Replies

Vattel v. Blackstone on perpetual subjects, citizens and naturalization. Article in it's entirety.

Collection: African American Newspapers
Publication: THE NATIONAL ERA
Date: July 7, 1859
Title: INTERNATIONAL LAW
Location: Washington, D.C.

"INTERNATIONAL LAW.

We proceed to present authorities in corroboration of the views heretofore and elsewhere in this day's issue advanced on this subject. We omit further particular reference to the Koszta case, of which we treated at length two weeks ago. It will be sufficient at present to allude to the fact, that in that case President Pierce's Administration took ground diametrically opposite to that occupied by the present Administration. Mr. Marcy, the Secretary of State, laid it down that not only naturalized citizens are entitled to the protection of this Government when travelling abroad, but that mere denizens who have come here and declared their intention of becoming citizens, or who have acquired a domicile, are entitled to such protection. The phraseology of Mr. Marcy will clearly embrace even free negroes, as their condition is defined by the Dred Scott's decision. Even that down-trodden race could according to Mr. Marcy and the Pierce Administration, claim the intervention of the Federal Government for their protection! What, then, after the high position assumed by the Pierce Administration on this question, will the world think of the disgraceful abandonment of it by Mr. Buchanan and Gen. Cass? It is humiliating to think of. The Governments of Europe will regard our public functionaries as at once blustering braggarts and arrant cowards. We being our citation of authorities with the following, from the New York Express, a Know Nothing paper. The case as stated is a strong one, and we regret that is was not taken as a precedent by General Cass, instead of completely surrendering the rights of a large class of our fellow-citizens, even before those rights were brought into question by foreign Governments:

"A PRECEDENT AGAINST SECRETARY CASS.

