Chapter 14
The citizen's standing, rights and duties; public spirit; membership in a political community.
339 passages · 75 principal · Covers the 49 volumes of primary texts
To be a citizen is to stand in a definite relation to a political community: to belong to it by birth or adoption, to hold rights it is bound to respect, and to owe it obedience, service and affection. The idea is a great one for these books because nearly every other political question passes through it. The legitimacy of law, the meaning of liberty, the nature of patriotism and treason, and the claims of a universal humanity against a particular city all become concrete in the person of the citizen. The Harvard Classics trace it from the Athenian prison where Socrates refused to flee, through Roman grants of the franchise and the treaties by which the United States absorbed new peoples, to the arguments of Mill and Lowell about who should vote. One Victorian poet compressed the matter into a single claim: citizens who know their duties and rights, and dare to maintain them, are what make a state1.
The oldest answer to the question of why a man owes his city allegiance is Plato’s. In the *Crito* the laws of Athens remind Socrates that citizens share in the city’s goods and are free to emigrate. Whoever remains has entered an implied contract to obey2. Socrates has lived his whole life in Athens and begotten children there, and so he has tacitly agreed to be governed and may not now break the compact3. The Stoics ground the obligation differently: in nature rather than in agreement. For Marcus Aurelius rational animals naturally form political communities4. What is not good for the swarm is not good for the bee5, and a citizen is harmed only if the state is harmed6,7. An act unrelated to social life tears a man’s life apart, like one who breaks with the assembly8. Happiness lies in acting for one’s fellow-citizens and accepting what the state assigns9. Macaulay sees the same fusion in historical terms: because the Greek citizen’s interests were bound to the state, patriotism became a governing passion10. Luther carries the image of one body into the church, where clergy and laity are equal members differing only in office11.
The Stoic argument does not stop at the walls of the city. Epictetus, following Socrates, would have a man call himself a citizen of the world rather than of Athens or Corinth12. Marcus holds that all men are fellow-citizens13. Particular cities stand to the highest city as households stand to a town14. As Antoninus his city is Rome, but as a man it is the world15. Dante transposes the theme into Christian terms: all souls are citizens of one true city, the heavenly one16, and Beatrice promises him citizenship forever in that Rome of which Christ is a Roman17. Later writers keep the cosmopolitan phrase but change its tone. For Rousseau, great souls regard themselves as citizens of the world18, and Sainte-Beuve finds the same Socratic self-understanding in Montaigne19. Newman speaks of a citizenship of mind among learned foreigners welcomed for their talent20. Adam Smith gives the phrase an economic edge: the landowner is a citizen of his country, but the owner of stock, who can move his capital, is a citizen of the world21.
Against this widening circle, Burke argues that civic affection grows outward from nearer loves. Attachment begins in the family and the neighbourhood and only then reaches the country. No cold relation is a zealous citizen, and nobody loves a square measurement22. Schiller laments that modern citizens are known only in classified, representative form and so receive the laws coldly23. Carlyle adds a diagnosis: patriotism is not preached or analysed while it is vigorous, as it was among the Decii, and it is praised only in its decline24. The question between the Stoic world-city and Burke’s little platoon remains unresolved in these books.
Citizenship is also a legal status, and the texts show how jealously it was guarded. Pericles’ law confined citizenship to those with two Athenian parents. Under it thousands were sold as slaves and the rest confirmed25. Illegitimate and half-blood children were already barred from full standing26. Bithynian law forbade admitting foreigners27. More’s Utopians do not count as citizens those who deny providence and an afterlife28, and Dana records a Catholic territory where non-Catholics could neither hold property nor remain ashore29. Yet the contrary policy of openness also has its champions. Bacon credits Rome’s greatness to her readiness to naturalize strangers, granting them suffrage and office. The stingy Spartans, by contrast, fell30, while Rome’s grants to families, cities and nations made the world spread upon her31. Freeman calls naturalization the state’s counterpart of family adoption, conferring rights otherwise assumed to come by birth32,33. Pliny’s letters show the practice at work under the empire: he petitions Trajan for citizenship for his physician, his freedmen and a centurion’s daughter34,35,36. Cellini, offered French naturalization, must ask what it means and learns it is a high dignity37. Dante, on the other hand, mourns a Florentine blood once pure and now corrupted by incomers from the villages38.
The American documents turn this status into explicit law. The Virginia charter promises settlers the rights of Englishmen born in England39, and the colonists later claim exactly those rights40. The Articles of Confederation and the Constitution secure to citizens of each state the privileges and immunities of citizens in every state41,42. The Constitution fixes years of citizenship as qualifications for office43,44. The Fourteenth Amendment defines citizenship by birth or naturalization45. Successive treaties settle the standing of ceded peoples. The inhabitants of Louisiana and Florida are to be admitted to the rights of citizens46,47. Mexicans must choose their allegiance within a year48. In Alaska uncivilized tribes are excepted49. In 1898 the political status of native inhabitants is left to Congress50.
