During the war with England then existing, the prince regent announced that every native-born Briton, taken prisoner while fighting in the American army, should be executed for treason to his lawful sovereign.

| Mr. Madison announced in return, that if any naturalized citizen of this country were put to death on the pretence that he was a British subject, the United States would put to death two English prisoners in retaliation. There was no further discussion on the subject, and no occasion for any. Still later, and especially within the last twenty years, cases have oc-curred in which foreigners naturalized here were upon their return to their native states compelled to render military service there, or were otherwise forced to assume the duties of subjects of their states of birth, and they invoked the protection of the United States by virtue of their status as American citizens. In 1857, in the case of Ernst, a subject of Hanover, naturalized here, who on his return was forced into the Hanoverian army, Attorney General Black gave to the president a very clear and convincing opinion, in which he advised him that Ernst was an American citizen; that by the public law of the world we have the undoubted right to naturalize a foreigner, whether his natural sovereign consents to his emigration or not; and that Hanover could not justify Ernst's arrest, even by showing that he emigrated contrary to the laws of that country, unless it could be proved that the original right of expatriation depended on the consent of the natural sovereign; and as to the last proposition, he added that he was sure that it could not be established.

In a case in the same year, that of Amther, Mr. Black's opinion was to the same effect on a reversed state of facts. Amther, a Bavarian subject, after being naturalized here, returned to Bavaria and sought to recover his original status as a citizen of that country. The authorities there doubted whether he could throw off his allegiance to this country, but the attorney general of the United States was of the clear opinion that he could; that by our law any citizen, native or naturalized, might sever his political connection with this government at his pleasure, provided it was for a purpose and at a time which were not injurious to our interests. He was of the opinion, therefore, that Amther might be reinstated as a citizen of Bavaria, and that, as a condition to such restitution of his citizenship, the Bavarian government was at liberty to compel him to abjure his allegiance to the United States in any form that its laws required. Doctrines quite as emphatic were pronounced by Mr. Marcy, secretary of state in 1853, in the famous case of Koszta. In a letter to the American minister to Prussia in 1859, concerning cases then in hand, Mr. Cass declared that the right of expatriation could not at this moment be doubted or denied in this country, and that the doctrine of perpetual allegiance was a relic of barbarism which was fast disappearing from Christendom. In 1860 Attorney General Stanbery declined to discuss the general question of the right of expatriation under our law, on the ground that the practice of the United States had long since rendered that question a mere abstraction.

It should be observed, however, that our government, in its dealings with other nations on this subject, has not claimed that the right to renounce allegiance is absolute under all circumstances. It has been willing to concede that our naturalization did not give full rights of American citizenship to aliens whose removal from their native country bore the character of an escape or flight from civil or political obligations already fixed upon them; so that, while it would not recognize any validity in the general right to claim military service, for example, the actual performance of which had not been demanded when the foreign subject left his country, yet it would concede that there was a just force in the claim of the foreign state, when the subject had been already conscripted into the army, and had deserted from it, or had otherwise run away from actually existing obligations. The whole subject has been finally closed, so far as the law of the United States about it is concerned, by a very explicit and vigorous statute passed in July, 1868. Its preamble recites that the right of expatriation is a natural and inherent right of all people, indispensable to the enjoyment of the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that in the recognition of this principle, this government has freely received emigrants from all nations and invested them with the right of citizenship; that it is necessary for the maintenance of public peace that the claim of foreign allegiance as to such adopted citizens should be promptly and finally disavowed; and it is therefore enacted that any declaration, opinion, order, or decision of any officer of this government which denies, impairs, restricts, or questions the right of expatriation, is inconsistent with the fundamental principles of the government.

The statute further enacts that all naturalized citizens of the United States, while in foreign states, are entitled to and shall receive from this government the same protection of person and property that is accorded to native-born citizens in like circumstances. At last, in 1870, Great Britain by the naturalization act of that year (May 12) revised all her own laws upon alienage, expatriation, and naturalization, and for the first time in her history recognized the right of her subjects to renounce their allegiance to the crown. (See Naturalization.)