st it on a ground of common advantage, substituting the general
sanction of treaty for the individual permission of expatriation and
recognizing the subject who may have changed allegiance as being on the
same plane with the natural or native citizens of the other contracting
State.

Some States, few in number, be it said, make distinction between
different classes of citizens of the foreign State, denying to some the
rights of innocent intercourse and commerce which by comity and natural
right are accorded to the stranger, and doing this without regard to the
origin of the persons adversely affected. One country in particular,
although maintaining with the United States a treaty which unqualifiedly
guarantees to citizens of this country the rights of visit, sojourn and
commerce of the Empire, yet assumes to prohibit those rights to Hebrew
citizens of the United States, whether native or naturalized.[45] This
Government can lose no opportunity to controvert such a distinction,
wherever it may appear. It cannot admit such discrimination among its
own citizens, and can never assent that a foreign State, of its own
volition, can apply a religious test to debar any American citizen from
the favor due to all.

There is no treaty of amity and commerce between the United States and
Roumania, but this Government is pleased to believe that Roumania
follows the precepts of comity in this regard as completely and
unreservedly as we ourselves do, and that the American in Roumania is as
welcome and as free in matters of sojourn and commerce and legal resorts
as the Roumanian is in the United States. We hear no suggestion that any
differential treatment of our citizens is there imposed. No religious
test is known to bar any American from resorting to Roumania for
business or pleasure. No attempt has been made to set up any such test
in the United States whereby any American citizen might be denied
recourse to the representatives of Roumania in order to authenticate
documents necessary to the establishment of his legal rights or the
furtherance of his personal interests in Roumania. And in welcoming
negotiations for a convention of naturalization Roumania gives proof of
her desire to confirm all American citizens in their inherently just
rights.

Another consideration, of cognate character, presents itself. In the
absence of a naturalization convention, some few States hold
self-expatriation without the previous consent of the sove