“His Brittanic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and Independent States….”

That is the first clause of Article 1 of the Treaty of Paris, the agreement ending hostilities between Great Britain and the United States, signed September 3 ,1783.

While the end of an 8-year war, a war that restored self-government to the 13 American states is worthy of celebration, there are a few words in the clause quoted above that are especially worthy of remembrance: “free sovereign and Independent.”

Later, in Article I, George III reaffirms that not only are his former colonies “free sovereign and independent,” but he vows from that day forward to “treat with them as such.” 

Notice, moreover, he is not signing a treaty with one nation; he is signing a treaty with 13 nations, each of which is listed at the beginning of Article 1.

Further down in this historic agreement, the representatives of George III and the representatives of Congress agree that “Congress shall earnestly recommend it to the Legislatures of the respective States to provide for the Restitution of all Estates, Rights, and Properties, which have been confiscated belonging to real British Subjects.”

Again, pay close attention to the relative status of the Congress of the United States and the legislatures of the respective states comprising that confederation.

Congress is not tasked with telling the states to restore the property of British subjects confiscated during the war. Congress is required to “earnestly recommend” a course of action to the 13 state governments. Think about what that reveals about the relative power of Congress and the state legislatures. If Congress were superior to the state legislatures, then the treaty would simply have enjoined Congress to inform the states that it — the Congress — would be returning to British subjects the property seized from them during the War for Independence. George III, his representatives, and the representatives of the Congress knew that Congress did not have that authority and that such an act would be up to the free, sovereign, and independent states to execute, or not.

Next, in Article 7 peace is explicitly declared between “his Britannic Majesty and the said states.” The states are now at peace with Britain, if Congress is able to convince the state legislatures to agree to the terms. 

The final clause of Article 7 of the Treaty of Paris commits all official documents, deeds, and papers that may have been confiscated by the British army or agents of the British government to be “forthwith restored and delivered to the proper States and Persons to whom they belong.”

You see? Those things weren’t to be delivered to Congress or to some U.S. government official. These items were to be returned to the states from where they were seized or the individuals to whom the items rightfully belonged.

Yet another of the provisions of this peace treaty illuminating the proper relationship and relative roles of the governments of the states and the Congress!

Next, in several articles of the Treaty of Paris (there are ten total) the people native to Great Britain are called “subjects,” while the people of the several states are called “citizens.” This may seem an insignificant and perhaps legalistic distinction, but it is not. The difference between those two conditions is vast and worth noting. Here is the essence of the distinction as described by historian David Ramsay:

Subjects look up to a master, but citizens are so far equal, that none have hereditary rights superior to others. Each citizen of a free state contains, within himself, by nature and the constitution, as much of the common sovereignty as another. In the eye of reason and philosophy, the political condition of citizens is more exalted than that of noblemen. Dukes and earls are the creatures of kings, and may be made by them at pleasure: but citizens possess in their own right original sovereignty.

Finally, it is valuable to recall that the language of the Treaty of Paris wherein the 13 states are recognized as fully-functioning, free, and sovereign entities, is substantially similar to the language of the Declaration of Independence, the document that formalized the state of war that had existed since April 19, 1775 when “the shot heard ‘round the world” was fired on Lexington Green.

The Declaration of Independence affirms in clear and unmistakable terms:

That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.

In 2020, some 237 years after the Treaty of Paris effectively ended the War for Independence, it is sad that we don’t know as much about the concept of federalism and the relationship it creates among the government of the United States and the governments of the several states that comprise that union.

Joe Wolverton II, J.D., is the author of the book The Real James Madison, What Degree of Madness: Madison’s Method to Make America STATES Again, and The Founders Recipe. He hosts the popular YouTube channel “Teacher of Liberty” and the podcast of the same name.

“Make way! Make way for the good Dr. Price!”

This is reportedly the familiar cry of farmers and tradesman that would greet Richard Price every morning as he would pass by their stalls at the marketplace. Today, there are PhDs in American history who have never heard of this man once known as the “Torchbearer of Liberty.”

There are scores of books published every year about the various men and movements that influenced the Founding Fathers of the United States, but there are few that even mention the celebrated Richard Price. This article is going to change that. 

Richard Price is a name that every American who loves liberty and wants to more fully understand the true value of “so celestial an article as freedom” should know and whose words should be taught to every child in every home in the country whose liberty Dr. Price praised so fully and so frequently.

