The Fairfax family, at one time, owned all that portion of Virginia called the Northern Neck, lying between the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers.
So much for the third Query. I beg leave to add a few remarks suggested by the fifth.
The citizens of the United States are not called subjects of the United States, and for the same reason that your excellent Queen is not called a subject of Great Britain. Native citizens take no oath of citizenship, expressly or impliedly, whatever the latter word may mean. Foreigners, who become naturalised, do not renounce allegiance to the sovereign of Great Britain more "pointedly" than to any other sovereign. Every one renounces his allegiance to the potentate or power under whose sway he was born: the Englishman to the King (or Queen) of Great Britain, the Chinese to the Emperor of China, the Swiss to the republic of Switzerland, and so of others.
W. H. M. says that the existence of the peers of Scotland "is denial of the first proposition in the constitution of" the United States. If W. H. M. will turn to this constitution, he will find that he has confounded the Declaration of Independence with it.
Foreigners, on becoming naturalised, have to renounce their titles of nobility; but I know of nothing to prevent a native American citizen from being called Lord, as well as Mr. or Esq. As above mentioned, a Lord Fairfax was so called twenty-six years after our Independence; and Lord Stirling, who was a Major-General in the American army of the Revolution, was always so styled by his cotemporaries, and addressed by them as "My Lord" and "Your Lordship."
Some farther information upon this subject has been promised to me.
Uneda.
Philadelphia.
If W. H. M. desires particular information concerning the Fairfax family in Virginia, it will give
me pleasure to send him Notes from Sparks' Washington, Virginia, its History and Antiquities, &c.; amongst which is a picture of "Greenway Court Manor House." I now give only an extract from Washington to Sir John Sinclair (Sparks, vol. xii. pp. 327, 328.), which answers in part W. H. M.'s third Query: