“Around the Englishman are others, born of the same race, speaking the same language, living under the same laws, fed from the same soil; In fact, satisfying almost all of the conditions under which a family exists together in its home. Sprung from different parents, localized in different neighborhoods, there is yet one common parent of all these, and one unvarying home. Our country is our general Mother, and her bounds our natural home.
Within those limits, we are like brothers and sisters of a family, not strangers, but native: not guests but members.
Whatever is there, is, in place and degree, for us; for the body of which we are parts, and for us, inasmuch as we are bound up with the body …
As regards the rest of the world, the nation is as one: as regards one another, national greatness, national advantages, national success and failure are common to all its citizens. In all these particular does the mind, true to its original training, recognize and embrace as a great home, the common country of the whole race of which the individual forms a part.
A man finds himself bound to his fellow-countrymen by a common language, which has grown up amidst events, and bears trace of changes, whose effects are still acting on the great brotherhood of the nation.
The history of their country is the history of all.”
Henry Alford – 1810-1871
Anglican Dean Of Canterbury Cathedral
The Nation An Extension of Family
Lectures on the 5th Commandment