Among our Founding Fathers, not only was the name of Richard Price known very well, but many of the leading lights of that noble generation knew him personally, eating dinner with him, listening to him deliver fiery sermons in support of human freedom, and carrying on years of correspondence with him. If for no other reason, our Founders’ immense respect and innumerable references to him make Richard Price worthy of our interest. 

Born in Tynton, Wales in 1723 in a farmhouse that was home to his ancestors for over 200 years by the time he was born, Richard Price was raised in a family of devout faith who were members of a denomination of Christianity known in history as “Dissenters.” 

Dissenters were those who did not agree with the direction being taken by the Anglican Church when it was restored as the established church by Charles II. Many members of the Church of England, in fact, fled from their mother church and met together in defiance of the dictates of the political powers of the day. 

In a book describing the atmosphere that dominated Great Britain in those days, G.M. Trevelyan wrote that the Puritans and other Dissenters developed a “political tradition…of vigilant criticism of protest towards the powers that rule society and the State.”

During the reign of Charles II, Dissenters — including the Puritans, the Presbyterians, and others — were oppressed by laws passed by Parliament for that very purpose: denying Dissenters their religious liberty. 

Richard Price’s parents were Dissenters who attended the congregation created by Reverend Samuel Jones in Glamorganishire, Wales and Richard was raised in a home where protest against any power that limited liberty was a family tradition.

Reverend Jones and his parishioners, including the Price family, often met in a barn, being prohibited by Parliament from publicly meeting. While the laws restricting the activity of the Dissenters were sometimes not enforced strictly, at other times they were enforced with ferocity, which ferocity once saw Samuel Jones imprisoned for a short time.

This suffering for the sake of the right to worship according to one’s own conscience was a condition that would make a deep impression on the young mind of Richard Price and would set the course of his life. 

That attitude was cultivated and encouraged during his years studying at a school ran by a man named Samuel Jones, however this was not the same Samuel Jones who was the pastor of his family’s church. This Samuel Jones, was, though, a fellow Dissenter.

When he was twelve, Richard’s father Rees Price enrolled his son in Jones’s school, seeking a tutor for his son that would give him more than an ordinary education. Samuel Jones was an able teacher and one that exposed to his students scholarship that would have been ignored, had it not been for Jones’s zeal for teaching his young scholars to be free-thinking, farsighted, and tenaciously true to the cause of religious liberty. This was the fountain from which the young Richard Price would drink deeply.

Richard’s father died suddenly when Richard was only sixteen, forcing the young man and his two sisters to move from the family’s ancestral estate and into a small house some forty miles away. The death of her husband caused Mrs. Price’s own health to deteriorate and she died less than one year later.

So, at 17 years-old Richard Price was an orphan. Although yet young, Richard was determined to not allow the tragedy of his parents’ untimely deaths to determine the trajectory of his life. Accordingly, Richard set out for London and the home of his uncle, Samuel Price, a preacher of some note among the nonconformists.

While in the home of his uncle, Richard marinated in the teaching of his uncle and he enrolled in Coward’s Academy where his uncle was a professor. In order to be admitted to the Coward school, applicants were required to pass difficult entrance tests and deliver a sermon in front of the academy’s faculty and administration.

Richard Price not only passed this battery of examinations and discourses, but he was such a studious young man that he developed jaundice attributed to “fatigue from his arduous studies.” 

When surveying the lives of our own Founding Fathers and the men that formed their thinking, you come to find that with few exceptions all of them clung tenaciously to the concept that wisdom was acquired by sincere study and genuine faith in God. Richard Price was such a man. He was not afraid of the heavy lifting required of those who would be leaders, whether in the 18th Century or the 21st Century.

During his four years at Coward’s Academy, Richard studied Hebrew, Greek, Latin, philosophy, divinity, theology, the history of the Holy Land, algebra, trigonometry, physics, oration, logic, and “pastoral care,” the art and science of being a minister of the gospel.

These are the very subjects that were studied by our Founding Fathers during their own education and it would seem that anyone who wants to be a man of their mental power would do more than give lip service to such studies.

After graduating from Coward’s Academy Richard Price entered the world where those of his religious beliefs were still subject to widespread prejudice. This challenge sculpted men of Richard’s mien and, as Trevelyan wrote, they were shaped into “a large body of the most conscientious and enthusiastic men [who] became political critics and social reformers by profession.” They were leaders of the liberty movement because “their own wrongs sharpened their sensibility to the wrongs of others, and their own position never permitted them to fall into the sleep of those to whom the world is an easy bed.”

