"It would be very pleasant," said he to Rollo, "for us to stop at those towns, and ramble about during the day, and then in the evening set sail again, provided we could be at liberty to land at our pleasure, to ramble about unmolested wherever we wished to go, as we can do in America."
"No," said Mr. George. "In the first place we must have our passports stamped here for all the places that we wish to visit, and that will cause us here a great deal of trouble, and not a little expense. Then to land we must have our passports all examined again, and stamped, and there will be more money to pay; and likely as not we should be detained half the morning in getting through all these formalities, and so our time would be passed in fruitless vexation instead of pleasure. Then, when at last we were free, and began our rambles, we should be beset by beggars every where, and have no peace."
"What a foolish plan it is to plague travellers so much with all these ceremonies about passports!" said Rollo.
"I am not certain that it is foolish for such governments as these," replied Mr. George. "You see, they are governments of force, maintained over the people against their will, by means of military power. The people at large hate the government, and are all the time plotting to destroy it; and if the plotters were allowed to go freely to and fro all over the country, they would be able to organize their plans, and general insurrections would be arranged, and the governments might thus be overthrown. By allowing nobody to travel without a passport, stating who he is, and where he came from, and where he is going, the government keep every thing under their control."
"But I think the governments _ought_ to be overthrown," said Rollo, "and better governments, such as the people would like, set up in their places."
"So do I," said Mr. George; "but it is not surprising that the governors themselves of these countries don't think so. They wish to retain their stations and their power, whether the people like it or not; and the passport system is a very cunning contrivance to help them do it. And then, besides, they have a very good pretext for keeping up the system."
"They pretend that the object is to assist them in stopping and arresting robbers, and murderers, and other criminals who attempt to escape from one part of the country to another after committing their crimes. And the system is sometimes useful in this way, I have no doubt; though these criminals can often elude the authorities by procuring false passports."