DENlZEN
A “denizen” is in a middle state between an alien and a natural-born citizen, and although subject to some of the disabilities of the former, is entitled to many of the privileges of the latter. He may take lands by purchase or devise, which an alien may not, but cannot take by inheritance; for his parent through whom he must claim, being an alien, has no inheritable blood, and therefore could convey none to the child. From a like defect of hereditary blood the issue of a denizen born before denizenation cannot inherit from him, but his issue born after may. McClenaghan v. McClenagban (S. C.) 1 Strob. Eq. 295, 319, 47 Am. Dec 632.
According to the law, the term “natural born” is an inheritable term, not something conferred by birth on the some random piece of soil.
“Females and infants do not personally possess those rights and privileges In any state In the Union, but they are generally dependent upon adult males, through whom they enjoy the benefits of those rights and privileges; and It is a rule of common law, as well as of common sense, that females and Infants should in this respect partake of the quality of those adult males who belong to the same class and condition in society, and, of course, they will or will not be citizens as the adult males of the same class are or are not so. Nor do we mean to say that It Is necessary even for an adult male, to be a citizen, that he should be In the actual enjoyment of all those rights and privileges; but he may even not possess those qualifications of property, of age, or of residence which most of the states prescribe as requisites to the enjoyment of some of their highest privileges and Immunities, and yet be a citizen. But to be a citizen It is necessary that he should be entitled to the enjoyment of those privileges and immunities upon the same terms upon which they are conferred upon other citizens, and, unless he is so entitled, he cannot, in the proper sense of the term, be a ‘citizen.’ In England, birth in the country was alone sufficient to make any one a subject Even a villein or a slave born within the King's allegiance is according to the principles of the common law a subject, but it never can be admitted that he is a citizen. One may, no doubt, be a citizen by birth as well as a subject, but subject and citizen are evidently words of different import, and it indisputably requires something more to make a citizen than it does to make a subject. It is, in fact, not the place of a man's birth, but the rights and privileges he may be entitled to enjoy, which make him a citizen.