Nobility, titles of
In the new naturalization bill was a clause prohibiting the use of a title of nobility by an alien after he should become a citizen of the
United States.
This provision was first suggested by
Giles, of
Virginia.
The New
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England Federalists ridiculed it, and it became a subject of warm debate in Congress.
They argued that a title was harmless, and that to refuse it might seem churlish, especially to require its renunciation by an unhappy exile.
“The very judge,” they said, “who administered the oath or pledge to such a naturalized citizen might the next moment address him as ‘marquis,’ ‘count,’ or ‘my lord,’ and who could prevent it? . . . Why not require him to renounce his connection with the Jacobin Club, if he should be a member of it?”
asked a
New England member.
“Why not require him to renounce the pope?”
Priestcraft, he thought, was quite as dangerous as aristocracy.
Giles, who had called for the yeas and nays, placed these New-Englanders in the dilemma that they must vote for his proposition or be numbered among the friends of
aristocracy (q. v.), then a very unpopular position.
To force
Giles to abandon his call for the yeas and nays,
Dexter, of
Massachusetts, moved as an additional amendment that in case the applicant for citizenship were a slaveholder, he should renounce, along with his titles of nobility, all his claim, right, and title as an owner of slaves.
This motion produced an intense excitement among the
Southern members.
It was declared to be an indirect attack upon the
Constitution and those who held slaves.
Another said it would wound the feelings and alienate the affections of six or eight States of the
Union.
The motion had its intended effect.
Giles, who saw the awkwardness of voting against titles of nobility and in favor of slave-holding in the same breath, professed his readiness to give up the yeas and nays.
Holding slaves to be as sacred property as any other, he would never consent to prohibit immigrants from holding slaves.
Titles of nobility were but names, and nobody was obliged to give them up unless he wished to become an American citizen.
It was argued by
Lee, of
Virginia, that, as the cause of the obnoxious provision was the fear of harboring among us a class who, because of the nature of their education, their habits of assumed superiority, the servile court they had uniformly received, could not make good citizens of a free republic, the same reasoning applied to the existing relations of superiority and servility between master and slave would prove the
Southern slave-holder to be unfit for an American citizen—a relation really more objectionable than that of lord and vassal.
The vote in favor of the renunciation of the use of titles was carried, 58 to 32.
