British chargé d'affaires at Washington requested the discharge of one Francis Carroll, a British subject, who had been arrested by the military |