Are you starting to see the picture? Are you starting to appreciate why Richard Price was so influential on our Founding Fathers? Are you starting to sense why tyrants of any era would want to keep kids from learning about him and from reading the powerful words he wrote defending freedom and condemning despots?

There’s no doubt that those devoted to restoring liberty to our people and protecting the free exercise of religion would be better prepared for such an endeavor by reading some of the sermons delivered by the Reverend Richard Price that prove that he was a flamethrower of freedom! Before we get into some of those sermons, let’s look at how he came to call so many Founding Fathers his friend.

By the time he was 40 years-old, Richard Price had written a shelf-full of books on several subjects and a variety of religious tracts taking to task the established church and the politicians that propped it up. By 1767, Richard Price’s reputation as a staunch supporter of liberty and talented writer had drawn many famous men into the orbit of his friendship, including David Hume, Lord Shelburne (the prime minister of England), and Benjamin Franklin.

Respect spread rapidly for Richard Price all over the island of Great Britain, across the English Cannel to continental Europe, and across the Atlantic Ocean to America. Believe it or not, Richard’s rise to worldwide fame began after he published a book about how to determine a person’s expected lifespan and how to handle life insurance costs based on those calculations. His work in this area was so well regarded that many American leaders pointed to Price’s work as the best way for a country “to avoid sinking under a weight of debt.”

That statement alone should be enough to convince parents and professors in a country that’s currently over $20 trillion in debt to teach children and students about Richard Price!

In fact, American political leaders were so grateful to the good work of Richard Price that on October 6, 1778, the Second Continental Congress passed the following resolution:

RESOLVED, that the Honorable Benjamin Franklin, Arthur Lee, and John Adams, Esqrs., or any of them, be ordered forthwith to apply to Dr. Price, and inform him that it is the desire of Congress to consider him as a citizen of the United States and to receive his assistance in regulating their finances; that if he shall think it expedient to remove with his family to America and afford such assistance, a generous provision shall be made for requiting his services.

The resolution, offered by Henry Laurens of South Carolina, passed 6 to 3, with three states whose delegations were split.

Richard Price declined the offer, but wrote that he hoped that “British America may preserve its liberty, set an example of moderation and magnanimity, and establish such forms of government, as may render it an asylum for the virtuous and oppressed in other countries.” (Emphasis in original)

In a separate letter sent to his friend Benjamin Franklin, Price asked that Franklin inform Congress “that Dr. Price feels the warmest gratitude for the notice taken of him, and that he looks to the American States as now the hope and likely soon to become the refuge of mankind.” (Emphasis in original)

When the war between England and America started a couple of years earlier, Richard Price supported the states in their battle to defeat the forces of despotism. As the war continued and the breach between the colonies and their mother country became irreparable, Price clearly communicated his advocacy for the Americans.

Richard Price was such a strident proponent of American independence, in fact, that Congress hired him as a spy and he began sending secrets to the representatives of the states. The intelligence gathered by Price never made much of a difference in the Wagin of the war, but his pen certainly did.

First, in February 1776, Price wrote a pamphlet called “Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, the Principles of Government, and the Justice and Policy of the War with America,” setting out his positions on the importance not only of political liberty in general, but on the success of the American struggle to restore that very condition to their country.

In the preface to the fifth edition of the work published one month after it first appeared, Price summarized his purpose in penning this pamphlet, courageously calling out the British government for fomenting the war by denying Americans of the freedom they enjoyed as an endowment from God, not from government:

The principles on which I have argued form the foundation of every State as far as it is free, and are the same with those taught by Mr. Locke, and all the writers on Civil Liberty who have been hitherto most admired in this country. But I find, with concern, that they are not approved by our Governors; and that they chuse to decline trying by them their present measures: For, in a pamphlet which has been circulated by government with great industry; these principles are pronounced to be “unnatural and wild, incompatible with practice; and the offspring of the distempered imagination of a man who is byassed by Party, and who writes to deceive.”

I must take this opportunity to add, that I love quiet too well to think of entering into a controversy with any writers; particularly, nameless ones—Conscious of good intentions, and unconnected with any Party, I have endeavoured to plead the cause of General Liberty and Justice; and happy in knowing this, I shall, in silence, commit myself to that candour of the Public of which I have had so much experience.

