the restoration. The liberals of those days cared for freedom, not in
the shape of national independence, but of French institutions; and they
combined against the nations with the ambition of the governments. They
were as ready to sacrifice nationality to their ideal as the Holy
Alliance was to the interests of absolutism. Talleyrand indeed declared
at Vienna that the Polish question ought to have precedence over all
other questions, because the partition of Poland had been one of the
first and greatest causes of the evils which Europe had suffered; but
dynastic interests prevailed. All the sovereigns represented at Vienna
recovered their dominions, except the King of Saxony, who was punished
for his fidelity to Napoleon; but the States that were unrepresented in
the reigning families--Poland, Venice, and Genoa--were not revived, and
even the Pope had great difficulty in recovering the Legations from the
grasp of Austria. Nationality, which the old _regime_ had ignored, which
had been outraged by the revolution and the empire, received, after its
first open demonstration, the hardest blow at the Congress of Vienna.
The principle which the first partition had generated, to which the
revolution had given a basis of theory, which had been lashed by the
empire into a momentary convulsive effort, was matured by the long error
of the restoration into a consistent doctrine, nourished and justified
by the situation of Europe.
The governments of the Holy Alliance devoted themselves to suppress with
equal care the revolutionary spirit by which they had been threatened,
and the national spirit by which they had been restored. Austria, which
owed nothing to the national movement, and had prevented its revival
after 1809, naturally took the lead in repressing it. Every disturbance
of the final settlements of 1815, every aspiration for changes or
reforms, was condemned as sedition. This system repressed the good with
the evil tendencies of the age; and the resistance which it provoked,
during the generation that passed away from the restoration to the fall
of Metternich, and again under the reaction which commenced with
Schwarzenberg and ended with the administrations of Bach and Manteuffel,
proceeded from various combinations of the opposite forms of liberalism.
In the successive phases of that struggle, the idea that national claims
are above all other rights gradually rose to the supremacy which it now
possesses among the revolutionary agencies.
The first liberal movement, that of the Carbonari in the south of
Europe, had no specific national character, but was supported by the
Bonapartists both in Spain and Italy. In the following years the
opposite ideas of 1813 came to the front, and a revolutionary movement,
in many respects hostile to the principles of revolution, began in
defence of liberty, religion, and nationality. All these causes were
united in the Irish agitation, and in the Greek, Belgian, and Polish
revolutions. Those sentiments which had been insulted by Napoleon, and
had risen against him, rose against the governments of the restoration.
They had been oppressed by the sword, and then by the treaties. The
national principle added force, but not justice, to this movement,
which, in every case but Poland, was successful. A period followed in
which it degenerated into a purely national idea, as the agitation for
repeal succeeded emancipation, and Panslavism and Panhellenism arose
under the auspices of the Eastern Church. This was the third phase of
the resistance to the settlement of Vienna, which was weak, because it
failed to satisfy national or constitutional aspirations, either of
which would have been a safeguard against the other, by a moral if not
by a popular justification. At first, in 1813, the people rose against
their conquerors, in defence of their legitimate rulers. They refused to
be governed by usurpers. In the period between 1825 and 1831, they
resolved that they would not be misgoverned by strangers. The French
administration was often better than that which it displaced, but there
were prior claimants for the authority exercised by the French, and at
first the national contest was a contest for legitimacy. In the second
period this element was wanting. No dispossessed princes led the Greeks,
the Belgians, or the Poles. The Turks, the Dutch, and the Russians were
attacked, not as usurpers, but as oppressors,--because they misgoverned,
not because they were of a different race. Then began a time when the
text simply was, that nations would not be governed by foreigners. Power
legitimately obtained, and exercised with moderation, was declared
invalid. National rights, like religion, had borne part in the previous
combinations, and had been auxiliaries in the struggles for freedom, but
now nationality became a paramount claim, which was to assert itself
alone, which might put forward as pretexts the rights of rulers, the
liberties of the people, the safety of religion, but which, if no such
union could be formed, was to prevail at the expense of every other
cause for which nations make sacrifices.
Metternich is, next to Napoleon, the chief promoter of this theory; for
the anti-national character of the restoration was most distinct in
Austria, and it is in opposition to the Austrian Government that
nationality grew into a system. Napoleon, who, trusting to his armies,
despised moral forces in politics, was overthrown by their rising.
