distinct from the geographical, which may be possibly in collision with
it The Frenchmen who bore arms against the Convention were as patriotic
as the Englishmen who bore arms against King Charles, for they
recognised a higher duty than that of obedience to the actual
sovereign. "In an address to France," said Burke, "in an attempt to
treat with it, or in considering any scheme at all relative to it, it is
impossible we should mean the geographical, we must always mean the
moral and political, country.... The truth is, that France is out of
itself--the moral France is separated from the geographical. The master
of the house is expelled, and the robbers are in possession. If we look
for the corporate people of France, existing as corporate in the eye and
intention of public law (that corporate people, I mean, who are free to
deliberate and to decide, and who have a capacity to treat and
conclude), they are in Flanders and Germany, in Switzerland, Spain,
Italy, and England. There are all the princes of the blood, there are
all the orders of the State, there are all the parliaments of the
kingdom.... I am sure that if half that number of the same description
were taken out of this country, it would leave hardly anything that I
should call the people of England."[332] Rousseau draws nearly the same
distinction between the country to which we happen to belong and that
which fulfils towards us the political functions of the State. In the
_Emile_ he has a sentence of which it is not easy in a translation to
convey the point: "Qui n'a pas une patrie a du moins un pays." And in
his tract on Political Economy he writes: "How shall men love their
country if it is nothing more for them than for strangers, and bestows
on them only that which it can refuse to none?" It is in the same sense
he says, further on, "La patrie ne peut subsister sans la liberte."[333]
The nationality formed by the State, then, is the only one to which we
owe political duties, and it is, therefore, the only one which has
political rights. The Swiss are ethnologically either French, Italian,
or German; but no nationality has the slightest claim upon them, except
the purely political nationality of Switzerland. The Tuscan or the
Neapolitan State has formed a nationality, but the citizens of Florence
and of Naples have no political community with each other. There are
other States which have neither succeeded in absorbing distinct races in
a political nationality, nor in separating a particular district from a
larger nation. Austria and Mexico are instances on the one hand, Parma
and Baden on the other. The progress of civilisation deals hardly with
the last description of States. In order to maintain their integrity
they must attach themselves by confederations, or family alliances, to
greater Powers, and thus lose something of their independence. Their
tendency is to isolate and shut off their inhabitants, to narrow the
horizon of their views, and to dwarf in some degree the proportions of
their ideas. Public opinion cannot maintain its liberty and purity in
such small dimensions, and the currents that come from larger
communities sweep over a contracted territory. In a small and
homogeneous population there is hardly room for a natural classification
of society, or for inner groups of interests that set bounds to
sovereign power. The government and the subjects contend with borrowed
weapons. The resources of the one and the aspirations of the other are
derived from some external source, and the consequence is that the
country becomes the instrument and the scene of contests in which it is
not interested. These States, like the minuter communities of the Middle
Ages, serve a purpose, by constituting partitions and securities of
self-government in the larger States; but they are impediments to the
progress of society, which depends on the mixture of races under the
same governments.
The vanity and peril of national claims founded on no political
tradition, but on race alone, appear in Mexico. There the races are
divided by blood, without being grouped together in different regions.
It is, therefore, neither possible to unite them nor to convert them
into the elements of an organised State. They are fluid, shapeless, and
unconnected, and cannot be precipitated, or formed into the basis of
political institutions. As they cannot be used by the State, they cannot
be recognised by it; and their peculiar qualities, capabilities,
passions, and attachments are of no service, and therefore obtain no
regard. They are necessarily ignored, and are therefore perpetually
outraged. From this difficulty of races with political pretensions, but
without political position, the Eastern world escaped by the institution
of castes. Where there are only two races there is the resource of
slavery; but when different races inhabit the different territories of
one Empire composed of several smaller States, it is of all possible
combinations the most favourable to the establishment of a highly
developed system of freedom. In Austria there are two circumstances
which add to the difficulty of the problem, but also increase its
importance. The several nationalities are at very unequal degrees of
advancement, and there is no single nation which is so predominant as to
overwhelm or absorb the others. These are the conditions necessary for
the very highest degree of organisation which government is capable of
receiving. They supply the greatest variety of intellectual resource;
the perpetual incentive to progress, which is afforded not merely by
competition, but by the spectacle of a more advanced people; the most
abundant elements of self-government, combined with the impossibility
for the State to rule all by its own will; and the fullest security for
the preservation of local customs and ancient rights. In such a country
as this, liberty would achieve its most glorious results, while
centralisation and absolutism would be destruction.
The problem presented to the government of Austria is higher than that
which is solved in England, because of the necessity of admitting the
national claims. The parliamentary system fails to provide for them, as
it presupposes the unity of the people. Hence in those countries in
which different races dwell together, it has not satisfied their
desires, and is regarded as an imperfect form of freedom. It brings out
more clearly than before the differences it does not recognise, and thus
continues the work of the old absolutism, and appears as a new phase of
centralisation. In those countries, therefore, the power of the imperial
parliament must be limited as jealously as the power of the crown, and
many of its functions must be discharged by provincial diets, and a
descending series of local authorities.
