It
may then so happen that the cry for help goes up and is answered on a
ground of kindred which in the eye of the physiologist has no existence.
Or it may happen that the kindred is real in a way which neither the
suppliant nor his helper thinks of. But in either case, for the
practical purposes of human life, the plea is a good plea; the kindred
on which it is founded is a real kindred. It is good by the law of
adoption. It is good by the law the force of which we all admit whenever
we count a man as an Englishman whose forefathers, two generations or
twenty generations back, came to our shores as strangers. For all
practical purposes, for all the purposes which guide men's actions,
public or private, the Russian and the Bulgarian, kinsmen so long
parted, perhaps in very truth no natural kinsmen at all, are members of
the same race, bound together by the common sentiment of race. They
belong to the same race, exactly as an Englishman whose forefathers came
into Britain fourteen hundred years back, and an Englishman whose
forefathers came only one or two hundred years back, are alike members
of the same nation, bound together by a tie of common nationality.
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