Later in the paper, Price puts a fine point on the problem, warning his own countrymen that if they love liberty, then they just support the cause of the colonies or their own freedom would be forfeited:

OUR Colonies in North America appear to be now determined to risk and suffer every thing, under the persuasion, that Great Britain is attempting to rob them of that Liberty to which every member of society, and all civil communities, have a natural and unalienable right. The question, therefore, whether this is a reasonable persuasion, is highly interesting, and deserves the most careful attention of every Englishman who values Liberty, and wishes to avoid staining himself with the guilt of invading it.

The case for considering Richard Price a starting player on the varsity squad of men who molded the minds of our Founding Fathers shouldn’t need much more evidence. For those who remain unpersuaded, there’s a more to come.

Writing of the freedom to worship, Price wrote that, “He likewise who, in religion, cannot govern himself by his convictions of religious duty, but is obliged to receive formularies of faith, and to practise modes of worship imposed upon him by others, wants Religious Liberty.”

Using Price’s definition of religious liberty, would a time traveler to the United States of 2019 believe that we enjoyed the right of unregulated religious practice?

In a final selection from “Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, the Principles of Government, and the Justice and Policy of the War with America,” Richard Price puts himself in the company of such renowned republicans as John Locke and Algernon Sidney:

FROM what has been said it is obvious, that all civil government, as far as it can be denominated free, is the creature of the people. It originates with them. It is conducted under their direction; and has in view nothing but their happiness. All its different forms are no more than so many different modes in which they chuse to direct their affairs, and to secure the quiet enjoyment of their rights.—In every free state every man is his own Legislator.—All taxes are free-gifts for public services.—All laws are particular provisions or regulations established by common consent for gaining protection and safety.—And all Magistrates are Trustees or Deputies for carrying these regulations into execution.

Liberty, therefore, is too imperfectly defined when it is said to be “a Government by Laws, and not by Men.” If the laws are made by one man, or a junto of men in a state, and not by common consent, a government by them does not differ from Slavery. In this case it would be a contradiction in terms to say that the state governs itself.

Again, would someone who’s a stranger to our world and our country read this description of liberty and judge the United States to be a free country? Would he think that Americans were self-governing?

Finally, in this time when political turmoil too often turns into partisan terrorism, Richard Price has a sermon that could set us straight.

On November 4, 1789 Richard Price delivered a discourse celebrating the centennial of the Glorious Revolution of Great Britain that should be required reading for every American who wants to make a difference on the direction our country is heading and on the people who we put in political office and the power they’re able to exert on the liberty that we once recognized as being composed of rights with which we were “endowed by our Creator,” but today is being converted by Congress, the courts, and the president into permission they can give and take away at their will. 

We know better. Richard Price knew better.

So, for us, in these days of deep political and moral division, here’s a couple words of counsel from Richard Price’s 1789 sermon entitled “A Discourse on the Love of Our Country”:

The love of our country has in all times been a subject of warm commendations; and it is certainly a noble passion; but, like all other passions, it requires regulation and direction. There are mistakes and prejudices by which, in this instance, we are in particular danger of being misled.—I will briefly mention some of these to you, and observe,

First, That by our country is meant, in this case, not the soil or the spot of earth on which we happen to have been born; not the forests and fields, but that community of which we are members; or that body of companions and friends and kindred who are associated with us under the same constitution of government, protected by the same laws, and bound together by the same civil polity.

And:

In other families there may be as much worth as in our own. In other circles of friends there may be as much wisdom; and in other countries as much of all that deserves esteem; but, notwithstanding this, our obligation to love our own families, friends, and country, and to seek, in the first place, their good, will remain the same.

Do yourselves a solid and go read Richard Price for yourselves. All of his most influential works are available free online. 

Maybe, if enough of remember this forgotten influence on the Founding Fathers, we can develop the same unshakeable love of liberty that our ancestors had and maybe we can come to truly find the good and the commendable in other countries and other parties, realizing that such wisdom does not require us to reduce in any amount whatsoever the love of what is our own.

The study of history is the best medicine for a troubled mind for in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see; and in that record you can find for yourself and your country both examples and warnings; fine things to take as models, base things, rotten through and through, to avoid.

