ZATION ; NATURALIZATION.] The rights of aliens, enumerated above, must be understood to apply only to alien friends. Alien enemies, or subjects of a foreign state at war with this country, are in a very different condition, and may be said to possess very few rights here.
As examples of the policy which has at different times been pursued in this country with reference to aliens, the fol lowing historical notices may be interest ing :— Magna Charts stipulates, in the article already cited, for the free access of foreign merchants for the purposes of trade, and its provisions were enforced and extended under the reigns of succeeding princes.
In the eighteenth year of Edward I. the parliament rolls contain a petition from the citizens of London, "that foreign merchants should be expelled from the city, because they get rich, to the im poverishment of the to which the king replies, that " they are beneficial and useful, and he has no intention to expel them." In the reign of Edward III. several beneficial privileges were conferred on aliens for the encouragement of foreign trade.
Under Richard II. and his successor statutes were made imposing various re straints on aliens trading within the realm, and especially prohibiting internal traffic with one another. Similar re 'frictions were introduced in the reign of Richard III., chiefly with a view to ex clude them from retail trade; and in that of Henry VIII. violent insurrections against aliens were followed by repeated statutes, reciting the mischievous con sequences attributed to the influx of foreigners, and laying greater impedi ments in the way of their settlement within the realm. Several acts of this description are still in force, though they have fallen into practical disuse ; but the courts of law have always put on them a construction the most favourable to foreign commerce, agreeably to the opinion of Lord Chief Justice Hale, that " the law of England hath always been very gentle in the construction of the disability, and rather contracting than extending it severely." (Ventris's Reports, vol. i. p.
427.) In the reign of James I. the king was strongly petitioned to adopt exclusive measures against the aliens, who had flocked into the kingdom from the Low Countries; but James, though he ac quiesced to a certain extent in the object of the petitioners, seems by no means to have participated in their feelings of enmity to aliens ; for he professes his intention " to keep a due temperament between the interests of the petitioners and the and he especially commends "their industrious and se dulous courses, whereof he wished his own people would take example." In the reign of Charles II. aliens were invited to settle in this country, and to engage in certain trades, by an offer of the privileges of native subjects. (15 Charles II. c. 15.) This statute was re pealed by 12 & 13 Wm. III. c. 2 ; but there is an =repealed act of 6 Anne, which naturalizes all foreigners who shall serve for two years on board any ship of her majesty's navy or a British merchant ship.
In the early part of the last century (1708) a bill was brought into parliament for the general naturalization of all foreign Protestants upon their taking certain and receiving the sacrament in any Pro testant church, and it passed notwith standing the strenuous opposition of the city of London, who represented that they would sustain loss by being obliged to remit certain dues which aliens were obliged to pay. After remaining in opera Lion for three years, it was repealed on a suggestion of its injurious effects upon the interests of natural-born subjects; but a previous bill for effecting this object was rejected by the Lords. The reasons for and against the measure will be found in the fourth volume of Chandler's Com mons' Debates, p. 119-122. In 1748 and 1751 a measure similar to the act of 1708 was brought forward, and in 1751 it was read a second time, but was dropped in consequence of the death of the Prince of Wales, which disarranged the public business.