Note 100 — Chapter V · THE STATE.

Speaking generally, we may say that the terms subject and citizen are synonymous. Subjects and citizens are alike those whose relation to the state is personal and not merely territorial, permanent and not merely temporary. This equivalence, however, is not absolute. For in the first place, the term subject is commonly limited to monarchical forms of government, while the term citizen is more specially applicable in the case of republics. A British subject becomes by naturalisation a citizen of the United States of America or of France. In the second place, the term citizen brings into prominence the rights and privileges of the status, rather than its correlative obligations, while the reverse is the case with the term subject. Finally it is to be noticed that the term subject is capable of a different and wider application, in which it includes all members of the body politic, whether they are citizens (i.e. subjects stricto sensu) or resident aliens. All such persons are subjects, as being subject to the power of the state and to its jurisdiction, and as owing to it, at least temporarily, fidelity and obedience. Thus it has been said that: “Every alien coming into a British colony becomes temporarily a subject of the Crown—bound by, subject to, and entitled to the benefit of the laws which affect all British subjects.” Low v. Routledge, 1 Ch. App. at p. 47. See also Jeffreys v. Boosey, 4 H. L. C. 815. So in Hale’s Pleas of the Crown, I. 542, it is said: “Though the statute speaks of the king’s subjects, it extends to aliens, ... for though they are not the king’s natural born subjects, they are the king’s subjects when in England by a local allegiance.”