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Rh Frenchman or an Englishman, born in either of their colonies, is a natural born subject of the country from which his ancestors migrated.*

The Romans alone made some distinctions on this subject, which did not long continue, and are now merely interesting as a matter of history.

But a stranger who joined a colony, gained only those rights which would have appertained to him in the parent country, and hence if an alien cannot hold lands in the United States, he cannot, without an express legislative dispensation, hold land in any of our territories where the feudal tenures prevail.

There are instances in ancient history of colonies increasing in population and strength so as to send out new colonies to adjacent territories, who still however, partook of the original relation to the parent country, and there also are examples of Greek colonies, when they had become populous and strong, throwing off their subjugation to the states from which they sprung.

With us it is a standing and a sound rule, to erect our colonies into states, and receive them into the Union as soon as they acquire a sufficient population; a subject to which we shall again have occasion to advert.

The discoveries made in America by Europeans, being considered as conferring an exclusive right of occupancy on the sovereign under whose authority they had sailed, various