Hamilton, Jefferson, Rawle and Natural Born Citizen

Revised 9/30/2010 to reflect that that the Hamilton quote about born a citizen and
presidential eligibility came from a paper which Farrand noted was not submitted to the
Convention and has no further value than attaches to the personal opinions of Hamilton.
The birthers quest for the meaning of natural born citizen is interesting. Centuries of British
jurisprudence showed that "every child born in England of alien parents was a natural-born
subject unless the child of an ambassador or other diplomatic agent of a foreign State or of an
alien enemy in hostile occupation of the place where the child was born," as was observed by the
U.S. Supreme Court.
Recently the birthers have been worshipping at the altar of Emmerich de Vattel, a Swiss author
who wrote in French about the unwritten Law of Nations in 1758 and died in 1767 before the
American colonies declared independence. The unwritten law of nations does not really have
much to do with one nation domestically determining citizenship status within its own
jurisdiction.
Black's Law Dictionary, Sixth Edition, for Law of nations states succinctly, "See International
Law."
International law per Black's is "Those laws governing the legal relations between nations. Rules
and principles of general application dealing with the conduct of nations and of international
organizations and with their relations inter se, as well as with some of their relations with
persons, whether natural or juridical. Restatement, Foreign Relations (Third) 101. Body of
consensual principles which have evolved from customs and practices civilized nations utilize in
regulating their relationships and such customs have great moral force. Zenith Radio Corp. v.
Matshushita Elec. Co., Ltd., D.C.Pa., 494 F.Supp. 1161, 1178. International customs and treaties
are generally considered to be the two most important sources of international law.
It would appear that the birthers desire to subjugate the Constitution to international customs and
treaties as those have evolved into principles of international law. Perhaps they believe the Law
of Nations is a set of statutes legislated by the Congress of Planet Earth and signed into law by
the Planetary President.
Before Vattel, the birthers were having orgasms over a letter from John Jay to George
Washington and they proclaimed the very idea of restricting presidential eligibility to a natural
born citizen originated from the letter of John Jay to George Washington dated July 25, 1787 in
New York.
In his letter to Washington, John Jay wrote of restricting Foreigners from national government,
and put an emphasis on the word born.
The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 [Farrand's Records, Volume 3]
3 Farrand's Records 61

"Permit me to hint, whether it would not be side & seasonable to provide a strong
check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national
Government; and to declare expresly that the Command in chief of the american
army shall not be given to, nor devolve on, any but a natural born citizen."
(Underlined in handwritten original)

To be considered is the fact that New Yorker John Jay was not a delegate to the Constitutional
Convention and he was in New York and not at the convention. On the other hand, Alexander
Hamilton was a delegate who was actually there.
Alexander Hamilton wrote that, "No person shall be eligible to the office of President of the
United States unless he be now a Citizen of one of the States, or hereafter be born a Citizen of
the United States." Regarding the paper the quote is from, Farrand noted it, was not submitted to
the Convention and has no further value than attaches to the personal opinions of Hamilton.
United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898) observes:
Mr. Dicey, in his careful and thoughtful Digest of the Law of England with
reference to the Conflict of Laws, published in 1896, states the following
propositions, his principal rules being printed below in italics:
"'British subject' means any person who owes permanent allegiance to the
Crown. 'Permanent' allegiance is used to distinguish the allegiance of a
British subject from the allegiance of an alien who, because he is within
the British dominions, owes 'temporary' allegiance to the Crown. 'Naturalborn British subject' means a British subject who has become a British
subject at the moment of his birth.' 'Subject to the exceptions hereinafter
mentioned, any person who (whatever the nationality of his parents) is
born within the British dominions is a natural-born British subject. This
rule contains the leading principle of English law on the subject of British
nationality."
The exceptions afterwards mentioned by Mr. Dicey are only these two:
"1. Any person who (his father being an alien enemy) is born in a part of
the British dominions, which at the time of such person's birth is in hostile
occupation, is an alien."
"2. Any person whose father (being an alien) is at the time of such person's
birth an ambassador or other diplomatic agent accredited to the Crown by
the Sovereign of a foreign State is (though born within the British
dominions) an alien."
And he adds:
"The exceptional and unimportant instances in which birth within the
British dominions does not of itself confer British nationality are due to
the fact that, though at common law nationality or allegiance in substance
depended on the place of a person's birth, it in theory, at least, depended
not upon the locality of a man's birth, but upon his being born within the
jurisdiction and allegiance of the King of England, and it might

occasionally happen that a person was born within the dominions without
being born within the allegiance, or, in other words, under the protection
and control of, the Crown."
Dicey Conflict of Laws, pp. 173-177, 741.
It thus clearly appears that, by the law of England for the last three centuries,
beginning before the settlement of this country and continuing to the present day,
aliens, while residing in the dominions possessed by the Crown of England, were
within the allegiance, the obedience, the faith or loyalty, the protection, the power,
the jurisdiction of the English Sovereign, and therefore every child born in
England of alien parents was a natural-born subject unless the child of an
ambassador or other diplomatic agent of a foreign State or of an alien enemy in
hostile occupation of the place where the child was born.
The British used the term subject because they had a king. Translated from British into
American, it would say the term natural born U.S. citizen means a U.S. citizen who has become
a U.S. citizen at the moment of his birth.
The Supreme Court recognized three centuries of British jurisprudence which applied to the
colonies which showed that "every child born in England of alien parents was a natural-born
subject unless the child of an ambassador or other diplomatic agent of a foreign State or of an
alien enemy in hostile occupation of the place where the child was born."
Unlike Jay, Hamilton explicitly referred to "being eligible to the office of the President." While
Jay cautions against having a foreigner as the Command[er] in chief of the american army, he
was not at the convention and would not necessarily have known that the commander-in-chief
would be the President. The future first Chief Justice used the legal term of art, "natural born
citizen," where Hamilton used plain language.
Birthers prefer the Jay legend, with a term they can twist, to the idea of Hamilton, actually about
eligibility to the office of President, cast in language too clear to to be rendered as "No person
shall be eligible to the office of President of the United States unless he be now a Citizen of one
of the States, or hereafter be born a Citizen of the United States, the child of two U.S. citizens.
----The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 [Farrand's Records, Volume 3]
APPENDIX F THE HAMILTON PLAN [1]
Page 617
[Note 1: 1 In preparing this criticism, the editor has used freely, with Mr.
Jameson's permission, "The text of Hamilton's Plan," in J. F. Jameson, Studies in
the History of the Federal Convention of 1787, pp. 143--150.]

