“This, you will understand,” observes Hawkesbury, “is not a personal but an official interview, Colonel Burr. I might hope to make it more pleasant were it personal. Speaking as one of the crown’s secretaries, I must notify you to quit England.” “What is your authority for this?” asks Aaron. “You will find it in the ‘Alien Act.’ Under that statute, Government is invested with power to order the departure of any alien without assigning cause.” “Precisely! Your Government is now engaged in searching American ships for English sailors. It was, I recall, the basis of bitter complaint in America when I left. In seizing those whom you call English sailors and subjects, you refuse to recognize their naturalization as citizens of America. Do I state the fact?” “Assuredly! No Englishman has a right to shift his allegiance from his king. That is British doctrine. Once a subject, always a subject.” “The very point!” returns Aaron. “Once a subject, always a subject. I suppose you will not deny that I was in 1756 born in New Jersey, then a province of England. I was born a British subject, was I not?” “There is no doubt of that.” “Then, sir, being born a British subject, under your doctrine of ‘Once a subject, always a subject,’ I am still a British subject. Therefore, I am no alien. Therefore, I do not fall within the description of your ‘Alien Act.’ You can hardly order me to quit England as an alien at the very moment when you say I am a British subject. My lord”--this with a smile like a warning--“the story, if told in the papers, would get your lordship laughed at.” Hawkesbury falls back baffled. He keeps his face, however, and tells Aaron the matter may rest until he further considers it. Aaron visits Oxford, and is wined and dined by the grave college heads. He talks Bentham and religion to his hosts, and they fall to amiable disagreement with him. “We then,” he writes in his journal, “got upon American politics and geography, upon which subjects a most profound and learned ignorance was displayed.” Birmingham entertains Aaron; Stratford makes him welcome. He travels to Edinburgh, and is the victim of parties, dinners, balls, sermons, assemblies, plays, lectures, and other Scottish dissipations. The bench and bar cannot get too much of him. Mackenzie, who wrote the “Man of Feeling,” and Walter Scott, who is in the “Marmion” stage of his development, seek his acquaintance. Aaron sees a deal of these lettered ones, and sets down in his diary that: “Mackenzie has twelve children; six of them daughters, all interesting, and two handsome. He is sprightly, amiable, witty. Scott, with less softness, has more animation--talks much and is very agreeable.” Aaron stays a month with his Scotch friends, and returns to London. He resumes the old round of club and drawing-room, with Holland, Melville, Mulgrave, Castlereagh, Canning, Bentham, Cobbett, Godwin, Lamb, Faseli, and others political, philosophical, social, literary, and artistic.