de Vattel: Of Our Native Country, and Several Things That Relate to It

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* NOW - Buy this resource online! Click here * Of Our Native Country, and Several Things That Relate to It§ 211. What is our country.§ 212. Citizens and natives.§ 213. Inhabitants.§ 214. Naturalization.§ 215. Children of citizens born in a foreign country.§ 216. Children born at sea.§ 217. Children born in the armies of the state.§ 218. Settlement.§ 219. Vagrants.§ 220. Whether a person may quit his country.§ 221. How a person may absent himself for a time.§ 222. Variation of the political laws in this respect, These must be obeyed.§ 223. Cases in which a citizen has a right to quit his country.§ 224. Emigrants.§ 225. Sources of their right§226. If the sovereign infringes their right, he injures them.§227. Supplicants.§ 228. Exile and banishment.§ 229. The exile and banished man have a right to live somewhere.§ 230. Nature of this right.§ 231. Duty of nations towards them.§ 232. A nation cannot punish them for faults committed out of its territories.§ 233. Except such as affect the common safety of mankind.
   1. This is the foundation of the tax paid on quitting a country, called, in Latin, census emigrationis.
   2. Charles XII. condemned to death and executed General Patkul, a native of Livonia, whom he had made prisoner in an engagement with the Saxons. But the sentence and execution were a violation of the laws of justice. Patkul, it is true, had been born a subject of the king of Sweden; but he had quitted his native country at the age of twelve years, and having been promoted in the army of Saxony, had, with the permission of his former sovereign sold the property he possessed in Livonia. he had therefore quitted his own country, to choose another (as every free citizen is at liberty to do, except, as we have observed above, at a critical moment, when the circumstances of his country require the aid of all her sons), and the king of Sweden, by permitting him to sell his property, had consented to his emigration.
   3. See above, the chapter on Religion.
   4. The common acceptation of these two terms is not repugnant to our application of them. The French academy says, "Banishment is only applied to condemnations indue course of law. Exile is only an absence caused by some disgrace at court." The reason is plain: such a condemnation from the tribunal of justice entails infamy on the emigrant; whereas a disgrace at court does not usually involve the same consequence.