Livy, History of Rome

Some time in the 4th Century B.C., the Greek philosopher Aristotle (his name means “complete perfection in Ancient Greek) wrote a book aimed at inquiring into what it was that could keep the community — the polis — peaceful and functioning well and to the benefit of the citizens of the community. Aristotle’s guidebook to good governance is known as Politics.

Book 5 of Politics reads as if it were written for our day. Aristotle begins that section of his essay by reciting what happens when people in the polis begin to “stir up factions” with the intent of overthrowing the established order by using “party strife” to “change parts of the constitution.” The purported goal of these “revolutionaries,” Aristotle wrote is a “desire for equality.”

Sound familiar?

These fractious factions believe that “as they are equal to others in one thing, they should be equal in all things,” including control over property owned by others. The people trying to abolish the constitution, Aristotle warned, would not stop until they were given and “unequal share of all things,” due to their perceived unequal treatment in other times and in other areas.

Sound familiar?

What is the motivation of these adversaries of the constitution and order, Aristotle asks rhetorically. His answer might surprise you: “feelings.”

The “spirit of feelings,” Aristotle writes, grips those seeking to overturn the constitution and to seize control over the property of others.

“Those that desire this ‘equality’ stir up party strife because they feel that even though they are the equals of those that have more, they are not treated equally,” Aristotle explains. “We have said that those who feel they ought to be greater than others start party conflict because of the state of their feelings.”

Sound familiar?

Next, the great Greek philosopher reveals, the goal of these agitators is “to get gain and honor by creating conflict and partisan fighting to prevent themselves and their friends from experiencing any dishonor or loss.”

Sound familiar?

After igniting these fires of faction, those organizing the disturbances continuing following their feelings because “they resent others unjustly getting a larger share than them.” If the uproar and the conflagrations don’t deliver the power they are seeking, then the instigators will resort to “election intrigue.”

Sound familiar?

Now, so you don’t misunderstand Aristotle’s insightful understanding of the political situation that creates the sort of cultural cacophony we’re experiencing today, he does point out that many of those who support these insurgents are motivated to migrate to that camp by the “insolence and greed shown by men in office.” This greed of the politicians leads them to “prey on private property and raid the common treasury.” The men in power then use their “excessive predominance” to hand out benefits and honors to themselves and their friends, and to begin secretly setting up a tyranny on the ruins of the constitution.

Sound familiar?

With the de facto establishment of the despotic government, the tyrants use their extraordinary power to “gradually and little by little without being noticed” destroy the “peace and wealth of the middle class.”

Sound familiar?

In one of the last pushes for complete control over the polis and its property, the tyrants and the terrorists join forces to strengthen their stranglehold on the polis. They squeeze the middle class out of any political influence by siphoning its wealth and gaining control over its property. The cabal’s single policy is the perpetuation of its own power and the prevention of others from ever diminishing their dominance or growing powerful enough to challenge its hegemony.

Sound familiar?

The last act of the despotic drama is the construction of a political program, each plank of which is a part of a larger platform supporting the strongmen in their positions of absolute power.

Much to our benefit, in Book V Aristotle identifies the weapons in the autocratic arsenal, giving us a 2,300-year heads up, plenty of time to build the barricades between the liberty of our own polis and the tyrants that have through all ages of time have with laser focus fought to demolish them.

What follows is the list of policies published in Politics by Aristotle. With this advanced warning, it is hoped that we may, as Livy counseled, use history to avoid falling prey to those people and programs that are “rotten through and through.” 

Those of you with ears to hear, may you hear: there is a way to avoid the complete ruin of our republic.

This is Aristotle’s slate of statist tactics.

1. Ostracize outstanding men
2. Embarrass the virtuous people
3. Prohibit eating together at public places
4. Prohibit the meetings of clubs
5. Close schools
6. Keep close watch over anything in the society which could lead the people to develop confidence of pride.
7. Close down any venues where people could gather to discuss or debate politics.
8. Do whatever necessary to make it difficult for people to get to know each other.
9. Keep the people who live in the cities constantly under the surveillance of the government.
10. Never allow the government to be uninformed about any conversations or actions of citizens.
11. Keep spies among the people or keep them under surveillance so that people become afraid to speak openly.
12. Cause friends to quarrel with each other.
13. Create class warfare.
14. Keep the people divided into groups and pit those groups against each other.
15. Make sure the people are not able to employ private security forces, requiring them to accept the government’s police forces as their only law enforcement.
16. Keep the people occupied with the daily demands of living so that they will not have time to think about uniting to oppose the tyrant.
17. Keep the people always working, but never able to increase their wealth.
18. Tax the people heavily so as to be able to reduce a man to poverty within five years.
19. Stir up war so that the people are compelled to demonstrate loyalty to the state and to need a strong leader to guide them through the war.
20. As a tyrant, show that you distrust your friends and that you are in charge and they depend on you for their power.
21. Flatter the lower classes of people.
22. Make friends with foreign leaders.
23. Tear down anyone who is perceived as being superior to the tyrant.
24. Be rude and vengeful to anyone  who displays an independent and free spirit or who refuses to recognize the tyrants’ usurped supremacy.

