the working of an artificial law, are still real and living things,
groups in which the idea of kindred is the idea around which every thing
has grown, how are we to define our races and our nations? How are we to
mark them off one from the other? Bearing in mind the cautions and
qualifications which have been already given, bearing in mind large
classes of exceptions which will presently be spoken of, I say
unhesitatingly that for practical purposes there is one test, and one
only, and that that test is language. It is hardly needful to show that
races and nations cannot be defined by the merely political arrangements
which group men under various governments. For some purposes of ordinary
language, for some purposes of ordinary politics, we are tempted,
sometimes driven, to take this standard. And in some parts of the
world, in our own Western Europe for instance, nations and governments
do, in a rough way, fairly answer to one another. And, in any case,
political divisions are not without their influence on the formation of
national divisions, while national divisions ought to have the greatest
influence on political divisions. That is to say, _primâ facie_ a nation
and government should coincide. I say only _primâ facie_; for this is
assuredly no inflexible rule; there are often good reasons why it should
be otherwise; only, whenever it is otherwise, there should be some good
reason forthcoming. It might even be true that in no case did a
government and a nation exactly coincide, and yet it would none the less
be the rule that a government and a nation should coincide. That is to
say, so far as a nation and a government coincide, we accept it as the
natural state of things, and ask no question as to the cause. So far as
they do not coincide, we mark the case as exceptional, by asking what is
the cause. And by saying that a government and a nation should coincide
we mean that, as far as possible, the boundaries of governments should
be so laid out as to agree with the boundaries of nations. That is, we
assume the nation as something already existing, something primary, to
which the secondary arrangements of government should, as far as
possible, conform. How then do we define the nation, which is, if there
is no especial reason to the contrary, to fix the limits of a
government? Primarily, I say, as a rule, but a rule subject to
exceptions,--as a _primâ facie_ standard, subject to special reasons to
the contrary,--we define the nation by language. We may at least apply
the test negatively. It would be unsafe to rule that all speakers of the
same language must have a common nationality; but we may safely say that
where there is not community of language, there is no common nationality
in the highest sense. It is true that without community of language
there may be an artificial nationality, a nationality which may be good
for all political purposes, and which may engender a common national
feeling. Still this is not quite the same thing as that fuller national
unity which is felt where there is community of language. In fact
mankind instinctively takes language as the badge of nationality. We so
far take it as the badge, that we instinctively assume community of
language as a nation as the rule, and we set down any thing that departs
from that rule as an exception. The first idea suggested by the word
Frenchman or German or any other national name, is that he is a man who
speaks French or German as his mother-tongue. We take for granted, in
the absence of any thing to make us think otherwise, that a Frenchman is
a speaker of French and that a speaker of French is a Frenchman. Where
in any case it is otherwise, we mark that case as an exception, and we
ask the special cause. Again, the rule is none the less the rule, nor
the exceptions the exceptions, because the exceptions may easily
outnumber the instances which conform to the rule. The rule is still the
rule, because we take the instances which conform to it as a matter of
course, while in every case which does not conform to it we ask for the
explanation. All the larger countries of Europe provide us with
exceptions; but we treat them all as exceptions. We do not ask why a
native of France speaks French. But when a native of France speaks as
his mother-tongue some other tongue than French, when French, or
something which popularly passes for French, is spoken as his
mother-tongue by some one who is not a native of France, we at once ask
the reason. And the reason will be found in each case in some special
historical cause which withdraws that case from the operation of the
general law. A very good reason can be given why French, or something
which popularly passes for French, is spoken in parts of Belgium and
Switzerland whose inhabitants are certainly not Frenchmen. But the
reason has to be given, and it may fairly be asked.
In the like sort, if we turn to our own country, whenever within the
bounds of Great Britain we find any tongue spoken other than English, we
at once ask the reason and we learn the special historic cause. In a
part of France and a part of Great Britain we find tongues spoken which
differ alike from English and from French, but which are strongly akin
to one another. We find that these are the survivals of a group of
tongues once common to Gaul and Britain, but which the settlement of
other nations, the introduction and the growth of other tongues, have
brought down to the level of survivals. So again we find islands which
both speech and geographical position seem to mark as French, but which
are dependencies, and loyal dependencies, of the English crown. We soon
learn the cause of the phenomenon which seems so strange. Those islands
are the remains of a state and a people which adopted the French tongue,
but which, while it remained one, did not become a part of the French
state. That people brought England by force of arms under the rule of
their own sovereigns. The greater part of that people were afterward
conquered by France, and gradually became French in feeling as well as
in language. But a remnant clave to their connection with the land which
their forefathers had conquered, and that remnant, while keeping the
French tongue, never became French in feeling. This last case, that of
the Norman islands, is a specially instructive one. Normandy and England
were politically connected, while language and geography pointed rather
to a union between Normandy and France. In the case of continental
Normandy, where the geographical tie was strongest, language and
geography together could carry the day, and the continental Norman
became a Frenchman. In the islands, where the geographical tie was less
strong, political traditions and manifest interest carried the day
against language and a weaker geographical tie. The insular Norman did
not become a Frenchman. But neither did he become an Englishman. He
alone remained Norman, keeping his own tongue and his own laws, but
attached to the English crown by a tie at once of tradition and of
advantage. Between states of the relative size of England and the Norman
islands, the relation naturally becomes a relation of dependence on the
part of the smaller members of the union. But it is well to remember
that our forefathers never conquered the forefathers of the men of the
Norman islands, but that their forefathers did once conquer ours.
