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 same in either people, the possibility of a gradual approach to concerted action becomes increasingly striking.  Of all the elements of the civilization that has spread over Europe and America, none is so potential for good as that singular combination of two essential but opposing factors—­of individual freedom with subjection to law—­which finds its most vigorous working in Great Britain and the United States, its only exponents in which an approach to a due balance has been effected.  Like other peoples, we also sway between the two, inclining now to one side, now to the other; but the departure from the normal in either direction is never very great.

There is yet another noteworthy condition common to the two states, which must tend to incline them towards a similar course of action in the future.  Partners, each, in the great commonwealth of nations which share the blessings of European civilization, they alone, though in varying degrees, are so severed geographically from all existing rivals as to be exempt from the burden of great land armies; while at the same time they must depend upon the sea, in chief measure, for that intercourse with other members of the body upon which national well-being depends.  How great an influence upon the history of Great Britain has been exerted by this geographical isolation is sufficiently understood.  In her case the natural tendency has been increased abnormally by the limited territorial extent of the British Islands, which has forced the energies of their inhabitants to seek fields for action outside their own borders; but the figures quoted by Sir George Clarke sufficiently show that the same tendency, arising from the same cause, does exist and is operative in the United States, despite the diversion arising from the immense internal domain not yet fully occupied, and the great body of home consumers which has been secured by the protective system.  The geographical condition, in short, is the same in kind, though differing in degree, and must impel in the same direction.  To other states the land, with its privileges and