CITIZEN (Fr. citoyen, Lat. ciris). Aristotle defines a C. to be one to whom belongs the right of taking part both in the deliberative, or legislative, and in the judicial pro ceedings of the community of which he is a member (Politics, iii. 1). A C., therefore, can exist only in a free state. Between a C. and a subject there is this distinction, that whilst the latter merely is governed, the former also governs ;, and thus, though every C. is a subject, ntany subjects are not citizens. In this; which was also the sense attached to the term by the Romans, when used in its highest meaning—that, viz., of the ciris optimo jure—it has passed to the modern world, gradually coming to be so understood everywhere. In the heroic ages of Greece, the idea of citizenship was but imperfectly understood. The members of the council and assembly were were advisers of the kings, who, as god-descended, were regarded as monarchs in the strict sense. But something of the C. character even then attached to the immediate followers of the chief, when regarded in opposition to slaves and strangers; and it was from them that the dominant class sprang, which everywhere overthrew the monarchies, and estab lished the small self-governing states—the democracies, or rather aristocracies, of Greece. At first, the rights of citizenship in Athens and other Greek communities were readily attained by those who were not born to them; but at a later period, when the organiza tion of Greek civic life had reached a high degree of perfection, admission to the roll of citizens was procured with great difficulty. In Sparta, indeed, according to Ilerod otus, so sparing were they of their national privileges, that there were only two instances of their conferring them in their full measure on strangers. The Perimci, or strangers by origin, who shared the Spartan territory, though not on equal terms with the Spartans, were probably, as regarded political rights, pretty much in the same posi tion with the Roman plebeians. In Rome, there were perfect and less perfect citizens, whose respective positions are thus described by Savigny in his History of the Roman Law in the Middle Ages: " In the free republic, there were two classes of Roman citi zens—one that had, and another that had not, a share in the sovereign power. That which peculiarly distinguished the higher class, was the right to vote in a tribe, and the capacity of enjoying magistracy." All the private rights of citizenship (the jus connubii and jus commercit) belonged to the citizens of the lower class, but the public rights of voting in a tribe, and of enjoying the honors of the magistracy (sulfregium et honores), were denied them. Under these two classes, again, there were two others—the Latin',
and the Peregrini.
Roman citizenship was acquired most commonly by birth, but for this, it was requi site that both father and mother should be citizens. If a C. married a Latina, or a Pere grina, even believing her to be a C., the children begotten of the marriage followed the status of the mother. But latterly, it was permitted, by a decree of the senate, to the parents to prove their mistake, and thus to raise both the mother and her children to the rank of citizens. In earlier times, the citizenship could be conferred on a stranger only by means of a iex—i.e., by a vote of the people assembled either in one or other of the COmitia (q.v.). It was conferred at a single sweep on the whole of the Latinii and Socii. In the case of some of the provinces, both in Italy and Gaul, the Latin itas was given as a step to the Ciritas, the former 'being converted into the latter in the case of any one who had exercised a magistracy in his own state or city.
When the imperial power was established, the public rights which formed the chief characteristic of the full Roman citizenship, became little more than empty names; and the only value which thenceforth attached to it consisted in the private rights which it conferred. Such as it was, the constitution of Caracalla extended it to the whole Roman world, the distinctions between Cixes and Peregrini and Latini being preserved only in the case of certain individuals, such as freedmen and their children. Even this distinc tion was abolished by the legislation of Justinian, the only divisions of persons hence forth being into subjects and slaves. A. fuller account of this interesting subject will be found in Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities.
In its modern use, the term C. is applied in Great Britain to a dweller in a town, and this either in the general sense of an inhabitant, or in the narrower and stricter sense of one who enjoys its privileges and franchises. In France, it denotes any one who is born in the country, or naturalized in it ; and in America, it is used in the same sense, but, so long as slavery was an institution there, slaves were not included in the title. In this latter acceptation, it is equivalent to the term in England.