20 Sept 1803

Evidence

Instructions

Considerations

1. Interests in General

Situations

7. The same assemblage of interests that /A group of interests the same in specie as those which/ on the part of the child are produced by the relation between parent and child will on this same part be produced by the relation subsisting between the child and any of these other kindred who after the decease of the parent or even during his life time may be considered as a sort of substitute, or representative of the parent: the Grand father and Grand mother; the Uncle or Aunt; the elder Brother or Sister; and so on. To each of these relationships is /are/ attached a groupe of interests, and therefore of causes of partiality, the same in specie the same as those which attach on the relationship between Parent and Child varying only in degree. As far as can be judged /conjectured/ of by general rules, the interest will naturally be regarded as less and less strong - the cause of partiality consequently less and less efficient /powerful/, the more remote the relationship, the further off the superior relative /junior relative/ who represents the parent is removed in the line of natural relationship from the person he thus represents. This criterion however, which in the character of a general criterion is as otherwise good than inasmuch as the nature of things does not afford a better, is liable in each particular instance to be rendered incorrect and if blindly adopted fallacious by an endless variety of particular causes. Between the Vice-parent and the Vice-child (if the expression may be allowed) the connection will be stronger after the decease of the parent than during his or her life: why? because the frequency of the occasions which the junior relative may have for the particular services of the senior relative will naturally be rendered more frequent /encreased/ by the removal of him whose protection would otherwise have been the recourse in the first instance /course could naturally have been had in the first instance/. Identity of sex is another circumstance by which justness of any inference deduced from the mere circumstance of proximity /priority/ in the line of relationship would be liable to be disturbed. Age in the instance of both parties but especially in that of the junior relation the child is another. Both parents dead, to the child during infancy the services of a Grand mother of either side may for a time be more immediately useful, whichever be the sex of the child, than those of a Grand parent of the other sex. As the child advances in that career in which the difference between sex and sex grows every day wider services of a Grandparent of his own sex will be more and more valuable in comparison of those of the opposite sex. But by the infinite diversity, of variations of which the inferior circumstances of families is susceptible in respect of occupation, habit of life, and pecuniary wants and pecuniary means, the operation of even these causes of disturbances is susceptible of a vast variety of a disturbance.