Austria committed the same fault in the government of her Italian
provinces. The kingdom of Italy had united all the northern part of the
Peninsula in a single State; and the national feelings, which the French
repressed elsewhere, were encouraged as a safeguard of their power in
Italy and in Poland. When the tide of victory turned, Austria invoked
against the French the aid of the new sentiment they had fostered.
Nugent announced, in his proclamation to the Italians, that they should
become an independent nation. The same spirit served different masters,
and contributed first to the destruction of the old States, then to the
expulsion of the French, and again, under Charles Albert, to a new
revolution. It was appealed to in the name of the most contradictory
principles of government, and served all parties in succession, because
it was one in which all could unite. Beginning by a protest against the
dominion of race over race, its mildest and least-developed form, it
grew into a condemnation of every State that included different races,
and finally became the complete and consistent theory, that the State
and the nation must be co-extensive. "It is," says Mr. Mill, "in general
a necessary condition of free institutions, that the boundaries of
governments should coincide in the main with those of nationalities."[329]
The outward historical progress of this idea from an indefinite
aspiration to be the keystone of a political system, may be traced in
the life of the man who gave to it the element in which its strength
resides,--Giuseppe Mazzini. He found Carbonarism impotent against the
measures of the governments, and resolved to give new life to the
liberal movement by transferring it to the ground of nationality. Exile
is the nursery of nationality, as oppression is the school of
liberalism; and Mazzini conceived the idea of Young Italy when he was a
refugee at Marseilles. In the same way, the Polish exiles are the
champions of every national movement; for to them all political rights
are absorbed in the idea of independence, which, however they may differ
with each other, is the one aspiration common to them all. Towards the
year 1830 literature also contributed to the national idea. "It was the
time," says Mazzini, "of the great conflict between the romantic and the
classical school, which might with equal truth be called a conflict
between the partisans of freedom and of authority." The romantic school
was infidel in Italy, and Catholic in Germany; but in both it had the
common effect of encouraging national history and literature, and Dante
was as great an authority with the Italian democrats as with the leaders
of the mediaeval revival at Vienna, Munich, and Berlin. But neither the
influence of the exiles, nor that of the poets and critics of the new
party, extended over the masses. It was a sect without popular sympathy
or encouragement, a conspiracy founded not on a grievance, but on a
doctrine; and when the attempt to rise was made in Savoy, in 1834, under
a banner with the motto "Unity, Independence, God and Humanity," the
people were puzzled at its object, and indifferent to its failure. But
Mazzini continued his propaganda, developed his _Giovine Italia_ into a
_Giovine Europa_, and established in 1847 the international league of
nations. "The people," he said, in his opening address, "is penetrated
with only one idea, that of unity and nationality.... There is no
international question as to forms of government, but only a national
question."
The revolution of 1848, unsuccessful in its national purpose, prepared
the subsequent victories of nationality in two ways. The first of these
was the restoration of the Austrian power in Italy, with a new and more
energetic centralisation, which gave no promise of freedom. Whilst that
system prevailed, the right was on the side of the national aspirations,
and they were revived in a more complete and cultivated form by Manin.
The policy of the Austrian Government, which failed during the ten years
of the reaction to convert the tenure by force into a tenure by right,
and to establish with free institutions the condition of allegiance,
gave a negative encouragement to the theory. It deprived Francis Joseph
of all active support and sympathy in 1859, for he was more clearly
wrong in his conduct than his enemies in their doctrines. The real cause
of the energy which the national theory has acquired is, however, the
triumph of the democratic principle in France, and its recognition by
the European Powers. The theory of nationality is involved in the
democratic theory of the sovereignty of the general will. "One hardly
knows what any division of the human race should be free to do, if not
to determine with which of the various collective bodies of human beings
they choose to associate themselves."[330] It is by this act that a
nation constitutes itself. To have a collective will, unity is
necessary, and independence is requisite in order to assert it. Unity
and nationality are still more essential to the notion of the
sovereignty of the people than the cashiering of monarchs, or the
revocation of laws. Arbitrary acts of this kind may be prevented by the
happiness of the people or the popularity of the king, but a nation
inspired by the democratic idea cannot with consistency allow a part of
itself to belong to a foreign State, or the whole to be divided into
several native States. The theory of nationality therefore proceeds from
both the principles which divide the political world,--from legitimacy,
which ignores its claims, and from the revolution, which assumes them;
and for the same reason it is the chief weapon of the last against the
first.