These instances, and countless others, bear out the position that, while
community of language is the most obvious sign of common nationality,
while it is the main element, or something more than an element, in the
formation of nationality, the rule is open to exceptions of all kinds,
and that the influence of language is at all times liable to be
overruled by other influences. But all the exceptions confirm the rule,
because we specially remark those cases which contradict the rule, and
we do not specially remark those cases which do not conform to it.
In the cases which we have just spoken of, the growth of the nation as
marked out by language, and the growth of the exceptions to the rule of
language, have both come through the gradual, unconscious working of
historical causes. Union under the same government, or separation under
separate governments, have been among the foremost of those historical
causes. The French nation consists of the people of all that extent of
continuous territory which has been brought under the rule of the French
kings. But the working of the cause has been gradual and unconscious.
There was no moment when any one deliberately proposed to form a French
nation by joining together all the separate duchies and counties which
spoke the French tongue. Since the French nation has been formed, men
have proposed to annex this or that land on the ground that its people
spoke the French tongue, or perhaps only some tongue akin to the French
tongue. But the formation of the French nation itself was the work of
historical causes, the work doubtless of a settled policy acting through
many generations, but not the work of any conscious theory about races
and languages. It is a special mark of our time, a special mark of the
influence which doctrines about race and language have had on men's
minds, that we have seen great nations united by processes in which
theories of race and language really have had much to do with bringing
about their union. If statesmen have not been themselves moved by such
theories, they have at least found that it suited their purpose to make
use of such theories as a means of working on the minds of others. In
the reunion of the severed German and Italian nations, the conscious
feeling of nationality, and the acceptance of a common language as the
outward badge of nationality, had no small share. Poets sang of language
as the badge of national union; statesmen made it the badge, so far as
political considerations did not lead them to do anything else. The
revived kingdom of Italy is very far from taking in all the speakers of
the Italian tongue. Lugano, Trent, Aquileia--to take places which are
clearly Italian, and not to bring in places of more doubtful
nationality, like the cities of Istria and Dalmatia--form no part of the
Italian political body, and Corsica is not under the same rule as the
other two great neighboring islands. But the fact that all these places
do not belong to the Italian body at once suggests the twofold question,
why they do not belong to it, and whether they ought not to belong to
it. History easily answers the first question; it may perhaps also
answer the second question in a way which will say Yes as regards one
place and No as regards another. Ticino must not lose her higher
freedom; Trieste must remain the needful mouth for southern Germany;
Dalmatia must not be cut off from the Slavonic mainland; Corsica would
seem to have sacrificed national feeling to personal hero-worship. But
it is certainly hard to see why Trent and Aquileia should be kept apart
from the Italian body. On the other hand, the revived Italian kingdom
contains very little which is not Italian in speech. It is perhaps by a
somewhat elastic view of language that the dialect of Piedmont and the
dialect of Sicily are classed under one head; still, as a matter of
fact, they have a single classical standard, and they are universally
accepted as varieties of the same tongue. But it is only in a few Alpine
valleys that languages are spoken which, whether Romance or Teutonic,
are in any case not Italian. The reunion of Italy, in short, took in all
that was Italian, save when some political cause hindered the rule of
language from being followed. Of any thing not Italian by speech so
little has been taken in that the non-Italian parts of Italy,
Burgundian Aosta and the Seven German Communes--if these last still keep
their Teutonic language,--fall under the rule that there are some things
too small for laws to pay heed to.
