Subject and citizen are, in a degree, convertible terms as applied to natives, and though the term citizen seems to be appropriate to republican freemen, yet we are, equally with the inhabitants of all other countries, subjects, for we are equally bound by allegiance and subjection to the government and law of the land.
If they are "convertible terms", why bother changing it? The normal usage was "Subject." If it makes no difference, why bother?
That he changed it was not an accident. It was a deliberate point to demonstrate that the two characters were not the same. The Declaration was informed by Vattel, and so was it's intended and deliberate usage of the word "Citizen."
Nonsense. I've called you on this made-up claim not long ago. You've got no proof, yet you persist.
The proof is in the word "Citizen" itself. I've looked up all instances of it in Shakespeare, and i've looked up all instances of it in Blackstone. The normal English usage is to describe the inhabitants of a City, not the members of a Confederated Republic of independent states. (You know, like Switzerland at the time.)
The only person of that era using that word in that context is Vattel. Even your lunatic buddies over at Dr. Conspiracy's kook site acknowledge that Jefferson borrowed heavily from Vattel in writing the Declaration of Independence. (What part of English Law does "Independence" come from?)
Plenty of writers before Vattel and after used the term "citizen." Montesquieu, who was FAR more influential on the framers of the Constitution than was Vattel, used the term "citizen" frequently. Jefferson's use, by itself, is no proof he's borrowing from Vattel.
You are not helping your case. Montesquieu was French, and wrote in French too. What was that French Standard for "Citoyenship" again? :)
Again, you just make this sh*t up as you go along without a shred of support.
No, it's demonstrable that England didn't have anything in it's common law to support the idea of "Independence." The concept was absolutely forbidden. No writer could have written about such an idea in England. He would have been arrested, and If I recall properly, Samuel Rutherford (cited in the Convention notes) got into a lot of trouble form merely hinting at it.
James Otis (in an excerpt you're wont to highlight) cites as influences both John Locke (whom he lists first) and then Vattel.
John Locke does not declare a natural right to revolution and Independence. Emmerich Vattel does. No one else asserts such a right. Only Vattel. No other writer of natural law would dare say such a thing. Only Vattel.
Finally, several sovereign and independent states may unite themselves together by a perpetual confederacy, without ceasing to be, each individually, a perfect state. They will together constitute a federal republic: their joint deliberations will not impair the sovereignty of each member, though they may, in certain respects, put some restraint on the exercise of it, in virtue of voluntary engagements. A person does not cease to be free and independent, when he is obliged to fulfil engagements which he has voluntarily contracted.
And that led to this:
You can stop this ridiculous assertion that Vattel was some singular influence on the American Revolution and Constitution any time now.
Find someone else of that era suggesting the United States could form a Federal Republic, and perhaps you have a point. Till then, you are just caterwauling.