Citizenship [Part 2]
~ This entry is part of my project of identifying, compiling, and editing the complete written and spoken works of James McCune Smith (1813-1865) in association with Northumbria University and funded by the British Academy. ~
Title: Citizenship [Part 2]
Source: The Anglo-African Magazine, May 1859, pp. 144-150 (In Hathi Trust)
Text:
Citizenship
––––
BY JAMES M’CUNE SMITH.
[Continued]
Leaving to abler hands to discuss the broader bearings of this subject, we propose to examine a single term―citizenship―on which, it will readily be seen the whole question hangs. What is Citizenship?
Singularly enough this term is a species, of which language has not yet furnished the generic term; clear proof, notwithstanding our boasting advance in all things, of our imperfect development in the matter of civil government. The relation which the individual bears to the state has no general expression in language. A subject expresses the relation of a person to an elective form of government, that of a city, or a state.[1] A citizen of London, may be a subject of the King of Great Britain. Louis 6th first granted in 1113 certain franchises which made the inhabitants of Noyon[2] citizens; and Henry I. of England by similar grant made the dwellers of London citizens thereof.[3] There is really no difference between citizen and denizen, the [word den][4] being the Welsh radical[5] having the force of the Latin[6] civis.[7]
As the Constitution of the United States does not define the word citizen,* the definition must be sought in the exact meaning of the word itself, altogether independently of the Constitution. Herein, after all, lies the great and only safeguard against the corruption or centralization which grow out of a written constitution. Language, and words with their distinct meaning at the time of its adoption are the only record to which we can safely go back as a barrier against new and forced or false interpretations.
Aristotle defines a citizen to be metochos kriseos kai arches,[8] ‘a partner in the Legislative and judicial power.’[9] The chief characteristics of citizens among the Athenians were good birth, hereditary transmission of privileges, the possession of land and the performance of military service.[10] So precious was the right of citizenship, that it required a vote of 6000 citizens to admit a stranger to the rights of
* The word citizen, as used in the Constitution,[11] did not bear the restricted sense applied to an inhabitant of a city possessing the franchises thereof; it bore the larger sense of the relation of the individual to the state of which that individual is an integral part. Our Declaration of Independence expressed this relation in the words ‘All men are created free and equal, and are endowed by their Creator with a certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’[12]
citizenship.[13] Among the Spartans, the helots or slaves earned the rank of citizen by purchase, or by military service, more especially in the heavy army ranks. Emancipation at once conferred citizenship on the person emancipated.[14]
The word citizenship, however, of Latin[15] derivation, gathers its purport and exact meaning from the Roman Republic; it originated and grew under the Romans.[16] Regarded as the relation which the individual bears to the state, the word citizenship is worthy of a close and attentive study; a broad historical view of the general relation of an individual and state is presented by Mr. Mill in his remarkable essay on Liberty[17] as follows:
‘The struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous feature in the portions of history with which we are earl[iest][18] familiar,* particularly [in] that of Greece, Rome and England. But in old times this contest was between subjects, [or some classes of subjects,] and the government. By liberty[,] was meant protection against the tyranny of [the] political rulers. The rulers were conceived (except in some of the popular governments of Greece) as in [a] necessarily antagonistic position to the people whom they ruled. They consisted of a governing One, or a governing tribe or caste, who derived their authority from inheritance or conquest, who, at all events did not […] venture, perhaps did not desire, to contest, whatever precautions might be taken against its oppressive exercise. Their power was regarded as necessary, but
* MR. MILL here speaks of British youth. Young America, as instructed in the Ward Schools of the City of New York, and we fear throughout the land, is forced to cram, in the dates of every sanguinary conflict of the Revolution, the numbers slain, and the event of the battle; it is pitiful to hear school boys complain of their inability to remember dates; thus filling the young mind with the dates instead of the principles of the Revolution, generally a hatred instead of a reverence for that great event. A School History, sound on the principles of liberty which lay at the root, and culminated in the result of the American Revolution, would be entirely too Anti-slavery to command the market. So the South not only buys our goods, but saps the principles of our youth, and gains command of the next generation. WILLIAM GOODELL owes it to the cause to write and print a ‘Constitution of the United States with questions and answers for the use of school.’
