The first naturalization treaties which this government negotiated embodying recognition of the right of expatriation were the so-called “Bancroft Treaties” of 1869, with the states of the North German Confederation--Bavaria, Hesse, Baden, and Württemberg. In the four years following similar treaties were concluded with Belgium, Great Britain, Sweden, and Norway, Austria-Hungary, Denmark, and Ecuador. Since then treaties of like import have been effected with Haiti, Portugal, Peru, Honduras, Salvador, Nicaragua, Uruguay, Brazil, and Costa Rica.[27] These treaties provide, in substance, for expatriation at will, but stipulate that subjects liable for offenses committed prior to emigration shall continue liable for the same, and that two years’ continuous resumption of residence in the country of origin shall be presumptive evidence of renewed citizenship in the old country. Under our own law, this loss of acquired citizenship by two years’ continuous residence in the country of origin is specifically recognized. And it is also generally provided that upon return to his former country a naturalized American shall be liable to punishment for the “evasion of an existing or accrued liability to military service”; but he is protected against the exaction of what was at the time of emigration merely (by reason of youth) a _future_ liability to serve.[28] GREAT BRITAIN Until the year 1870, England held tenaciously to the doctrine of the indelibility of national allegiance. Everyone was free to emigrate at will and live where he pleased, but wherever he went, and whatsoever he might do in the attempt to acquire another citizenship, he was an Englishman still, in the eyes of the British law inalienably a subject of the British crown. Although the author probably did not realize it, there was a certain grimness underlying the lines in “Pinafore”: But, in spite of all temptations To belong to other nations, He is an Englishman! And although the War of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain was chiefly provoked by the insistence of England upon her slogan, “Once an Englishman always an Englishman,” and her refusal to mitigate her policy with regard to British-born sailors naturalized by the United States, the theory continued to be stoutly declared as a matter of principle, though perhaps with diminishing emphasis. Hall says, however,[29] that by 1876 it “had become an anachronism.” And after the report of a British royal commission on the subject, Parliament enacted a statute providing that a British subject might lose his British nationality by naturalization in another country. This long-maintained attitude of Great Britain undoubtedly goes far to account for the failure of many persons of English birth, long resident in this country, and for all practical purposes except political participation Americans, to seek formal adoption into our body politic. GERMANY