But it must not be forgotten that all this simply means that in the
lands of which we have just been speaking the process of adoption has
been carried out on the largest scale. Nations, with languages as their
rough practical test, have been formed; but they have been formed with
very little regard to physical purity of blood. In short, throughout
Western Europe assimilation has been the rule. That is to say, in any of
the great divisions of Western Europe, though the land may have been
settled and conquered over and over again, yet the mass of the people of
the land have been drawn to some one national type. Either some one
among the races inhabiting the land has taught the others to put on its
likeness, or else a new national type has arisen which has elements
drawn from several of those races. Thus the modern Frenchman may be
defined as produced by the union of blood which is mainly Celtic with a
speech which is mainly Latin, and with an historical polity which is
mainly Teutonic. That is, he is neither Gaul, Roman, nor Frank, but a
fourth type which has drawn important elements from all three. Within
modern France this new national type has so far assimilated all others
as to make every thing else merely exceptional. The Fleming of one
corner, the Basque of another, even the far more important Breton of a
third corner, have all in this way become mere exceptions to the general
type of the country. If we pass into our own islands, we shall find that
the same process has been at work. If we look to Great Britain only, we
shall find that, though the means have not been the same, yet the end
has been gained hardly less thoroughly than in France. For all real
political purposes, for every thing which concerns a nation in the face
of other nations, Great Britain is as thoroughly united as France is.
Englishmen, Scotchmen, Welshmen, feel themselves one people in the
general affairs of the world. A secession of Scotland or Wales is as
unlikely as a secession of Normandy or Languedoc. The part of the island
which is not thoroughly assimilated in language, that part which still
speaks Welsh or Gaelic, is larger in proportion than the non-French part
of modern France. But however much either the northern or the western
Briton may, in a fit of antiquarian politics, declaim against the Saxon,
for all practical political purposes he and the Saxon are one. The
distinction between the southern and the northern English--for the men
of Lothian and Fife must allow me to call them by this last name--is,
speaking politically and without ethnological or linguistic precision,
much as if France and Aquitaine had been two kingdoms united on equal
terms, instead of Aquitaine being merged in France. When we cross into
Ireland, we indeed find another state of things, and one which comes
nearer to some of the phenomena which we shall come to in other parts of
the world. Ireland is, most unhappily, not so firmly united to Great
Britain as the different parts of Great Britain are to one another.
Still even here the division arises quite as much from geographical and
historical causes as from distinctions of race strictly so called. If
Ireland had had no wrongs, still two great islands can never be so
thoroughly united as a continuous territory can be. On the other hand,
in point of language, the discontented part of the United Kingdom is
much less strongly marked off than that fraction of the contented part
which is not thoroughly assimilated. Irish is certainly not the
language of Ireland in at all the same degree in which Welsh is the
language of Wales. The Saxon has commonly to be denounced in the Saxon
tongue.
In some other parts of Western Europe, as in the Spanish and
Scandinavian peninsulas, the coincidence of language and nationality is
stronger than it is in France, Britain, or even Italy. No one speaks
Spanish except in Spain or in the colonies of Spain. And within Spain
the proportion of those who do not speak Spanish, namely the Basque
remnant, is smaller than the non-assimilated element in Britain and
France. Here two things are to be marked: First, the modern Spanish
nation has been formed, like the French, by a great process of
assimilation; secondly, the actual national arrangements of the Spanish
peninsula are wholly due to historical causes, we might almost say
historical accidents, and those of very recent date. Spain and Portugal
are separate kingdoms, and we look on their inhabitants as forming
separate nations. But this is simply because a Queen of Castile in the
fifteenth century married a King of Aragon. Had Isabel married a King of
Portugal, we should now talk of Spain and Aragon as we now talk of
Spain and Portugal, and we should count Portugal for part of Spain. In
language, in history, in every thing else, Aragon was really more
distinct from Castile than Portugal was. The King of Castile was already
spoken of as King of Spain, and Portugal would have merged in the
Spanish kingdom at last as easily as Aragon did. In Scandinavia, on the
other hand, there must have been less assimilation than anywhere else.
In the present kingdoms of Norway and Sweden, there must be a nearer
approach to actual purity of blood than in any other part of Europe. One
cannot fancy that much Finnish blood has been assimilated, and there
have been no conquests or settlements later than that of the Northmen
themselves.
When we pass into Central Europe we shall find a somewhat different
state of things. The distinctions of race seem to be more lasting. While
the national unity of the German Empire is greater than that of either
France or Great Britain, it has not only subjects of other languages,
but actually discontented subjects, in three corners, on its French, its
Danish, and its Polish frontiers. We ask the reason, and it will be at
once answered that the discontent of all three is the result of recent
conquest, in two cases of very recent conquest indeed. But this is one
of the very points to be marked; the strong national unity of the German
Empire has been largely the result of assimilation; and these three
parts, where recent conquest has not yet been followed by assimilation,
are chiefly important because, in all three cases, the discontented
territory is geographically continuous with a territory of its own
speech outside the Empire. This does not prove that assimilation can
never take place; but it will undoubtedly make the process longer and
harder.