also as highly dangerous; as a weapon which they [would] attempt to use against their subjects, no less than against external enemies. To prevent the weaker members of the community from being preyed upon by innumerable vultures, it was needful that there should be an animal of prey stronger than the rest, commissioned to keep them down. But as the [k]ing of vultures would be no less bent upon preying on the flock, than any of the minor harpies, it was indispensable to be in a perpetual attitude of defense against his beak and claws. The aim[,] therefore, of patriots, was to set limits to the power which the ruler should be suffered to exercise over the community; and this limitation was what they meant by liberty. It was attempted in two ways. First, by obtaining a recognition of certain immunities, called political liberty or rights, which it was to be regarded as a breach of duty in the ruler to infringe, and which if he did infringe[,] specific resistance or general rebellion was held to be justifiable. A second, and generally later expedient, was the establishment of constitutional checks; by which the consent of the community, or [of] a body of some sort, supposed to represent its interests, was made a necessary condition to some of the more important acts of the governing power. To the first of these modes of limitation, the ruling power, in most European countries, was compelled, more or less, to submit. It was not so with the second; and to attain this, or when already in some degree possessed, to attain it more completely became everywhere the principle object of the lovers of liberty. And so long as mankind was content to [combat] one enemy by another, and to be ruled by a master, on condition of being guaranteed more or less efficaciously against his tyranny, they did not carry their aspirations beyond this point.
A time, however, came in the progress of human affairs, when men ceased to think it a necessity of nature that their governors should be an independent power, opposed in interest to themselves. It appeared to them much better that the various magistrates of the State should be their tenants or delegates, revocable at their pleasure. […] By degrees[,] this new demand for elective temporary rulers became the prominent object [of the exertions] of the popular party, wherever any such party existed; and superseded, to a considerable extend, the previous efforts to limit the power of rulers. That (it might seem) was a resource against rulers whose interests were habitually opposed to those of the people. What was now wanted was, that the rulers should be identified with the people; that their interest and will should be the interest and will of the nation. The nation did not need to be protected against its own will. […] Their power was but the nation’s own power, concentrated, [and] in a form convenient for the exercise. This mode of thought, or rather perhaps of feeling, was common among the last generation of European liberalism[…] Those who admit any limit to what a government may do, except in the case of such governments as they think ought not to exist, stand out as brilliant exceptions among the political thinkers of the Continent.’ (Introduction, pp. 9-11.)[19]
…
[1] This conception of ‘subject’ is similar to and may have been informed by that of the autodidact scholar, civil servant, and early English abolitionist Granville Sharp as expressed in his treatise on the liberty and rights of British citizen-subjects derived from natural law and enshrined in the English Constitution. For Sharp, the natural right of freeholders to participate in making the laws that rule them is intermittently intertwined with the authority of a sovereign to rule over their subjects; one depends upon the other. See Granville Sharp, A Declaration of the People’s Natural Right to a Share in the Legislature: Which Is the Fundamental Principle of the British Constitution of State (B. White, 1774), xiv–xx, 2–32. See also the definition of citizenship or ‘civitas’ drawn from Aristotle’s Politics, which McCune Smith quoted below, in William Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (In Internet Archive).
[2] McCune Smith here offered a traditional historical accreditation to Louis VI (often known as Louis le Gros or Louis the Fat) of enfranchising Noyon, St. Quentin, and other ‘communes’ in France by granting them rights of citizens, as affirmed by Sir James Stephen in his lectures on French history published the year Dred Scott was decided. (See James Stephen, Lectures on the History of France, 3rd edn (Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, & Roberts, 1857), 1:173–77. McCune Smith appears not to have been convinced by those who argued that the people of Noyon and other communes enfranchised themselves, with Louis VI only later confirming these actions out of political and military necessity. While Stephen argued against this view, it was promoted by Alexandre Dumas – who McCune Smith greatly admired and often wrote about – in The Progress of Democracy; Illustrated in the History of Gaul and France, trans. Edward S. Gould (J. & H. G. Langly, 1841), 201–4, (Originally published as Gaule et France in 1833). (‘Noyon’ was misspelled ‘Nayon’ in the original printing.)
[3] See David Hume et al., History of England (George Bell, 1854), 1:244–46.
[4] In the Anglo-African Magazine version, ‘latter’ appeared where ‘word den’ appears here in brackets: ‘word den’ appeared in this essay’s later publication in Douglass’ Monthly, as a correction or clarification. It certainly does make the sense in which McCune Smith used the term ‘Welsh radical’ clearer. (See below.)
[5] ‘Welsh radical’ in the linguistic sense, as in the base form of a word (radical) in Welsh. See discuss of Welsh radicals in ‘Welsh Language: The Bardic Letters’, The Cambro-Briton (London) 1 (March 1820): 241–46.
[6] Spelled with a lowercase ‘l’ in the original printing.
[7] Latin for ‘citizen.’ See Robert Ainsworth, Ainsworth’s Latin Dictionary: Reprinted from the Folio Edition of 1752 (Joseph Ogle Robinson, 1830), 65; William Smith, ed., Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, 2nd edn (Boston, 1849), 283 (In Internet Archive).
[8] Often rendered in the Latin script as ‘metechein kriseôs kai arches’; see David C. Mirhady, ‘Aristotle and the Law Courts’, Polis: The Journal for Ancient Greek and Roman Political Thought 23, no. 2 (2006): 5; Melissa Schwartzberg, ‘Aristotle and the Judgment of the Many: Equality, Not Collective Quality’, The Journal of Politics 78, no. 3 (2016): 736.