Sound familiar?

Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, has chosen California Senator Kamala Harris to be his running mate. 

While such a story may seem somewhat unremarkable, the particulars of the two people involved in this political decision make the story more problematic than it appears on its face.

Joe Biden suffers from what many reckon are substantial setbacks in his cognitive capacity and his advanced is undeniable, placing Kamala Harris in a more likely than usual position to assume the office of president.

That likelihood is made more meaningful given that Harris herself has made a run at the Democratic Party’s nomination that her now-ticket mate has all but wrapped up.

So, while in most election years the specific constitutional qualifications of the vice-presidential nominee may be of no more than academic interest, but in light of Biden’s decreasing awareness and increasing age Harris’s constitutional eligibility for the presidency is of urgent import.

Put simply, Kamala Harris is constitutionally ineligible to be president of the United States because she is not a natural born citizen, as required by Article II (and, by reference, the 12th Amendment) of the U.S. Constitution.

While born in the United States — Oakland, California — at the time of her birth, Kamala Harris’s father was a citizen of Jamaica and her mother was a citizen of India. This makes Kamala Harris a native-born American — thus eligible to serve as a U.S. senator — but she is not a natural born citizen, the higher standard set for those occupying the office of president.

What follows is a historically detailed and constitutionally precise analysis of why the Framers of the U.S. Constitution raised the required citizenship bar for those elected president of the United States. I know it’s a bit lengthy, but stay with me. Preventing constitutionally unqualified candidates from usurping power is of critical concern to every American and every man and woman whose life and liberty could be taken by the person with his — or her — finger on the button.

The Constitution does not define natural born citizenship, neither have Supreme Court and Congress. The term “natural born citizen” comes from the English concept of “natural born subject,” which came from Calvin’s Case, a 1608 decision.

Natural born subjects were those who owed allegiance to the king at birth under the “law of nature.” The court concluded that under natural law, certain people owed duties to the king, and were entitled to his protection, even in the absence of a law passed by Parliament.

Let’s explore the possible sources and appropriate interpretations of the “natural born citizen” qualification.

At the time of the drafting of the Constitution, a person born subject to the British Crown could hold “double allegiance,” a concept similar to “dual citizenship” as understood today.

Our own Founding Fathers, nearly every one of whom was born in some outpost of the British Empire, feared the damage that could come from such divided loyalty. They instituted the “natural born citizen” qualification in order to avoid what Gouverneur Morris described during the Constitutional Convention as “the danger of admitting strangers into our public councils.”

As famed jurist of the early republic St. George Tucker, a contemporary of Morris, explained:

That provision in the constitution which requires that the president shall be a native-born citizen (unless he were a citizen of the United States when the constitution was adopted) is a happy means of security against foreign influence, which, wherever it is capable of being exerted, is to be dreaded more than the plague. The admission of foreigners into our councils, consequently, cannot be too much guarded against; their total exclusion from a station to which foreign nations have been accustomed to attach ideas of sovereign power, sacredness of character, and hereditary right, is a measure of the most consummate policy and wisdom.

The very source of the “natural born citizen” standard is known to us today. The Swiss jurist Emer de Vattel defined that term in his seminal book The Law of Nations, published in 1758 and, according to Benjamin Franklin, “had been continually in the hands of the members of our Congress.” 

Book I, Chapter 19, Section 212 of The Law of Nations reads:

[N]atural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens. As the society cannot exist and perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights. The society is supposed to desire this, in consequence of what it owes to its own preservation; and it is presumed, as matter of course, that each citizen, on entering into society, reserves to his children the right of becoming members of it. The country of the fathers is therefore that of the children; and these become true citizens merely by their tacit consent. We shall soon see, whether, on their coming to the years of discretion, they may renounce their right, and what they owe to the society in which they were born. I say, that, in order to be of the country, it is necessary that a person be born of a father who is a citizen; for if he is born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country.