"The Koszta case is not the only precedent. Here is what Mr. Fillmore's Administration claimed on our side, and what Louis Napoleon yielded on their, only six years ago: "Francis Allibert, a native of the Department de Var, in the south of France, left there during the drawing the conscription in 1839, and was actually drawn as a conscript, and was therefore an echape de la conscription. He arrived at New Orleans, made the usual application for citizenship, and was duly naturalized in 1845. He was successful in business in Louisiana, and in July, 1852, after an absence of nearly fourteen years, he returned to his family in his native village, and, under the vigilant police in France, he was arrested in twenty-four hours after his return. He immediately wrote to Mr. Hodge, the nearest American consul. The latter, that he might the better attend to the case, immediately requested that Mr. Allibert might be brought to Marseilles, which request was promptly acceded to by the General-in-chief commanding the military division. He was there brought before the Tribunal de Guerre as an insoumis, and condemned. Mr. Allibert was willing to pay four thousand frances for a substitute, but Mr. Hodge would not allow him even to make the offer, but, obtaining a rehearing of his case, appeared in person before the Tribunal de Guerre, and pleaded the case; and after two trials, and a detention of six months, he was acknowledged an American citizen, and order came from the Minister of War at Paris, directing his release. Mr. Hodge gave him a passport, which was vised by the police, and with which he remained some weeks with his family, travelled through France, and embarked at Havre, on his return to the United States. "The correspondence on file in the Department of State gives the full details of the case, and Mr. Everett, the Secretary of State under Mr. Fillmore, on the 3d of March, 1855, (the last day he was in office,) wrote a complimentary letter to Mr. Hodge, in which he says: "The Department was gratified to learn that Mr. Allibert, whose arrest and imprisonment as an insoumis , although a naturalized citizen of the United States, as mentioned in your communications, has been released. This is undoubtedly due to the firm and decided stand maintained throughout the long controversy in your official correspondence with the authorities on the subject. "'It is much to be desired that this case my be considered as a precedent, as you intimate, and that hereafter naturalized citizens of the United States may visit France without danger of arrest for military service. In this event, a hurtful source of irritation and unfriendly feeling will be avoid.' "Now, if Millard Fillmore, Edward Everett, Louis Napoleon, and the French Ministry, in 1852 and 1853, decided that a Frenchman actually drawn as a conscript was exempt from service because of his American naturalization, might not the present Administration, the par excellence friend of naturalized foreigners, have looked into these latter and of course more authoritative precedents, before writing their Le Clerc and Hofer letters? "When the French Government yields her local laws, we ought not to force our citizens into her conscript service." The Philadelphia Press quote various authorities tending to show that the right of expatriation is now new dogma, but an old recognised principle in international law. We avail ourselves of some of these authorities. The Greeks and Romans held to the right of expatriation, and the high authority of Cicero is quoted as follows: In the case of L.C. Balbus, the subject came necessarily under his notice. Balbus, an inhabitant of Gades, (Cadiz,) had been made a citizen of Pompey. His right to be thus naturalized was questioned. He was defended by Cicero, in whose oration there are expressions which indicate a liberal and generous spirit, and an ardent attachment to that liberty which the friends and enemies of the orator were, at that time, alike conspiring to subvert. "The whole subject of this controversy," says this distinguished philosopher and patriot, "and of my address, belongs to the common right of expatriation. There is nothing in it connected with religion or compact; for I lay it down as an universal truth, that there is no nation, in any region of the earth, however separated from the Roman people by altercation and hatred, or however united by friendship and benevolence, by whom we are forbidden to make citizens of their own people. "O, glorious right! by the Divine favor, obtained for us by our ancestors in the commencement of the Roman name; by which no man can be a citizen of more than one Commonwealth; by which no man can be compelled to leave it against his will, nor remain in it against his inclination. This is the firmest foundation of our liberty, that every man should have an absolute power to retain or abandon his rights, at his election." Wicquefort, in the 11th section and 1st book of the Ambassador, affirms that a prince may employ strangers in his embassies, even in their own country." All difficulty on this subject (he observes) will be removed by deciding the question whether a subject can, without crime, withdraw himself from the subjection and obedience which he owes to the society under which he was born." This, he affirms, the subject may certainly do; and he represents the right of expatriation as being allowed by the laws of France, Spain, the Netherlands, and Germany. The Czar forbids this to his subjects, as do others in some provinces in the North; but he adds that is because the former are slaves, and the latter belong to the soil. He further says: "In England, the subjects are under a stronger and more particular obligation to the sovereign than elsewhere, in virtue of a right which they there call allegiance but this does not prevent the English from withdrawing from the kingdom without the permission of the King; and when they have established themselves elsewhere, neither the authority of the King nor the laws of the kingdom have any farther power over them." Heineccius, book 2, sec. 230, holds the right of expatriation to be clear. He says: "Again, since one is a subject, in regard that he constitutes, with others, one republic, into which he willingly enters, it follows from thence that one cease to be a citizen so soon as he willingly removes with that design from his native country, and joins himself to another State, settling there his fortune and family, unless the laws forbid subjects to remove." That also was the opinion of Puffendorf, book 8, ch. 11: "Where the liberty of removal hath been promiscuously allowed, and the subject settle himself and his effects under the protection of a foreign State, the Commonwealth which he left hath no longer any authority over him." Locke also denied the English doctrine of perpetual allegiance because of birth- On Gov., vol. 2, p. 207. Vattel mentions three cases, says the Press, in which this right of expatriation exists in defiance even of a positive local law to the contrary: 1. Where the subject cannot find subsistence at home. 2. Where society fails in its obligations to him. 3. Where there is any oppression in matters of conscience. These however, are but examples of a much wider rule, viz: The right of every man to promote his own happiness; and he, and not his sovereign, is the only and exclusive judge of what will best promote that. Byukershock, ch. 2, (whose translator, Duponceau, had expatriated himself, says: "If there be no law to prohibit expatriation, it is lawful for a subject to transfer his allegiance. And this (he says) is the case wherever the country is not a prison." The Press also cites 1 Blackstone's Commentaries, 374, to show that naturalization in England, and also under the civil law, placed the alien on the same footing with the native born subject. A statute of Queen Anne naturalized all foreign Protestants. In the reigns of Georges II and III, foreign seamen who should serve two years in a British merchant ship or ship of war were naturalized as British subjects by that act, even without an oath of allegiance. Naturalization in England, says Woodeson, "confers the full and unqualified privileges of a subject born within the King's dominions. (vol. 1, p. 232 ) and Blackstone says, "he is put exactly in the same state as if he had been both in the King's legiance.- Vol. 1, 374. So, too, by the civil law: "Naturalization makes the persons naturalized of the same condition with the natives."- Demot, part 2, p. 11, sec. 9. While Secretary of State under Washington. Mr. Jefferson wrote to Mr. Morris, our Minister to Paris, respecting Mr. Genet: "Our citizens are certainly free to divest themselves of that character by emigration, and other acts manifesting their intention, and may then become the subjects of another Power, and free to do whatever the subjects of that Power may do."- Am. State Papers, vol. 1. p. 169. "