is vote of the Convention declaring him to be a
foreigner the former Committees have imprisoned him. It is therefore
become my official duty to declare to you that the foreigner thus
imprisoned is a citizen of the United States of America as fully, as
legally, as constitutionally as myself, and that he is moreover one of
the principal founders of the American Republic.

I have been informed of a law or decree of the Convention which
subjects foreigners born in any of the countries at war with France
to arrestation and imprisonment. This law when applied to citizens of
America born in England is an infraction of the Treaty of Alliance and
of Amity and Commerce, which knows no distinction of American citizens
on account of the place of their birth, but recognizes all to be
citizens whom the Constitution and laws of America recognize as such.
The circumstances under which America has been peopled requires this
guard on her Treaties, because the mass of her citizens are composed not
of natives only but also of the natives of almost all the countries
of Europe who have sought an asylum there from the persecutions they
experienced in their own countries. After this intimation you will
without doubt see the propriety of modelling that law to the principles
of the Treaty, because the law of Treaty in cases where it applies is
the governing law to both parties alike, and it cannot be infracted
without hazarding the existence of the Treaty.

Of the Patriotism of Thomas Paine I can speak fully, if we agree to give
to patriotism a fixed idea consistent with that of a republic. It would
then signify a strict adherence to Moral Justice, to the equality of
civil and political rights, to the system of representative government,
and an opposition to all hereditary claims to govern. Admitting
patriotism to consist in these principles, I know of no man who has gone
beyond Thomas Paine in promulgating and defending them, and that for
almost twenty years past.

I have now spoken to you on the principal matters concerned in the case
of Thomas Paine. The title of French citizen which you had enforced upon
him, you have since taken away by declaring him to be a foreigner, and
consequently this part of the subject ceases of itself. I have declared
to you that this foreigner is a citizen of the United States of America,
and have assured you of his patriotism.

I cannot help at the same time repeating to you my wish that his
liberation had ta