CONSANGUINITY is the term applied to relationship by blood, as distinguished from AFFINITY, or relationship by marriage. Marriage is essential, however, to legal consanguinity, for without marriage no legal can be created, as in the case of a bastard. But marriage would not be essential if considering the subject from the point of view of the legal capacity of parties to a marriage—for a bastard can come within the pro hibited degrees equally with a person born in lawful wedlock ; or from that of the criminal and divorce law—for bastardy does not in itself prevent incest. In addition to the question of legal capacity for marriage, con sanguinity is an essential element in the determination of questions of descent, or succession to real property. Persons between whom there sub sists the relationship of consanguinity arc also known as kin or kindred, and they may be of two kinds—lineal or collateral. Lineal kindred exists where the relationship i3 in a direct descending or ascending line, as that between grandfather, father, son, grandson ; and collateral, where it subsists only through the medium of a common ancestor, as in the case of first cousins who have a mutual grandfather.
The degrees of collateral consanguinity are computed according to the rules of the Canon Law, those of affinity according to the Roman Law. According to the Canon Law the reckoning begins at the common ancestor and is carried downwards to the person whose degree of consanguinity it is desired to ascertain, counting each generation as a degree. The degree
of consanguinity in which each of the parties stand to one another is the degree in which they stand to the common ancestor, if they are removed from the common ancestor fay the same number of degrees ; if they are not, their degree is that in which the more remote of them stands to the common ancestor. Two brothers would according to this be related in the first degree, for only one can be counted from the father of each of them. Uncle andttnephew would be related in the second degree, for the nephew is two degrees removed from the common his own grandfather.
In the above cases, if the computation were one to ascertain degrees of affinity, for the purpose of discovering the next-of-kin am9ngst whom an intestate's personal estate is to be distributed, it would be made according to the Roman Law, and the results would be different. Thus, the uncle and his nephew would be placed in the third degree of consanguinity, for by the Roman Law all degrees are counted upwards from one given person to the common ancestor, and downwards from that common ancestor to the person whose degree of relationship to the first person it is the object to establish. By this calculation the nephew is two degrees to his grandfather, and one more front his grandfather to his uncle.