In pursuing the outward and visible growth of the national theory we are
prepared for an examination of its political character and value. The
absolutism which has created it denies equally that absolute right of
national unity which is a product of democracy, and that claim of
national liberty which belongs to the theory of freedom. These two views
of nationality, corresponding to the French and to the English systems,
are connected in name only, and are in reality the opposite extremes of
political thought. In one case, nationality is founded on the perpetual
supremacy of the collective will, of which the unity of the nation is
the necessary condition, to which every other influence must defer, and
against which no obligation enjoys authority, and all resistance is
tyrannical. The nation is here an ideal unit founded on the race, in
defiance of the modifying action of external causes, of tradition, and
of existing rights. It overrules the rights and wishes of the
inhabitants, absorbing their divergent interests in a fictitious unity;
sacrifices their several inclinations and duties to the higher claim of
nationality, and crushes all natural rights and all established
liberties for the purpose of vindicating itself.[331] Whenever a single
definite object is made the supreme end of the State, be it the
advantage of a class, the safety or the power of the country, the
greatest happiness of the greatest number, or the support of any
speculative idea, the State becomes for the time inevitably absolute.
Liberty alone demands for its realisation the limitation of the public
authority, for liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and
provokes no sincere opposition. In supporting the claims of national
unity, governments must be subverted in whose title there is no flaw,
and whose policy is beneficent and equitable, and subjects must be
compelled to transfer their allegiance to an authority for which they
have no attachment, and which may be practically a foreign domination.
Connected with this theory in nothing except in the common enmity of the
absolute state, is the theory which represents nationality as an
essential, but not a supreme element in determining the forms of the
State. It is distinguished from the other, because it tends to diversity
and not to uniformity, to harmony and not to unity; because it aims not
at an arbitrary change, but at careful respect for the existing
conditions of political life, and because it obeys the laws and results
of history, not the aspirations of an ideal future. While the theory of
unity makes the nation a source of despotism and revolution, the theory
of liberty regards it as the bulwark of self-government, and the
foremost limit to the excessive power of the State. Private rights,
which are sacrificed to the unity, are preserved by the union of
nations. No power can so efficiently resist the tendencies of
centralisation, of corruption, and of absolutism, as that community
which is the vastest that can be included in a State, which imposes on
its members a consistent similarity of character, interest, and opinion,
and which arrests the action of the sovereign by the influence of a
divided patriotism. The presence of different nations under the same
sovereignty is similar in its effect to the independence of the Church
in the State. It provides against the servility which flourishes under
the shadow of a single authority, by balancing interests, multiplying
associations, and giving to the subject the restraint and support of a
combined opinion. In the same way it promotes independence by forming
definite groups of public opinion, and by affording a great source and
centre of political sentiments, and of notions of duty not derived from
the sovereign will. Liberty provokes diversity, and diversity preserves
liberty by supplying the means of organisation. All those portions of
law which govern the relations of men with each other, and regulate
social life, are the varying result of national custom and the creation
of private society. In these things, therefore, the several nations
will differ from each other; for they themselves have produced them, and
they do not owe them to the State which rules them all. This diversity
in the same State is a firm barrier against the intrusion of the
government beyond the political sphere which is common to all into the
social department which escapes legislation and is ruled by spontaneous
laws. This sort of interference is characteristic of an absolute
government, and is sure to provoke a reaction, and finally a remedy.
That intolerance of social freedom which is natural to absolutism is
sure to find a corrective in the national diversities, which no other
force could so efficiently provide. The co-existence of several nations
under the same State is a test, as well as the best security of its
freedom. It is also one of the chief instruments of civilisation; and,
as such, it is in the natural and providential order, and indicates a
state of greater advancement than the national unity which is the ideal
of modern liberalism.
The combination of different nations in one State is as necessary a
condition of civilised life as the combination of men in society.
Inferior races are raised by living in political union with races
intellectually superior. Exhausted and decaying nations are revived by
the contact of a younger vitality. Nations in which the elements of
organisation and the capacity for government have been lost, either
through the demoralising influence of despotism, or the disintegrating
action of democracy, are restored and educated anew under the discipline
of a stronger and less corrupted race. This fertilising and regenerating
process can only be obtained by living under one government. It is in
the cauldron of the State that the fusion takes place by which the
vigour, the knowledge, and the capacity of one portion of mankind may be
communicated to another. Where political and national boundaries
coincide, society ceases to advance, and nations relapse into a
condition corresponding to that of men who renounce intercourse with
their fellow-men. The difference between the two unites mankind not only
by the benefits it confers on those who live together, but because it
connects society either by a political or a national bond, gives to
every people an interest in its neighbours, either because they are
under the same government or because they are of the same race, and thus
promotes the interests of humanity, of civilisation, and of religion.
