Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/390

 374 of uch. In which the contitution of France differs from ours; for there, by their jus albinatus, if a child be born of foreign parents, it is an alien.

is an alien born, but who has obtained ex donatione regis letters patent to make him an Englih ubject: a high and incommunicable branch of the royal prerogative. A denizen is in a kind of middle tate between an alien, and natural-born ubject, and partakes of both of them. He may take lands by purchae or devie, which an alien may not; but cannot take by inheritance : for his parent, through whom he mut claim, being an alien had no inheritable blood, and therefore could convey none to the on. And, upon a like defect of hereditary blood, the iue of a denizen, born before denization, cannot inherit to him; but his iue born after, may. A denizen is not excued from paying the alien's duty, and ome other mercantile burthens. And no denizen can be of the privy council, or either houe of parliament, or have any office of trut, civil or military, or be capable of any grant from the crown.

cannot be performed but by act of parliament: for by this an alien is put in exactly the ame tate as if he had been born in the king's ligeance; except only that he is incapable, as well as a denizen, of being a member of the privy council, or parliament, &c. No bill for naturalization can be received in either houe of parliament, without uch diabling claue in it. Neither can any peron be naturalized or retored in blood, unles he hath received the acrament of the Lord's upper within one month before the bringing in of the bill; and unles he alo takes the oaths of allegiance and upremacy in the preence of the parliament. Rh