Children are not consenting to
their relation; but their relation, without their actual consent, binds
them to its duties,--or rather it implies their consent, because the
presumed consent of every rational creature is in unison with the
predisposed order of things. Men come in that manner into a community
with the social state of their parents, endowed with all the benefits,
loaded with all the duties of their situation. If the social ties and
ligaments, spun out of those physical relations which are the elements
of the commonwealth, in most cases begin, and always continue,
independently of our will, so, without any stipulation on our own part,
are we bound by that relation called our country, which comprehends (as
it has been well said) "all the charities of all."[21] Nor are we left
without powerful instincts to make this duty as dear and grateful to us
as it is awful and coercive. Our country is not a thing of mere physical
locality. It consists, in a great measure, in the ancient order into
which we are born. We may have the same geographical situation, but
another country; as we may have the same country in another soil.
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