understand they mock
at. But the fact exists and does its work in spite of them. And it does
its work none the less because in some cases the feeling of sympathy is
awakened by a claim of kindred, where, in the sense of the physiologist
or the genealogist, there is no kindred at all. The practical view,
historical or political, will accept as members of this or that race or
nation many members whom the physiologist would shut out, whom the
English lawyer would shut out, but whom the Roman lawyer would gladly
welcome to every privilege of the stock on which they were grafted. The
line of the Scipios, of the Caesars, and of the Antonines, was continued
by adoption; and for all practical purposes the nations of the earth
have agreed to follow the examples set them by their masters.

WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE.

BORN 1809.

KIN BEYOND SEA[7]

BY WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE.

"When Love unites, wide space divides in vain,
And hands may clasp across the spreading main."

It is now nearly half a century since the works of De Tocqueville and De
Beaumont, founded upon personal observation, brought the institutions of
the United States effectually within the circle of European thought and
interest. They were co-operators, but not upon an equal scale. De
Beaumont belongs to the class of ordinary, though able, writers: De
Tocqueville was the Burke of his age, and his treatise upon America may
well be regarded as among the best books hitherto produced for the
political student of all times and countries.

But higher and deeper than the concern of the Old World at large in the
thirteen colonies, now grown into thirty-eight States, besides eight
Territories, is the special interest of England in their condition and
prospects.

I do not speak of political controversies between them and us, which are
happily, as I trust, at an end. I do not speak of the vast contribution
which, from year to year, through the operations of a colossal trade,
each makes to the wealth and comfort of the other; nor of the friendly
controversy, which in its own place it might be well to raise, between
the leanings of America to Protectionism, and the more daring reliance
of the old country upon free and unrestricted intercourse with all the
world. Nor of the menace which, in the prospective development of her
resources, America offers to the commercial pre-eminence of England.[8]
On this subject I will only say that it is she alone who,