The projects advocated by previous
writers embraced: 1, a federate union; 2, a merely naval union or
alliance; or, 3, a defensive alliance of a kind frequent in
political history.]

The words "kinship" and "alliance" express two radically distinct
ideas, and rest, for both the privileges and the obligations involved
in them, upon foundations essentially different. The former represents
a natural relation, the latter one purely conventional,--even though
it may result from the feelings, the mutual interests, and the sense
of incumbent duty attendant upon the other. In its very etymology,
accordingly, is found implied that sense of constraint, of an
artificial bond, that may prove a source, not only of strength, but of
irksomeness as well. Its analogue in our social conditions is the
marriage tie,--the strongest, doubtless, of all bonds when it realizes
in the particular case the supreme affection of which our human nature
is capable; but likewise, as daily experience shows, the most fretting
when, through original mistake or unworthy motive, love fails, and
obligation alone remains.

Personally, I am happy to believe that the gradual but, as I think,
unmistakable growth of mutual kindly feelings between Great Britain
and the United States during these latter years--and of which the
recent articles of Sir George Clarke and Mr. Arthur Silva White in the
"North American Review" are pleasant indications--is a sure evidence
that a common tongue and common descent are making themselves felt,
and are breaking down the barriers of estrangement which have
separated too long men of the same blood. There is seen here the
working of kinship,--a wholly normal result of a common origin, the
natural affection of children of the same descent, who have quarrelled
and have been alienated with the proverbial bitterness of civil
strife, but who all along have realized--or at the least have been
dimly conscious--that such a state of things is wrong and harmful. As
a matter of sentiment only, this reviving affection well might fix the
serious attention of those who watch the growth of world questions,
recognizing how far imagination and sympathy rule the world; but when,
besides the powerful sentimental impulse, it is remembered that
beneath considerable differences of political form there lie a common
inherited political tradition and habit of thought, that the moral
forces which govern and shape political development are the s