“Till 1791. You know, till just shortly after the Constitution was ratified.”
We’re concerned with what the ratifiers thought in 1787, not what you think in 2012.
“There were English translations as early as 1760. Am I to believe that you have looked at all of them?
I noticed in one 1760 edition they used the term “natives” which as you and I both know, was used interchangeably with “natural born citizen.”
They have been looked at, and found wanting. Sorry, charlie.
And if natives is interchangeable with NBC, why do birthers maintain a native citizen is born in the US of non-citizen parents, and a NBC is one born to citizen parents?
It is particularly odd, since Vattel never used the French equivalent of NBC (”sujets naturel”), and since the word translated NBC in 1797 was “indigenes” - which is also an English word, needing no translation.
The modern manner of using the term has changed from the way in which it was used in previous centuries. When travel was expensive, and by sailing ship, pretty much anyone who was born in a particular place, was either a citizen, or intending to be a citizen. Transient Aliens were rare, so 99% of the people who were "natural born citizens" were also "natives." The term "native" was also shorter and easier to say, so I can see why the usage of it was favored.
But let us not forget that Chief Supreme Court Justice Waite specifically equated the term with "natural born citizen" in the context of being born to two citizen parents.
At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners.