[bushpilot1]

Alexander Morse...Treatise on Citizenship...pls note 4 after the yellow marking. I posted the 1863 Edition.

[Abd al-Rahiim]

Again, I'm not disputing that de Vattel wrote that natives have citizen parents. I'm pointing out that de Vattel himself did not use the phrase "natural-born." Morse either used a translation or did the translation himself when he cited de Vattel.

The question is, "What would a reasonable person living at the time of ratification have understood these words to mean?" The Constitution, with the phrase "natural-born citizen," was ratified in 1788. de Vattel never used the English phrase "natural-born citizen," for he wrote in French, and not everyone translated "les naturels ou indigènes" as "natural-born citizen."

But the British had long defined the phrase "natural-born subject," and a reasonable person living at the time of ratification was a "natural-born subject" of the British Crown until 1783. He would've used the English common law definition of "natural-born subject" applied to "natural-born citizen," not one way of translating a Swiss legalist's writing that doesn't even contain the phrase "natural-born citizen."