De Vattel’s definition of “natural born citizen” and the benefits derived from distinguishing between “natural born citizens” and “citizens” was well known to our Founding Fathers and, in fact, the very name of that high standard was copied verbatim by them into Article II of the U.S. Constitution wherein the qualifications for President of the United States are set out.

That such a qualification was universally agreed to by the delegates at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 one need only look to the record of that convention and note that the requirement that the president by a “natural born citizen” was mentioned only twice and was agreed to “nem con,” a contraction of a Latin legal phrase meaning, “without opposition.”

In fact, as indicated in early records of the naturalization process, men applying for American citizenship were required to make two renunciations of all fealty to foreign powers before swearing allegiance to the Republic of the United States.

As a matter of fact, the possibility of any legal acceptance of divided allegiance was explicitly rejected in a report issued by the House of Representatives in 1874:

The United States have not recognized a ‘double allegiance.’ By our law a citizen is bound to be ‘true and faithful’ alone to our government.

The practical effect of that proclamation is that in order to be a “natural born citizen” of the United States, one would have to be free from a competing claim for allegiance from another nation.

That such a schizophrenic situation was not only anticipated but accepted by His Majesty’s government during the time of the American founding can be inferred from the impressment of American sailors into the service of the Crown. During the War for Independence, British ships would block American ships from sailing and then the seamen on the British vessels would board the American ships and force the Americans to serve the side of the Empire.

The insistence on the part of the British that anyone born within the realm was a British subject regardless of any voluntary severance thereof and subsequent vow of allegiance to another prince was a significant factor in the hostilities known as the War of 1812. 

Finally, in this regard, the British required no process of naturalization as such. Simply being born within the dominions of the monarchy of Great Britain was sufficient to endow one with the rights and privileges granted to any British subject. Nothing such a person did later in life (including becoming a citizen of another country) would ever alter his status as subject.

Obviously, in the United States that concept is neither the law now, nor was it the law at the time of the founding. Quite the opposite, in fact.

One of the scholars frequently cited in articles on the subject of the definition of “natural born citizen” is Temple University law professor Peter Spiro.

Spiro often cites the 14th Amendment to the Constitution as further evidence that although born outside the U.S. to a foreign father, recent presidential candidates — including Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio — fit the 14th Amendment’s definition of a natural born citizen. 

The relevant clause of the 14th Amendment reads:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the States wherein they reside.

The principal architect of the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment was Michigan Senator Jacob Merritt Howard, a Republican representing Detroit. 

Senator Howard crafted much of the language that was eventually ratified as part of the 14th Amendment.

During the debates that embroiled the Senate in the years following the Civil War, Senator Howard insisted that the qualifying phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” be inserted into Section 1 of the 14th Amendment being considered by his colleagues. In the speech with which he proposed the alteration, Howard declared:

This amendment which I have offered is simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already, that every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, [or] who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.

How could a person “born in the United States” be simultaneously a citizen and a “foreigner” or “alien” if the mere fact of nativity settled the question of citizenship?

Another legislator commenting at the time of the ratification of the 14th Amendment, Representative John Bingham, provided the following clarification of the meaning behind the “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” clause:

Every human being born within the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen.

While similar questions have been raised regarding the Article II eligibility of Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) who ran for president in 2000 and in 2008, and Mitt Romney, who ran in 2008 and 2012, the case of those two men is distinct from that of Kamala Harris.

Both McCain, who was born in the Panama Canal Zone to an American father serving overseas in the military, and Romney, whose father was born in Mexico to American parents, pass constitutional muster.

However, although not necessarily in the way claimed by Professor Spiro, when applied to the case of Senator Kamala Harris, the principles of constitutional law and interpretation set forth above call into question her eligibility for president. 

So, to conclude, there is no reasonable or legal doubt that at the time of her birth (regardless of the location), Harris’s father was not an American citizen — and thus, should she assume the office of the president, the president would be the child of a person with legal allegiance to a foreign sovereignty and so would not conform to the accepted legal, constitutional, and historical definition of “natural born citizen,” thus Kamala Harris cannot serve as vice-president.