“The Earl of Aberdeen to Lord Howard de Walden.
“My Lord: I have received your lordship’s dispatch No. III, of the 25th of May, stating that you had informed the Portuguese minister for foreign affairs that Her Majesty’s government cannot for an instant admit the right claimed by the Portuguese government to consider as Portuguese subjects all persons born in Portugal, notwithstanding that they may be the issue of foreigners residing in that country.
“I think it necessary for your information to put you in possession of the opinion of the Queen’s advocate-general upon several cases which have arisen in foreign countries, and in which the right referred to in your dispatch has been questioned.
“The substance of that opinion is, that although by the statute law of this country all children born out of the allegiance of the King, whose fathers, or grandfathers by the father’s side, were natural-born subjects, are themselves entitled to enjoy British rights and privileges while they are within British territory, yet the effect of British statute law cannot extend so far as to take away from the government of the country in which those persons may have been born, the right to claim them as natural-born subjects, at least so long as they remain in that country.
“By the common law of England, all persons born within the King’s allegiance, whether the children of British subjects or of foreigners, are deemed to be natural-born subjects of the Crown of England; and if the law of any foreign state upon this point be the same as the English law, and if such foreign state places persons born within its territory upon the same footing as its own subjects or citizens, the government of that state has the right to exact the service of a subject from such persons, even if they may have been the children of foreigners, at least whilst such children remain in the country of their birth.
“It may be necessary that I should add that the children or grandchildren by the father’s side, of natural born-British subjects, born in any other country than Portugal, are entitled to be protected by you, in Portugal, as natural-born subjects of the Crown of Great Britain; but the children of British fathers born in Portugal cannot be protected by you against the operation of the laws affecting the subjects of Portugal, unless the laws of that country withhold from the child of a foreigner the rights of a Portuguese subject.”