Christianity rejoices at the mixture of races, as paganism identifies
itself with their differences, because truth is universal, and errors
various and particular. In the ancient world idolatry and nationality
went together, and the same term is applied in Scripture to both. It was
the mission of the Church to overcome national differences. The period
of her undisputed supremacy was that in which all Western Europe obeyed
the same laws, all literature was contained in one language, and the
political unity of Christendom was personified in a single potentate,
while its intellectual unity was represented in one university. As the
ancient Romans concluded their conquests by carrying away the gods of
the conquered people, Charlemagne overcame the national resistance of
the Saxons only by the forcible destruction of their pagan rites. Out of
the mediaeval period, and the combined action of the German race and the
Church, came forth a new system of nations and a new conception of
nationality. Nature was overcome in the nation as well as in the
individual. In pagan and uncultivated times, nations were distinguished
from each other by the widest diversity, not only in religion, but in
customs, language, and character. Under the new law they had many things
in common; the old barriers which separated them were removed, and the
new principle of self-government, which Christianity imposed, enabled
them to live together under the same authority, without necessarily
losing their cherished habits, their customs, or their laws. The new
idea of freedom made room for different races in one State. A nation was
no longer what it had been to the ancient world,--the progeny of a
common ancestor, or the aboriginal product of a particular region,--a
result of merely physical and material causes,--but a moral and
political being; not the creation of geographical or physiological
unity, but developed in the course of history by the action of the
State. It is derived from the State, not supreme over it. A State may in
course of time produce a nationality; but that a nationality should
constitute a State is contrary to the nature of modern civilisation. The
nation derives its rights and its power from the memory of a former
independence.
The Church has agreed in this respect with the tendency of political
progress, and discouraged wherever she could the isolation of nations;
admonishing them of their duties to each other, and regarding conquest
and feudal investiture as the natural means of raising barbarous or
sunken nations to a higher level. But though she has never attributed to
national independence an immunity from the accidental consequences of
feudal law, of hereditary claims, or of testamentary arrangements, she
defends national liberty against uniformity and centralisation with an
energy inspired by perfect community of interests. For the same enemy
threatens both; and the State which is reluctant to tolerate
differences, and to do justice to the peculiar character of various
races, must from the same cause interfere in the internal government of
religion. The connection of religious liberty with the emancipation of
Poland or Ireland is not merely the accidental result of local causes;
and the failure of the Concordat to unite the subjects of Austria is the
natural consequence of a policy which did not desire to protect the
provinces in their diversity and autonomy, and sought to bribe the
Church by favours instead of strengthening her by independence. From
this influence of religion in modern history has proceeded a new
definition of patriotism.
The difference between nationality and the State is exhibited in the
nature of patriotic attachment. Our connection with the race is merely
natural or physical, whilst our duties to the political nation are
ethical. One is a community of affections and instincts infinitely
important and powerful in savage life, but pertaining more to the animal
than to the civilised man; the other is an authority governing by laws,
imposing obligations, and giving a moral sanction and character to the
natural relations of society. Patriotism is in political life what faith
is in religion, and it stands to the domestic feelings and to
home-sickness as faith to fanaticism and to superstition. It has one
aspect derived from private life and nature, for it is an extension of
the family affections, as the tribe is an extension of the family. But
in its real political character, patriotism consists in the development
of the instinct of self-preservation into a moral duty which may involve
self-sacrifice. Self-preservation is both an instinct and a duty,
natural and involuntary in one respect, and at the same time a moral
obligation. By the first it produces the family; by the last the State.
If the nation could exist without the State, subject only to the
instinct of self-preservation, it would be incapable of denying,
controlling, or sacrificing itself; it would be an end and a rule to
itself. But in the political order moral purposes are realised and
public ends are pursued to which private interests and even existence
must be sacrificed. The great sign of true patriotism, the development
of selfishness into sacrifice, is the product of political life. That
sense of duty which is supplied by race is not entirely separated from
its selfish and instinctive basis; and the love of country, like married
love, stands at the same time on a material and a moral foundation. The
patriot must distinguish between the two causes or objects of his
devotion. The attachment which is given only to the country is like
obedience given only to the State--a submission to physical influences.
The man who prefers his country before every other duty shows the same
spirit as the man who surrenders every right to the State. They both
deny that right is superior to authority.