ALLEGIANCE (ante). It is but recently that foreign governments have come to recognize the right of persons to change their allegiance as well as their residence. The United States always held it to be a natural right, and our legislation so recognizes it. The difference was strikingly manifest in the war of 1812, when the prince regent pro claimed that every native-born Briton taken prisoner while fighting for the Americans should be shot for treason. to which president Madison replied that if any naturalized American of the United States should suffer death in such manner he would execute two British prisoners. There were no executions of the sort which England had threatened.
Very recently the question has been discussed as to the right of a government to subject to military service men who were once its citizens but were afterwards citizens of another country; and late decisions tend to show that most governments are abandoning the old claim, "once a citizen. always a citizen." For instance, Germans naturalized in the United States on returning to Germany were formerly required to enter the army; but now they plead American citizenship, and with success. Allegiance is often transferred en masse, as on the treaty of peace in 1783, when British subjects who should so elect became Americans; also, when Louisiana and Florida were purchased and Texas was annexed; no inquiry was made about allegiance, but the official transfer made the creoles and the Tex ans as completely citizens owing allegiance as though born under the U. S. flag. The law
of congress, July, 1868, very clearly sets forth the extent and obligations of allegiance. The preamble states that the right of expatriation is natural and inherent in all people and indispensable to the enjoyment of rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, recognizing this right, our government has received emigrants from all nations and given them citizenship and protection; that it is necessary for the maintenance of public peace that the claim of foreign allegiance as to such adopted citizens should be promptly and finally disavowed; and therefore it was enacted that any declaration, opinion, order, or decision of any officer of this government which denies, impairs, restricts, or questions the right of expatriation, is inconsistent with the fundamental principles of the govern men t. ; that all naturalized citizens of the United States,while in foreign states, are entitled to, and shall receive from this government, the same protection of person and property that is accorded to native-born citizens in like circumstances. This broad declaration of our rights and duties was followed in May, 1870, by the British parliament in an act revisinn. all British laws on alienage, expatriation, and naturalization—the government for the first time recognizing the right of subjects to renounce allegiance to the crown.