Political privileges are not necessarily incident to citizenship (above, § 193), but citizenship is important with reference to the protection to which the citizen is entitled while outside of the limits of the United States, and also as to privileges to which he is entitled within the United States under the federal constitution and laws and under the constitutions and laws of the states.

A citizen abroad is not exempt from local jurisdiction in the country where he is sojourning or temporarily residing, but it is the duty of the United States to secure to its citizen abroad the equal protection of the laws of the country where he is sojourning, and in countries which are regarded as not fully civilized, such as Turkey and China, he is accorded the specific privilege of being tried for crimes or of having his civil rights determined by proceedings before officers who represent the United States government. (See above, § 165.)

It is impossible to state fully the privileges and immunities which a citizen of the United States enjoys and is entitled to have protected as distinct on the one hand from mere political privileges, and on the other from those civil rights which are guaranteed to all persons by the federal constitution. It is evident that some such privileges and immunities must be recognized as incident to federal citizenship, for the Fourteenth Amendment, after specifically describing federal and state citizenship, provides that " No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States." These privileges and immunities are, however, different from those pertaining to citizens of a state and which are not to be denied in any other state (see above, § 190). It has been suggested that among the privileges and immunities incident to federal citizenship are the right to participate in foreign and inter-state commerce, to make use of the navigable waters of the United States, to enjoy the postal privileges, to petition the federal government and visit the seat of government, to participate on equal terms in the purchase of public lands, and to sue in the federal courts, if by the provisions of the constitution and laws regulating the jurisdiction of such courts there is a right to bring such suit. (See Ward v. Mary-latid and Slaughter-House Cases.) Indeed it might safely be said that the right of a citizen of the United States to remain within its limits, or to go into a foreign country, or to return to the United States from such country, or to reside in such part of the United States as he may see fit, and to enjoy, without discrimination against him, all the benefits and the protection of the constitution, laws, and treaties of the United States are privileges and immunities which cannot be denied to the citizen either by the federal or state government.

It is doubtful whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment was essential as a guaranty of any of these rights. They would, undoubtedly, have been fully recognized and protected had the amendment never been adopted. The immediate occasion for the adoption of that amendment was the fear that the negroes would not be accorded equal protection with white persons in some of the states, and accordingly citizenship was so defined as to include negroes born within the limits of the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof. But on the other hand it must not be assumed that the Fourteenth Amendment is of no significance otherwise than as applied to colored persons. The provisions of the amendment are general in terms and are of universal application, and they enunciate rules which although they may have been previously recognized were thought to be of so fundamental a character that their definite statement was important.

The first eight amendments to the federal constitution contain general guaranties which were primarily intended as restrictions on the powers of the federal government, but since the adoption of Amendment XIV the question has been raised whether these guaranties, which were not originally intended as limitations on state powers, have not become privileges and immunities of the citizens of the United States which the states cannot abridge. For instance, in Amendment V it is provided that no person shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise infamous crime unless on the presentment or indictment of a grand jury, and in Amendments VI and VII the right to trial by jury in civil and criminal cases is provided for. Now there is no reasonable question but that these provisions as originally adopted related to proceedings in federal courts and not to those in the state courts, and that a state might by proper amendment of its constitution and change of its laws substitute some other form of accusation and indictment in criminal cases and some other form of trial than the trial by jury as generally known in all the states of the Union in which the common law is recognized. Since the adoption of Amendment XIV, which contains the further provision that no state shall "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law," it is clear that some form of accusation as the basis of a trial for crime and some form of trial in a judicial tribunal in either criminal or civil cases must be provided; but it seems to be well settled that it was not intended by the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment to restrict the state as to the matters referred to in the first eight amendments and that those amendments continue to be guaranties as against the exercise of federal power, and not limitations upon the power of the states. (See above, § 22.)