CONSANGUINITY, or KIN, is the relation subsisting between persons who are of the same blood, or, in other terms, who are descended from the same stock or common ancestor. There can be no legal consanguinity without a legal mar riage. [BAsTsain.] Consanguinity is either lineal or collateral. Lineal con sanguinity subsists between persons who are related to each other in the direct ascending line, as from son to father, grandfather, great-grandfather, &c. ; or in the descending line from great-grand father to grandfather, father, and son. Collateral kindred are those who, though they have the same blood, derived from a common ancestor, and are therefore con sanguinei, do not descend one from the other. Thus brothers have the same blood and are descended from a common ancestor, but they are related to each other collaterally, and the children and descendants of each of them are all col lateral kinsmen to each other. The Canon Law and the Roman Law have different methods of computing the de grees of collateral consanguinity. Ac cording to the Canon Law, which has been followed by the law of England, we begin at the common ancestor and reckon downwards to the persons whose degree of consanguinity we desire to ascertain, counting each generation as a degree : and the degree of consanguinity in which they stand to each other is the degree in which they stand to their common an cestor, if they are removed from the common ancestor by 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. Thus (to use the example given by Sir William Black stone), Titius and his brother are related in the first degree ; for from the father to each of them is counted only one ; but Titius and his nephew are related in the second degree, for the nephew is two degrees removed from the common ancestor, namely, his own grandfather, the father of Titius On the other hand, in this supposed case, the Romans place Titius and his nephew in the third degree of consanguinity, for they count all the degrees from one given person upwards 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. Thus they would count from Titius's nephew to his grandfather two degrees, and one more from the grandfather to Titius. By
the law of England, all persons related to each other by consanguinity or affinity, nearer than the fourth degree of the Ro man law, are prohibited from marrying, excepting in the ascending or descending line (in which the case is hardly possible by the course of nature); and by statute 5 & 6 Will. IV. c. 54, sec. 2, it is enacted, "that all marriages celebrated after the data of that act between persons within the prohibited degrees of affinity or con sanguinity, shall be absolutely null and void to all intents and purposes whatso ever." [AFFINITY.] Under the statute of distributions, 22 & 23 Car. II. c. 10, in making the distribution of an intes tate's personal estate among the next of kin, the computation of degrees of kin dred is according to the Roman law, which has probably been adopted in this case, because the other provisions of the statute are mainly taken from the Roman law. In England real estate descends to the next heir, and the descent is regulated by the general doctrine of consanguinity of the Common Law and the statute of 3 & 4 Will. IV. e. 106. (Novell., 118 ; Blackstone's Essay on collateral Con sanguinity, and Blackstone's Commenta ries, vol. ii. p. 202.) The question of consanguinity is the question of relationship between two given persons, as explained above. If one of these persons is called al all hia lineal ancestors will be found in (a) ire the ascending line above him, and all his lineal descendants in the descending line below him. His collateral relations will be found in the parallel lines (b), (c), (d), &c. The Roman numerals denote the respective degrees of consanguinity in the Canon, and the Arabic those in the Roman Law. Thus, HI. in the ascending line is A's great grandfather, and III. in the descending line his great grandson. In the ascending and descending lines the computation of the Roman and canon laws, as already explained, is the same : in both laws the great grandfather and great grandson are respectively in the third degree from A. No. III. in line (b) is A's great uncle, who, according to the mode of reckoning already explained, is in the third degree of consanguinity to A by the canon law ; and in the fourth, as denoted by the Arabic numeral 4, placed under III., by the civil or Roman law.