In connection with his important speech of June 18, Hamilton read a sketch of a
plan of government which "was meant only to give a more correct view of his
ideas, and to suggest the amendments which he should probably propose to the
plan of Mr. R. in the proper stages of its future discussion." [2]
[Note 2: 2 See Records of June 18, and Appendix A, CCXXXIII, CCLXXI,
CCXCII, CCXCIV--CCXCVI, CCCIX, CCCXI, CCCXII, CCCXXIV,
CCCXXVIII, CCCXXIX, CCCLIV, CCCLXVII, CCCLXXX, CCCXCVII,
CCCCI.]
----The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 [Farrand's Records, Volume 3]
3 Farrand's Records 617 at 629
Article IX 1 in Appendix F by Hamilton:
No person shall be eligible to the office of President of the United States
unless he be now a Citizen of one of the States, or hereafter be born a
Citizen of the United States.
Farrand noted that this not submitted to the Convention and has no further value
than attaches to the personal opinions of Hamilton.
-----

U.S. Const., Art 2, Sec 1: "No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United
States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of
President...."
Hamilton: "No person shall be eligible to the office of President of the United States unless he be
now a Citizen of one of the States, or hereafter be born a Citizen of the United States.
Jay 7/25/1787: "Permit me to hint, whether it would not be side & seasonable to provide a strong
check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government; and to
declare expresly that the Command in chief of the american army shall not be given to, nor
devolve on, any but a natural born citizen." (underlined as in handwritten original)
----William Rawle's treatise on Constitutional law was published in 1825 and it was used at the U.S.
Military Academy at West Point as a textbook.
A VIEW OF THE CONSTITUTION
of the United States of America.
BY WILLIAM RAWLE, LL.D.
SECOND EDITION. PHILADELPHIA: PHILIP H. NICKLIN, LAW BOOKSELLER, NO. 175,
CHESTNUT STREET. 1829.
CHAPTER IX.
OF THE ENUMERATED POWERS OF CONGRESS.
[excerpt]
It cannot escape notice, that no definition of the nature and rights of citizens appears in the
Constitution. The descriptive term is used, with a plain indication that its meaning is understood
by all, and this indeed is the general character of the whole instrument. Except in one instance, it
gives no definitions, but it acts in all its parts, on qualities and relations supposed to be already
known. Thus it declares, that no person, except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United
States at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of president
that no person shall be a senator who shall not have been nine years a citizen of the United
States, nor a representative who has not been such a citizen seven years, and it will therefore be
not inconsistent with the scope and tendency of the present essay, to enter shortly into the nature
of citizenship.
In a republic the sovereignty resides essentially, and entirely in the people. Those only who
compose the people, and partake of this sovereignty are citizens, they alone can elect, and are
capable of being elected to public offices, and of course they alone can exercise authority within
the community: they possess an unqualified right to the enjoyment of property and personal

immunity, they are bound to adhere to it in peace, to defend it in war, and to postpone the
interests of all other countries to the affection which they ought to bear for their own.
The citizens of each state constituted the citizens of the United States when the Constitution was
adopted. The rights which appertained to them as citizens of those respective commonwealths,
accompanied them in the formation of the great, compound commonwealth which ensued. They
became citizens of the latter, without ceasing to be citizens of the former, and he who was
subsequently born a citizen of a state, became at the moment of his birth a citizen of the United
States. Therefore every person born within the United States, its territories or districts,
whether the parents are citizens or aliens, is a natural born citizen in the sense of the
Constitution, and entitled to all the rights and privileges appertaining to that capacity. It is
an error to suppose, as some (and even so great a mind as Locke) have done, that a child is born a
citizen of no country and subject of no government, and that be so continues till the age of
discretion, when he is at liberty to put himself under what government he pleases. How far the
adult possesses this power will hereafter be considered, but surely it would be unjust both to the
state and to the infant, to withhold the quality of the citizen until those years of discretion were
attained. Under our Constitution the question is settled by its express language, and when we are
informed that, excepting those who were citizens, (however the capacity was acquired,) at the
time the Constitution was adopted, no person is eligible to the office of president unless he is a
natural born citizen, the principle that the place of birth creates the relative quality is established
as to us.
The mode by which an alien may become a citizen, has a specific appellation which refers to the
same principle. It is descriptive of the operation of law as analogous to birth, and the alien,
received into the community by naturalization, enjoys all the benefits which birth has conferred
on the other class.
----While discussing a different topic during the Clinton impeachment time, Biden described
Rawle's treatise as "the first distinguished commentary on the Constitution."
Sen. Joseph Biden's closed-door impeachment statement
Released into Congressional Record, February 12, 1999
William Rawle wrote the first distinguished commentary on the Constitution, "A View of the
Constitution of the United States of America." In this treatise, he came to precisely the same
interpretation I have described. He said, "The causes of impeachment can only have reference to
public character and official duty.... In general those which may be committed equally by a
private person as a public officer are not the subject of impeachment."