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> The copy of Law of Nations on John Adam’s nightstand said > nothing about natural born citizens. Neither did any > other edition until it was inserted by an unknown > translator into the 1797 London edition. Once again, you show your ignorance on this topic. Let me help you. First of all, John Adams was quite literate and lingual in French, as he went with Ben Franklin to Paris to create a treaty and ask for funding for the Revolutionary War. He and Franklin clearly used "Law of Nations" for definitions and as a primer for French with which they were not familiar; Franklin commented as such in 1775 (if memory serves me correctly, Franklin had 4 copies):
Adams would have continued to negotiate with the French, but because of his “stern and haughty” nature, by the summer of 1780 the French refused further communication with Adams; henceforth they would deal only with Franklin. Later, when John Adams served as US Ambassador to Britain, Thomas Jefferson would also have been required to speak French when he served as US ambassador to France in the mid-1780s. They had to be able to speak and write French, and did so by reading the books available at the time (since the WWW and Babelfish weren’t quite available yet). As the Framers eschewed the phrase “Natural Born Subject”, they began to use phrase “Natural Born Citizen” to put additional distance between themselves and the Crown they had just declared independence from in 1776. In fact, you’ll find that the home States of the Second and Third “Committee of Eleven” that inserted the “Natural Born Citizen” qualification in July and August of 1787, at the bequest of Washington and John Jay, began to migrate from the phrase “Natural Born Subject” to “Natural Born Citizen” in the early to mid 1780s, such as Adams' home State of Massachusetts:
So, where did “Natural Born Citizen” originate and who used it FIRST? Not from Blackstone certainly as he did not use the phrase “Natural Born Citizen” to describe “Natural Born Subject”. Framers would have likely been familiar with the phrase “Natural Born Citizen” from the London-based multi-lingual translator “J. Patsall”, known for his French and Latin translations into English. He’s attributed to the first-known use of the phrase “Natural Born Citizen” in this 1774 English translation (from the Latin) classic Institutio Oratoria, by Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (published in the first century A.D.):
Although it is unknown who is responsible for the 1797 London-based English translation of the French version of the "Law of Nations" on John Adam's nightstand in the 1770s through the mid-1790s, most experts (including myself) agree that London-based multi-lingual translator “J. Patsall” is likely responsible. There just weren't that many translators in those days with France and England as enemies. And since J. Patsall first introduced the phrase “Natural Born Citizen” in 1774 — 23 years before the 1797 English Translation was available — the likelihood is very, very, VERY high that the Founders and Framers derived their use and understanding of the phrase from Vattel's French "Law of Nations", instead of from Blackstone ... who never used the phrase “Natural Born Citizen” in the first place:
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