Joseph Story,
Commentaries
on the Constitution volume 3
(1833)
(from http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a2_1_5s2.html)
§ 1472. Considering the nature of the duties,
the extent of the information, and the solid wisdom and experience required in
the executive department, no one can reasonably doubt the propriety of some
qualification of age. That, which has been selected, is the middle age of life,
by which period the character and talents of individuals are generally
known, and fully developed; and opportunities have usually been afforded for
public service, and for experience in the public councils. The faculties of the
mind, if they have not then attained to their highest maturity, are in full vigor,
and hastening towards their ripest state. The judgment, acting upon large
materials, has, by that time, attained a solid cast; and the principles, which
form the character, and the integrity, which gives luster to the virtues of
life, must then, if ever, have acquired public confidence and approbation.
§ 1473. It is indispensable, too, that the
president should be a natural born citizen of the United States; or a citizen at the
adoption of the constitution, and for fourteen years before his election. This
permission of a naturalized citizen to become president is an exception from
the great fundamental policy of all governments, to exclude foreign influence
from their executive councils and duties. It was doubtless introduced (for it
has now become by lapse of time merely nominal, and will soon become wholly
extinct) out of respect to those distinguished revolutionary patriots, who were
born in a foreign land, and yet had entitled themselves to high honors in their
adopted country. A positive exclusion of them from the office would have been
unjust to their merits, and painful to their sensibilities. But the general
propriety of the exclusion of foreigners, in common cases, will scarcely be
doubted by any sound statesman. It cuts off all chances for ambitious foreigners,
who might otherwise be intriguing for the office; and interposes a barrier
against those corrupt interferences of foreign governments in executive
elections, which have inflicted the most serious evils upon the elective
monarchies of Europe. Germany, Poland,
and even the pontificate of Rome,
are sad, but instructive examples of the enduring mischiefs arising from this
source. A residence of fourteen years in the United States is also made an
indispensable requisite for every candidate; so, that the people may have a
full opportunity to know his character and merits, and that he may have mingled
in the duties, and felt the interests, and understood the principles, and
nourished the attachments, belonging to every citizen in a republican
government. By "residence," in the constitution, is to be understood,
not an absolute inhabitancy within the United
States during the whole period; but such an inhabitancy,
as includes a permanent domicile in the United States. No one has supposed,
that a temporary absence abroad on public business, and especially on an
embassy to a foreign nation, would interrupt the residence of a citizen, so as
to disqualify him for office. If the word were to be construed with such
strictness, then a mere journey through any foreign adjacent territory for
health, or for pleasure, or a commorancy there for a single day, would amount
to a disqualification. Under such a construction a military or civil officer,
who should have been in Canada
during the late war on public business, would have lost his eligibility. The
true sense of residence in the constitution is fixed domicile, or being out of
the United States, and settled abroad for the purpose of general inhabitancy, animo
manendi, and not for a mere temporary and fugitive purpose, in transitu.