ment to expel him from the country. In some few instances, but they are very few, he may find to his surprise that he lacks some right possessed by a British subject. An alien, for example, cannot be owner of a British ship, but this restriction, and it is a very exceptional one, is rather nominal than real, for there is nothing to prevent an alien from being a shareholder in a British company which owns ships. A foreigner, again, who wishes to execute a will may find, on consulting his lawyer, that a particular form of will, which would be valid if executed by a British subject, is invalid if the testator be an alien, and I doubt not that industrious research might discover one or two other trifling points in respect of which an alien's civil rights are in England affected by his alienage. But these matters are the merest trifles. A foreigner enjoys, in substance, in England all the ordinary civil rights of a native. The result is that an American citizen who should, by act of Parliament, be transformed into a British subject, would in England, at least, hardly feel that, as regards the affairs of every-day life, his position was in any way changed. In some English colonies the case may be different, and aliens may there still labor under some of the disabilitiese.g., as to the inheritance of land-imposed by the common law, and it is possible that the institution of a common citizenship might slightly increase even the mere civil rights of American citizens throughout the British Colonial Empire. Still, if you look at the matter broadly, it remains strictly true that an American becoming a British subject would find that, as regards the affairs of every-day life, he had undergone no perceptible change of status. Let me add further, in order to obviate a common and natural error, that the institution of a citizenship common to Englishmen and Americans would have no effect whatever upon the operation of the marriage laws or the divorce laws prevailing in different parts of the British Empire, or in the different states of the American Union. Let no En

glishman imagine that if in virtue of a common citizenship he became an American citizen, he could avail himself any more easily than at present of the facility with which a divorce can be obtained in the state of Illinois. As things now stand an Englishman who chooses really and bonâ fide to settle or become domiciled in Illinois, may obtain a divorce there which would be held valid in England, and this he may accomplish whilst remaining a British subject. A British subject, and for that matter an American citizen, who is really or bonâ fide settled or domiciled in England, may possibly, if he takes the proper steps, get a divorce in Illinois, but that divorce will have no validity in England, and will not save him in England from conviction for bigamy should he, whilst his English wife is living, marry another wife in Illinois. The ordinary principle of English, as of American, law is that civil status and civil rights depend upon permanent residence or domicile, not upon nationality.

The position of aliens in the United States is still, it would appear, in theory at least, somewhat inferior to the position in the United Kingdom. Their rights to hold and to inherit real estate is still governed partly by common law, partly by the statutes of the several states. It is, therefore, possible that an interchange of citizenship would confer rather greater advantages upon Englishmen residing in the United States than upon Americans residing in England. But state legislation has tended to modify, in favor of aliens, the harshness of the common law, and there is no reason to suppose that the change I am advocating would materially affect the civil position of an Englishman settled in America. In all the ordinary transactions of life which lie outside the sphere of politics, an Englishman, resident in or visiting New York or Illinois, has already pretty much the same rights as a citizen of that state.1

1 As to the position of aliens in the United States see 2 Kent, Comm." 12th ed. pp. 53-73, especially Holmes's Note on Rights of Aliens, p. 70. When

Community of citizenship would affect not civil, but political rights. If the acts creating isopolity were passed, a citizen of the United States would stand, when in England, in the same position as an English colonist. Mr. Phelps or Mr. Bayard would possess the same political rights as Mr. Blake or Mr. Rhodes. The political status, in short, of an American citizen would be exactly the same as that of his grandfather, who, before 1776, was an inhabitant of Massachusetts, but a subject of the British Crown. He would, on the necessary conditions being fulfilled, be able to vote for a mem ber of Parliament, to sit in Parliament, and, if fortune favored, become a Cabinet minister or a premier. He might aspire, did his ambition lead in that direction, to the House of Lords. So on the other hand, a British subject, to whom American citizenship had been extended, might, on the necessary conditions being fulfilled, vote for a member of Congress, become a member of the House of Representatives, or even a senator. To one glory, it must be admitted, he could not attain; he must forego any hope of the presidentship, for none but a natural born citizen can become President of the United States.1 We must leave it for American jurists to decide whether under the constituwe consider that "many of the States of the Union have done away with all disabilities of aliens to hold landed property, and all are believed to have much qualified the common law" (2 "Kent," p 70, note 1), it may be assumed that the position of aliens in the United States would be but slightly changed by the extension of common citizenship. In order that Englishmen might not suffer by what was intended to be a gain, it should be made clear that they preserved the right given to citizens of different States and to citizens of the foreign States of suing and being sued in the Federal Courts. See Constitution of U. S., art. iii. s. 2.

1 U. S. Constitution, art. iii. s. 1. It is worth notice that some American citizens even after the acknowledgment by Great Britain of American independence, considered themselves to be both American citizens and British subjects. See the unpublished memoir of J. C Dyer, containing an expression of this view, which is very noteworthy as representing the sentiment of loyalty to England retained by a loyal citizen of the American Republic.

tion the child of British subjects, who had themselves obtained American citizenship, might not, as a natural born citizen, hope to gain the supreme object of American ambition.