[9] This is a direct quote from the definition of citizenship or ‘civitas’ drawn from Aristotle’s Politics in Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, 289 (In Internet Archive).
[10] This sentence is nearly an exact quote from William Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. In describing the ‘dominant class’ that ‘gradually overthrew the monarchies of ancient Greece,’ Smith wrote: ‘Of such a class, the chief characteristics were good birth and the hereditary transmission of privileges, the possession of land, and the performance of military service.’ See Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, 289 (In Internet Archive).
[11] At the time Dred Scott was decided, the word ‘citizen’ or ‘citizens’ in the United States Constitution (with all its amendments to that date) appeared, in each instance, in provisions setting rules of eligibility for federal offices; referring to the one’s status in their respective State at the time the Constitution was adopted and/or, afterwards, to one’s status in the nation and/or state, and/or one’s status as a citizen by virtue of birth or naturalization (the rules to be set by Congress); and most often, in relation to the rights, privileges, and immunities of citizens in the States and under the federal government. See Art. 1 §§ 2, 3, and 8; Art. 2 §1; Art. 3 § 2; Art. 4 § 2; and the 11th Amendment in The Constitution of the United States of America, with the Amendments Thereto (House of Representatives, 1857). But, as McCune Smith observed in this essay, a precise definition of citizenship is never provided in the Constitution. So, McCune Smith interprets it in light of the other founding document of the United States: the Declaration of Independence. The definitional gap in the Constitution was filled by the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment on 9 July 1868.
[12] This quote is nearly but not quite verbatim. See the text of the Declaration of Independence in The Past and Present - Freedom National, Slavery Sectional: A Document for the People (Buell & Blanchard, Printers, 1853), 3 (In Internet Archive).
[13] See Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, 289 (In Internet Archive). See also John Gillies, The History of Ancient Greece (Thomas Wardle, 1841), 163.
[14] In his Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, Smith argued – citing Karl Otfried Müller’s History and Antiquities of the Doric Race – that ‘Properly speaking, the helots [of Sparta] cannot be said to have had any political rights; yet being serfs of the soil, they were not absolutely under the control of their masters, and were never sold out of the country even by the state itself. Their condition was not one of hopeless servitude; a legal way was open to them, by which, through many intermediate stages, they might attain to liberty and citizenship. Those who followed their masters to war were deemed worthy of especial confidence; indeed, when they served among the heavy-armed, it seems to have been usual to give them their liberty.’ Yet, Smith noted, most of these former helots were unlikely to have enjoyed the full rights of citizenship; McCune Smith appears, then, to have put his own rosier gloss on Smith’s picture. See Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, 290 (In Internet Archive). The ancient historians Thucydides, Xenophon, and Plutarch – in accounts which McCune Smith also likely read – also described situations in which some helots could and did gain limited freedom from Sparta by military service, purchase, or liberation by others. See Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. William Smith (Thomas Wardle, 1840), 141–42; Xenophon, The Cyropaedia, or, Institution of Cyrus, and the Hellenics, or Grecian History [Hellenica], trans. John S. Watson and Henry Dale (London, H.G. Bohn, 1855), 511; Plutarch, Plutarch’s Lives: Translated from the Greek, vol. 7, trans. M. Dacier (J. Tonson, 1727), 56–57. However, Gillies disagreed with Smith’s, in turn, relatively rosy view of helots’ opportunities for emancipation and citizenship. While Gillies alluded to some very limited and occasional examples, he stressed the tyranny of the Spartans over the helots and the rarity of their opportunities for emancipation, let alone citizenship. See Gillies, History of Ancient Greece, 49, 157, 209, ib.
[15] Spelled with a lowercase ‘l’ in the original printing.
[16] See Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, 291–93 (In Internet Archive).
[17] McCune Smith was deeply impressed by John Stuart Mill’s recently published On Liberty, and again called it ‘remarkable’ when he quoted it in ‘On the Fourteenth Query of Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia’, The Anglo-African Magazine, August 1859, 237 (In Hathi Trust). McCune Smith also quoted Mill’s On Liberty in ‘A Note from Mr. Tilton, and Reply’, The Anglo-African, 3 October 1863 (In Duke University Libraries).
[18] ‘earliest’ in original source is misspelled ‘early’ here. This and other errors in the rest of the quoted section are corrected against Mill’s original text; see citation footnote below. Where phrases or sentences are left out from Mill’s original text without indication, ellipses in brackets are inserted. It’s unknown which errors and omissions were McCune Smith’s, and/or which were the typesetter’s.
[19] See John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 2nd edn (John W. Parker and Son, 1859), 9–11 (In Internet Archive).