So again, wherever German-speaking people dwell outside the bounds of
the revived German state, as well as when that revived German state
contains other than German-speaking people, we ask the reason and we can
find it. Political reasons forbade the immediate annexation of Austria,
Tyrol, and Salzburg. Combined political and geographical reasons, and,
if we look a little deeper, ethnological reasons too, forbade the
annexation of Courland, Livonia, and Esthonia. Some reason or other
will, it may be hoped, always be found to hinder the annexation of
lands which, like Zürich and Bern, have reached a higher political
level. Outlying brethren in Transsilvania or at Saratof again come under
the rule "De minimis non curat lex." In all these cases the rule that
nationality and language should go together, yields to unavoidable
circumstances. But, on the other hand, where French or Danish or
Slavonic or Lithuanian is spoken within the bounds of the new Empire,
the principle that language is the badge of nationality, that without
community of language nationality is imperfect, shows itself in another
shape. One main object of modern policy is to bring these exceptional
districts under the general rule by spreading the German language in
them. Everywhere, in short, wherever a power is supposed to be founded
on nationality, the common feeling of mankind instinctively takes
language as the test of nationality. We assume language as the test of a
nation, without going into any minute questions as to the physical
purity of blood in that nation. A continuous territory, living under the
same government and speaking the same tongue, forms a nation for all
practical purposes. If some of its inhabitants do not belong to the
original stock by blood, they at least belong to it by adoption.
The question may now fairly be asked, What is the case in those parts of
the world where people who are confessedly of different races and
languages inhabit a continuous territory and live under the same
government? How do we define nationality in such cases as these? The
answer will be very different in different cases, according to the means
by which the different national elements in such a territory have been
brought together. They may form what I have already called an artificial
nation, united by an act of its own free will. Or it may be simply a
case where distinct nations, distinct in every thing which can be looked
on as forming a nation, except the possession of an independent
government, are brought together, by whatever causes, under a common
ruler. The former case is very distinctly an exception which proves the
rule, and the latter is, though in quite another way, an exception which
proves the rule also. Both cases may need somewhat more in the way of
definition. We will begin with the first, the case of a nation which has
been formed out of elements which differ in language, but which still
have been brought together so as to form an artificial nation. In the
growth of the chief nations of Western Europe, the principle which was
consciously or unconsciously followed has been that the nation should be
marked out by language, and the use of any tongue other than the
dominant tongue of the nation should be at least exceptional. But there
is one nation in Europe, one which has a full right to be called a
nation in a political sense, which has been formed on the directly
opposite principle. The Swiss Confederation has been formed by the union
of certain detached fragments of the German, Italian, and Burgundian
nations. It may indeed be said that the process has been in some sort a
process of adoption, that the Italian and Burgundian elements have been
incorporated into an already existing German body; that, as those
elements were once subjects or dependents or protected allies, the case
is one of clients or freedmen who have been admitted to the full
privileges of the _gens_. This is undoubtedly true, and it is equally
true of a large part of the German element itself. Throughout the
Confederation, allies and subjects have been raised to the rank of
confederates. But the former position of the component elements does not
matter for our purpose. As a matter of fact, the foreign dependencies
have all been admitted into the Confederation on equal terms. German is
undoubtedly the language of a great majority of the Confederation; but
the two recognized Romance languages are each the speech, not of a mere
fragment or survival, like Welsh in Britain or Breton in France, but of
a large minority forming a visible element in the general body. The
three languages are all of them alike recognized as national languages,
though, as if to keep up the universal rule that there should be some
exceptions to all rules, a fourth language still lives on within the
bounds of the Confederation, which is not admitted to the rights of the
other three, but is left in the state of a fragment or a survival.[4] Is
such an artificial body as this to be called a nation? It is plainly not
a nation by blood or by speech. It can hardly be called a nation by
adoption. For, if we choose to say that the three elements have all
agreed to adopt one another as brethren, yet it has been adoption
without assimilation. Yet surely the Swiss Confederation is a nation. It
is not a a mere power, in which various nations are brought together,
whether willingly or unwillingly, under a common ruler, but without any
further tie of union. For all political purposes, the Swiss
Confederation is a nation, a nation capable of as strong and true
national feeling as any other nation. Yet it is a nation purely
artificial, one in no way defined by blood or speech. It thus proves the
rule in two ways. We at once feel that this artificially formed nation,
which has no common language, but each of whose elements speaks a
language common to itself with some other nation, is something different
from those nations which are defined by a universal or at least a
predominant language. We mark it as an exception, as something different
from other cases. And when we see how nearly this artificial nation
comes, in every point but that of language, to the likeness of those
nations which are defined by language, we see that it is a nation
defined by language which sets the standard, and after the model of
which the artificial nation forms itself. The case of the Swiss
Confederation and its claim to rank as a nation would be like the case
of those _gentes_, if any such there were, which did not spring even
from the expansion of an original family, but which were artificially
formed in imitation of those which did, and which, instead of a real or
traditional forefather, chose for themselves an adopted one.