What can be given can be taken away. Aristophanes’ chorus urges Athens to restore the franchise to the disfranchised and to enrol all who fight bravely for the city51. Socrates is warned that flight would cost his friends their citizenship52. Marcellus has a man of New Comum whipped to mark him a non-citizen53, while Caesar restores the children of Sylla’s victims54. Cicero treats his recall as proof that the Republic could not do without him55. The protective force of status appears most vividly in Acts. Paul protests being beaten uncondemned as a Roman, and the magistrates fear on learning it56. He tells the captain, who bought his citizenship, that he was born to it57, and he appeals to Caesar58. Long notes that Roman citizens among the Christian martyrs were beheaded while others were given to the beasts59. Andrew Johnson, ending the Civil War, declares military rule incompatible with the individual right of the citizen60.
Who shares in governing has been a question from the beginning. Lowell observes that the right has always been restricted by property, nativity, age and sex61. He notes that dropping the property test did not ruin Massachusetts62, though he worries about immigrants unpractised in self-government63. Mill moves in Parliament to enfranchise women householders as equal electors64, and the amendments later forbid denial of the vote on grounds of race and of sex65,66. Emerson rests equal rights on access to reason67. The relation of elector to representative proves just as contested. Burns’s election songs want an independent man of their own, not voters bought and sold like cattle68,69. Burke complains that under the new French order electors and officials are strangers lacking civil connections70. Mill holds that a candidate undertaking public duty should not bear its cost71. Lowell finds voters disciplined into parties, with the ballot serving as a safety-valve72. Direct participation runs from the Homeric assembly73 to Swiss cantons deciding in the open74. Harrison describes burgesses sent to Parliament to consent or dissent to laws75, and Mill reports Tocqueville’s view that practical political activity trains social feeling76. Orders of citizens divide opinion. Rome’s plebeians seceded to win tribunes77. Burke praises ancient legislators for grading citizens into orders with fitting privileges, against modern levelling78. Voltaire admires English citizens distinguished only by their public employments79.
The duties of the citizen begin with obedience. Creon equates the good man with the obedient subject80. Montaigne’s friend was the best citizen, religiously obeying the laws under which he was born81, and Burke, as a citizen bound by his state’s public will, declines to correspond with a foreign government82. Limits appear as well. Rousseau confines obedience to lawful magistrates83. Smith thinks the smuggler might have been an excellent citizen had the law not made his act a crime84. The Fugitive Slave Act commands all good citizens to help enforce it85, a demand that tests the formula of the obedient citizen severely.
Service in arms is the oldest duty after obedience. In Greece and Italy every citizen was a soldier equipped at his own expense86. Machiavelli wants native armies of citizens87,88. Macaulay laments that Italian soldiers were severed from the citizen body, reducing defence to naked traffic89. Burke, however, sees danger in the reverse confusion: tell a soldier he is a citizen with the rights of man and he will claim to elect his officers90. Taxation is a duty too. Every order of citizens must contribute91, and the Swiss declare their wealth on oath and pay faithfully92. Burke insists that civil society’s first faith is pledged to the citizen’s property93. Office is the last of the duties, and its claim is disputed. Penn prefers private life and would compel no one to serve94. Franklin accepts office hoping to do more good95. Mill weighs whether a citizen may refuse his fellows’ call96.
Public spirit goes beyond duty. Aristides serves his country without thought of reward97. Franklin organizes fire companies, paving and subscriptions by persuasion98,99,100. Mill values local institutions for drawing men from private selfishness into joint concerns101. Cicero subordinates even friendship to the republic102, and Bacon condemns the self-love that wastes the public103. Plutarch’s Volumnia notes that her son had preferred his country to mother, wife and children104, and Demosthenes lets private sorrow yield to the commonwealth105. Patriotism finds voice in Burns’s prayer for Scotland106, in Washington’s appeal to the common name of American over local distinctions107, and in Lowell’s definition of it as memory, hope and tradition binding a man to his country108. Its decay is noticed as often. Mentor rebukes a silent people109. Caxton laments Londoners seeking private profit, unlike the Romans110. Machiavelli warns that citizens promise to die for the state in calm times but desert it in troubled ones111. Macaulay mocks the Roman writers who praised sacrifice to a country that, under despots, gave them nothing112.
Loyalty is hardest when the country does the wrong. Cicero holds that Themistocles, though wronged, ought not to have attacked Athens102. Plutarch distinguishes Alcibiades, who returned to save his city, from Coriolanus, who attacked all his countrymen113,114. Aristides, unjustly banished, prays that Athens may never need him115. Schiller’s Rudenz abandons his foreign ties over a corpse and becomes again a Switzer116. Washington warns against citizens devoted to a favourite nation117. Finally there is the question whether the wise man should engage at all. Long reads Marcus as forbidding retirement into solitude118, and Cicero contrasts his love of country with Stoic detachment119. Mill observes that Christian ethics scarcely acknowledges the duty to the state which pagan morality emphasized120. Between the city that claims a man wholly and the wider communities of mankind and of heaven that claim him beyond it, these books leave the reader to decide where the citizen finally belongs.
Introductory essay written by Claude Opus 5.5 from the outline and the notes on every passage below; quotations are checked against this edition.
See also: Religion 13c · Constitution 6b · Liberty 7e
See also: Government 7a
See also: War and Peace 6a
See also: Wealth 13a
See also: Patriotism 4b · War and Peace 2a
See also: Justice 7a
See also: Patriotism, Government, Law, Liberty, War and Peace, Constitution