3. The common body of citizens of the United States, that is to say, the citizens of each State and Territory, as “entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.” These privileges and immunities have always been construed to mean such rights and privileges as are in their nature fundamental, such as belong of right to the citizens of all free governments, such as at all times have been enjoyed by the citizens of the several States from the time of their becoming free, sovereign, and independent. Recognizing the distinction between the inhabitants of a State and its citizens, Mr. Caleb Cushing defines the latter as the “sovereign, constituent ingredients of the government.” To the same effect speaks Mr. Chief-Justice Waite in the United States vs. Cruikshank: “Citizens are members of the political community to which they belong. They are the people who compose the community, and who in their associated capacity have established or submitted themselves to the dominion of a government for the promotion of their general welfare, and the protection of their individual as well as their collective rights.” The political community in a State differs from the civil community; it is less numerically, but it comprehends special privileges. Membership therein implies the possession, not only of the civil rights, but of the privilege of participating in the sovereignty. Whereas membership in the civil community alone implies merely the possession of the civil rights,--_i.e._, the rights of personal security, of personal liberty, and of private property.[59] Under the Articles of Confederation, the States constituting only a league, citizenship of the so-united States was a thing inconceivable; accordingly the only citizenship then possible, as a legal fact, was citizenship of the State. National citizenship was introduced for the first time by the Constitution of 1787. Still that constitution contained no definition of citizenship of the United States. Under the provision that “the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States,” a person going from one commonwealth into another, acquired no other status than that held by the race or class to which he belonged in the commonwealth into which he went. The only sense in which a citizenship of the United States existed was in the provisions where it appears as a qualification for office. The phrase “citizen of the United States” is employed three times, as to eligibility for the several positions of President, Senator, and Representative in Congress. From the adoption of the constitution to the time of the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment thereto, the existence of such a thing as citizenship of the United States, in the sense of a citizenship independent of the citizenship of the several States, was hardly admitted. Then citizenship of the United States was