Dating the translation of Vattel The article says An English language translation of Emerich de Vattel s 1758 treatise The Law of Nations That s OK but it s important for clarifying the argument of those who want to make Vattel the controlling authority on the meaning of natural born citizen that the English language translation of Vattel that appears in the article is from 1797 and that the 1787 First American Edition of Vattel when the Federal Convention met and those before it said something different The natives or indigenes are those born in the country of parents who are citizens There is no mention of natural born citizen One way to deal with this is to simply change the article to say A 1797 English language translation Need this be sourced It s easy enough to tie the translation to 1797 Google Books has the 1797 edition online Sourcing the earlier translation online is a more difficult problem since we re now dealing with rare books