CHAPTER 6. - Travel Documents into Other States. In It Are 6 Articles.

1. If someone happens to leave the Muscovite state for a commercial enterprise, or for any other personal purpose, for another state, which state is at peace with the Muscovite state: that person in Moscow shall petition the sovereign, and in the provincial towns the governors, for a travel document. Without a travel document he shall not travel. In the provincial towns the governors shall issue them travel documents without any delay.

2. If governors do not proceed to issue people travel documents quickly, and thus cause people delay and losses, and there are petitioners against them for that, and that is established conclusively: the governors shall be in great disgrace with the sovereign for that. Concerning the fact that they cause people losses: exact [the value of the losses] from them two-fold and return it to the petitioners.

3. If someone travels to any [other] state without a travel document, and then, having been in another state, returns to the Muscovite state; and someone else proceeds to denounce him, [alleging] that he traveled on his own volition without a travel document for treasonous purposes, or for any other reprehensible purpose: on the basis of that denunciation, conduct a rigorous investigation by all methods of inquiry of that person who traveled to another state without the sovereign's travel document. If they say about him in the investigation that he indeed rode into another state without a travel document to commit treason, or for any other reprehensible purpose: after investigation, punish that person with death for treason.

4. If it is revealed during an investigation that he traveled to another state without a travel document on a trading enterprise, but not to commit treason: inflict punishment on him for that, beat him with the knout, so that others looking on will learn not to do that.

5. Concerning the fact that [some of the] sovereign's court villages, and rural taxpaying districts, and hereditary estates and service landholdings in the possession of people of various ranks of the border towns in the provinces are adjacent to Lithuanian and Swedish border land; and the sovereign's lands [in the past] have passed to the Lithuanian and Swedish side, and Lithuanian and Swedish land has passed to the sovereign's side; and the peasants [living in] the sovereign's court and rural taxpaying districts, and service landholders, and hereditary estate owners, and their slaves and peasants travel across those Lithuanian and Swedish frontier lands from town to town without travel documents, and they meet with Lithuanian and Swedish subjects: do not accuse them of any crime for that because they are living adjacent to Lithuanian and Swedish subjects on the frontier.

6. If service landholders and hereditary estate owners of the frontier towns learn of anything reprehensible, or of treason, among their slaves or peasants: they shall inform the sovereign about that, and in the provincial towns shall submit formal denunciations on the matter to the governors, and bring in their own slaves and peasants for arraignment. The governors shall interrogate those people against whom there is an accusation and shall conduct a rigorous investigation about them, concerning the accusation, by all methods of inquiry and shall write the sovereign about this; imprison those people against whom there is a denunciation until the sovereign [issues] a decree.