The plain truth is that if every American settled in any part of the British dominions were suddenly by an act of Parliament transformed into a British subject, he might for a long time not realize his change of legal status. The alteration would certainly not attract the attention of his neighbors. There are scores of Americans living in England as to whom even an intimate friend does not know whether they have or have not taken out certificates of naturalization. It would be a bold prediction to assert that by a given date, say January 1, 1901, every American citizen would become a British subject, and ten or twelve American citizens would have obtained seats in the House of Commons, but though the prophecy would excite amazement, and would possibly enough not obtain fulfilment, there is no reason why it should excite alarm. The common citizenship which already prevails throughout the British empire has brought, and has most rightly brought, into Parliament men who by race, language, and religion are far less closely connected with us than are the citizens of Massachusetts or of Illinois, and Englishmen may see not only with calmness but with satisfaction, natives of India take their seats at Westminster; but they surely may see with just as much calmness, and just as much satisfaction, a citizen of Vermont or Connecticut seated side by side with a Parsee or a Hindoo. Recent legislation, moreover, enables any foreigner who is really resident in the United Kingdom to acquire British nationality. This extension of the rights of citizenship is as politic and reasonable as it is liberal and generous, but it forbids the maintenance of the principle that the public life of England shall be open to none but natural born Englishmen. No one wishes to exclude naturalized aliens from the full citizenship, but without being a victim to insular prejudice, a

liberal-minded Englishman may confess that he would as soon have seen seated at Westminster, Mr. Lowell or Mr. Phelps, or Mr. Bayard, or any one of the eminent citizens who have represented the United States in England, as a gentleman, who, however keen an advocate of the doctrine of England for the English, owes his seat in Parliament to a certificate of naturalization on which the ink was scarcely dry at the day of his election.

The direct effects of isopolity would be no greater in the United States than England. From some points of view they might be even less, since the rights and liabilities of an American often arise rather from his being a citizen of the particular state than from his being a citizen of the United States. However this may be, an Englishman who became an American citizen would, when in the United States, find that his civil rights were but slightly if at all increased, and that though his political status would be altered, this alteration would hardly affect the position of a man who did not wish to take an active part in public life. It must further be remembered that under the law of the United States naturalization, as things now stand, is easy, and that a naturalized American citizen has almost all the rights of a natural born American citizen. There certainly has at least been one case, and no doubt persons well acquainted with American politics might point to many more, in which a naturalized alien has played a very prominent and it must be added a very beneficial part in the public life of America.

In the United States, therefore, as in England, the practical change produced by common citizenship would be small, but the change would, from one point of view, be of more importance in the United States than in the United Kingdom. The reason of this difference is that the number of Americans settling in England, or even in the British Empire, is small and insignificant, whilst the number of British subjects who settle in the United States is large and important. The naturaliza

tion laws, moreover, of the United States, though they are very liberal, secure, nominally at least, that no foreigner shall obtain American citizenship who is not a person of respectable character, and has not resided in the United States for a period of five years.

The suggestion, therefore, is plausible that legislation which made every British subject ipso facto an American citizen would break down some of the few checks on the tendency which every wise American deplores, of a mass of emigrants who have no real connection with the United States, and of whom some are by no means desirable citizens, to swamp and outnumber native-born Americans. But when the matter is carefully considered, the most plausible objection from an American point of view to my proposal turns out to be in reality a reason of some force in its favor. This assertion sounds paradoxical, but admits of easy justification.

American checks on naturalization are not real, but nominal. Any emigrant who does not stickle at a little formal perjury, and can obtain a friend or two no more scrupulous than himself, can, it is pretty well understood, gain admission to American citizenship, even though his character be indifferent, and though he may not have resided many weeks in America. A good number of emigrants, indeed, if left to themselves, might, it is possible, not go through the formalities (we might say the farce), by which they are transformed into American citizens. But emigrants are not left to themselves; they are taken in hand by the agents of political parties, and having been duly drilled, go through the necessary forms as lightheartedly as some fifty years ago respectable undergraduates signed on their matriculation those thirty-nine articles of which they neither understood nor, in many cases, knew the contents. No doubt, however, there is to be found a residue of respectable persons who hesitate to claim by means of false declarations a

1 See 2" Kent, Comm." 12th ed. pp. 64, 65.

citizenship to which they have not yet become duly entitled. This, then, is the result of the present system. All emigrants can become American citizens almost immediately upon their landing in the United States, except, indeed, the most moral and the most respectable portion of the emigrants. In other words, citizenship is open immediately to every foreigner but the very class of foreigners who most deserve to become citizens, and the only aliens who are excluded are the aliens whose character renders them specially deserving of citizenship. Years ago I had the happiness to witness at New York this manufacture of American citizens. It was an amusing, though in one respect an impressive scene. One might doubt whether the respectable gentlemen who vouched for the qualifications of the claimants to citizenship were specially nice in the matter of truth. But no one who compared the indigent foreigner with his well-to-do friends could doubt that a very short residence in the United States often raised European paupers into well-todo Americans. Shortly after witnessing this bestowal of citizenship, I called on an American public man of some eminence. He maintained that the abolition of all checks on naturalization would be a benefit. It would, he argued, have two good effects. It would diminish the influence of wire-pullers, and put an end to the temptation which beset every emigrant to enlist himself at once in some political party; it would, in the second place, on the whole, raise the character of American citizens. Whether this contention was absolutely sound or not it is not for an Englishman to determine, but it, at any rate, establishes that restrictions on naturalization which are of dubious value are not worth weighing against any serious advantage to be obtained from the common citizenship of the whole English people.

