From the letters of James Madison in his own words:
” Much information [he said] might be obtained by the experience of others, if, in despite of it we were not determined to be guided only by a visionary theory. The ancient republics of Greece and Rome [said he, see with what jealousy they guarded the rights of citizenship against adulteration by foreign mixture. The Swiss nation [lie said, in modern times, had not been less jealous on the name subject. Indeed, no example could be found, in the history of man, to authorize the experiment which had been made by the United States. It seemed to have been adopted by universal practice as a maxim, that the republican character was in no way to be formed “not by early education. In some instances, to form this character, those propensities which are generally considered as almost irresistible, were appeased and subdued. And shall we [he asked] alone adopt the rash theory, that the subjects of all governments, despotic, monarchical, and aristocratical, are, as soon as they set foot on American ground, qualified to participate in administering the sovereignty of our country? Shall we hold the benefits of American citizenship so cheap as to invite, nay, to almost bribe, the discontented, the ambitious, and the avaricious of every country, to accept them ?”
” Every species of government has its specific principle. Ours are more peculiar than those of any other in the universe. It is a composition of the freest principles of the English constitution, with others derived from natural right and natural reason. To these nothing can be more opposed than the maxims of absolute monarchy—yet from such we are to expect the greatest number of immigrants. They will bring with them the principles of the government they imbibed in their early youth; or if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty. These principles, with their language, they will transmit to their children. In proportion to their numbers, they will share with us the legislation. They will infuse into it, warp and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, and distracted mass.”
As you can see, the founders/framers were very deeply concerned with children of aliens being educated in foreign practices and rightfully so. They were against all laws of a monarchy & that included the feudal definition of natural born subject being imposed on a person. this was NOT the practice of a free society where citizenship was derived through heredity or consent. You can not inherit what is not there. England pretty much quit using their original constitution when they adopted feudal law, which defined the feudal definition of 'natural born subject'. This definition was not that of the freeman/English Saxon's that formed the country of England. I suggest you might want to spend some time on the history of merry ole England, because the framers & founders were quite learned in the mother country's rich history where the men were once free & sovereign, not subject to an all powerful sovereign king or queen. But you'll have to go back before the Norman conquest when the Constitution was 1st drafted to really understand what the founders meant when they said they looked to the ancient ages when the laws of nature which are the laws of God that defined who a citizen was. It didn't start with Vattel, Vattel merely further expounded on what the greats of Aristotle, Cicero, Puffendorf, Grotius and all the others who wrote of the laws of nature. If you read Aristotle, you would see that his words are Vattel's words. If you read Grotius, the same as well as all the others.
Thank you Patlin. The attack on the rights our Constitution was written to protect has caused some of us to learn a history we hadn’t thought seriously about. It also focuses the minds of the otherwise occupied. If the quality and clarity of discussion relating to the intentions of our framers is an indication, and I think it is, we are having some success in exposing the truth of Obama’s illegitimacy. Curiously, many who now accept that Obama is a socialist or Marxist, without a particular understanding of those terms, cannot grasp the subtleties of citizenship, certainly a better defined concept. Your analysis of the Madison letter was excellent.