Chapter XIX. One’s Country, and Various Matters Relating to It
The members of a civil society are its citizens. Bound to that society by certain duties and subject to its authority, they share equally in the advantages it offers. Its natives are those who are born in the country of parents who are citizens. As the society can not maintain and perpetuate itself except by the children of its citizens, these children naturally take on the status of their fathers and enter upon all the latter’s rights. The society is presumed to desire this as the necessary means of its self-preservation, and it is justly to be inferred that each citizen, upon entering into the society, reserves to his children the right to be members of it. The country of a father is therefore that of his children, and they become true citizens by their mere tacit consent. We shall see presently whether, when arrived at the age of reason, they may renounce their right and the duty they owe to the society in which they are born. I repeat that in order to belong to a country one must be born there of a father who is a citizen; for if one is born of foreign parents, that land will only be the place of one’s birth, and not one’s country.
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