Thirdly, the indirect and moral effects would be great and wholly beneficial.

The creation of a common English citizenship would of itself intensify

throughout the whole English race that sentiment of national unity, the increase of which is, in one form or another, suggesting plans for binding closer together England and her colonies; and a common citizenship would be no small advantage if it did no more than emphasize the feeling that the two branches of the English people were bound together by the feeling of common nationality. It would, further, be an unspeakable advantage that this sense of unity should be proclaimed to the whole world. The declaration of isopolity would be an announcement which no foreign state could legitimately blame or wisely overlook, that men of English descent in England and America alike were determined to safeguard the future prosperity of the whole English people. The knowledge, or even the presumption, that neither division of the race could be induced to attack the other by any provocation falling short of the causes which justify civil war would increase the moral prestige and even the material power both of England and of America. How great is the worth of concord to each country will be seen at once by any one who reflects how much the mere possibility of a war about Venezuela must have encouraged every foreign state which may have meditated an attack upon England.

The immediate results, indeed, of a common citizenship would, as I have all along insisted, be small, but, as far as they went, they would all be good. The ambassadors, the ministers, or the consuls of England or of America would be prepared to aid, protect, or show courtesy in foreign countries to Americans and to Englishmen alike, and no one can doubt that Great Britain and the United States could often each in turn, or both together, give effective help to their common citizens. Nor can any Englishman, at any rate, deem it a small advantage that every citizen of the United States should when in England feel himself absolutely and completely at home. No one can expect, or even reasonably desire,

that any large number of American citizens should permanently settle in England, or take part in the public life of England, but it should always be remembered that Americans can, if the opportunity is given them, play a part in English life which no act of Parliament could in reality lay open to a Frenchman or an Italian. The most eminent lawyers of America would, if they saw fit to settle here, find prepared for them a distinguished career at the English bar. The late Mr. Benjamin's political action in America has never commanded my admiration, but his extraordinary gifts as a lawyer are beyond dispute. Arriving in England as a foreigner, he became within a very short time the leading counsel in the courts of appeal; he rose to the very highest eminence at the bar, and, unless common rumor was mistaken, came near to obtaining a seat on the Bench. Whether he was naturalized, or whether, as was sometimes said, his place of birth conferred upon Mr. Benjamin the character of a British subject, I know not. What is certain is that, being in reality in the sort of position which, under a system of common citizenship, would belong to every American settled in England, he showed that such an American might rise very high in the public life of England. Of good lawyers, it may be said, we have already more than enough. The truth of this assertion is doubtful. High legal ability is, like every other kind of ability, rare. It is certain, however, that there are to be found in the United States men whose powers are not displayed in the form of a genius for law, but whom we should all welcome in England as allies, guides, or instructors in political matters. Let me take as an example one writer known to many Englishmen. Mr. Godkin landed in America, I believe, as a foreigner. He has, by energy, by literary talent, and, above all, by character, done during the last thirty years more than any one natural born citizen of the United States to resist what is evil and to strengthen what is good in the tendencies of American democracy.

Should he ever return to the United Kingdom, he would be able to give us invaluable aid in the solution of the most difficult questions which demand the consideration of English statesmanship. Whoever reads with care the "Problems of Modern Democracy" will be convinced that its author might, if he could freely mix in our public life, fill in England the place left vacant in the world of politics by the death of Mill and of Maine. He might be the philosophic adviser of active politicians. Let it, however, be noted that the capacity for giving sound advice, even of a speculative kind, in political matters depends, at any rate, on the possibility of thinkers taking part in public life. Mr. Godkin, or any man of the type of Mr. Godkin, settled in England with the full rights of a British subject, would be worth to this country twice as much as Mr. Godkin, or any man like him, whilst standing outside English life, and regarding it merely from the external point of view of an intelligent foreign observer. Add to all this that the isopolity would not only draw Englishmen and Americans closer together, but would counteract what may soon become the urgent peril of the passing of laws, or the growth of institutions, which may widen the division between the two branches of the same people. The circumstances are rapidly passing away, if they have not passed away already, under which public opinion in the United States has favored unrestricted emigration. The world is filling up. In fifty years public sentiment throughout the United States will, it may be anticipated, distinctly cease to welcome the accession of emigrants. Before opinion or law has fixed a definite bar against free emigration, it would be well to ensure to every member of the English people the right to free settlement in every English-speaking land.

Common citizenship is not alliance any more than it is political unity; but common citizenship may well stimulate first co-operation and then alliance. The unbroken amity, and even the defensive

alliance of England and