The great importance of nationality in the State consists in the fact
that it is the basis of political capacity. The character of a nation
determines in great measure the form and vitality of the State. Certain
political habits and ideas belong to particular nations, and they vary
with the course of the national history. A people just emerging from
barbarism, a people effete from the excesses of a luxurious
civilisation, cannot possess the means of governing itself; a people
devoted to equality, or to absolute monarchy, is incapable of producing
an aristocracy; a people averse to the institution of private property
is without the first element of freedom. Each of these can be converted
into efficient members of a free community only by the contact of a
superior race, in whose power will lie the future prospects of the
State. A system which ignores these things, and does not rely for its
support on the character and aptitude of the people, does not intend
that they should administer their own affairs, but that they should
simply be obedient to the supreme command. The denial of nationality,
therefore, implies the denial of political liberty.
The greatest adversary of the rights of nationality is the modern theory
of nationality. By making the State and the nation commensurate with
each other in theory, it reduces practically to a subject condition all
other nationalities that may be within the boundary. It cannot admit
them to an equality with the ruling nation which constitutes the State,
because the State would then cease to be national, which would be a
contradiction of the principle of its existence. According, therefore,
to the degree of humanity and civilisation in that dominant body which
claims all the rights of the community, the inferior races are
exterminated, or reduced to servitude, or outlawed, or put in a
condition of dependence.
If we take the establishment of liberty for the realisation of moral
duties to be the end of civil society, we must conclude that those
states are substantially the most perfect which, like the British and
Austrian Empires, include various distinct nationalities without
oppressing them. Those in which no mixture of races has occurred are
imperfect; and those in which its effects have disappeared are decrepit.
A State which is incompetent to satisfy different races condemns itself;
a State which labours to neutralise, to absorb, or to expel them,
destroys its own vitality; a State which does not include them is
destitute of the chief basis of self-government The theory of
nationality, therefore, is a retrograde step in history. It is the most
advanced form of the revolution, and must retain its power to the end of
the revolutionary period, of which it announces the approach. Its great
historical importance depends on two chief causes.
First, it is a chimera. The settlement at which it aims is impossible.
As it can never be satisfied and exhausted, and always continues to
assert itself, it prevents the government from ever relapsing into the
condition which provoked its rise. The danger is too threatening, and
the power over men's minds too great, to allow any system to endure
which justifies the resistance of nationality. It must contribute,
therefore, to obtain that which in theory it condemns,--the liberty of
different nationalities as members of one sovereign community. This is a
service which no other force could accomplish; for it is a corrective
alike of absolute monarchy, of democracy, and of constitutionalism, as
well as of the centralisation which is common to all three. Neither the
monarchical, nor the revolutionary, nor the parliamentary system can do
this; and all the ideas which have excited enthusiasm in past times are
impotent for the purpose except nationality alone.
And secondly, the national theory marks the end of the revolutionary
doctrine and its logical exhaustion. In proclaiming the supremacy of the
rights of nationality, the system of democratic equality goes beyond its
own extreme boundary, and falls into contradiction with itself. Between
the democratic and the national phase of the revolution, socialism had
intervened, and had already carried the consequences of the principle to
an absurdity. But that phase was passed. The revolution survived its
offspring, and produced another further result. Nationality is more
advanced than socialism, because it is a more arbitrary system. The
social theory endeavours to provide for the existence of the individual
beneath the terrible burdens which modern society heaps upon labour. It
is not merely a development of the notion of equality, but a refuge from
real misery and starvation. However false the solution, it was a
reasonable demand that the poor should be saved from destruction; and if
the freedom of the State was sacrificed to the safety of the individual,
the more immediate object was, at least in theory, attained. But
nationality does not aim either at liberty or prosperity, both of which
it sacrifices to the imperative necessity of making the nation the mould
and measure of the State. Its course will be marked with material as
well as moral ruin, in order that a new invention may prevail over the
works of God and the interests of mankind. There is no principle of
change, no phase of political speculation conceivable, more
comprehensive, more subversive, or more arbitrary than this. It is a
confutation of democracy, because it sets limits to the exercise of the
popular will, and substitutes for it a higher principle. It prevents not
only the division, but the extension of the State, and forbids to
terminate war by conquest, and to obtain a security for peace. Thus,
after surrendering the individual to the collective will, the
revolutionary system makes the collective will subject to conditions
which are independent of it, and rejects all law, only to be controlled
by an accident.
Although, therefore, the theory of nationality is more absurd and more
criminal than the theory of socialism, it has an important mission in
the world, and marks the final conflict, and therefore the end, of two
forces which are the worst enemies of civil freedom,--the absolute
monarchy and the revolution.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 326: _Home and Foreign Review_, July 1862.]
[Footnote 327: "Observations on the Conduct of the Minority," _Works_,
v. 112.]
[Footnote 328: There are some remarkable thoughts on nationality in the
State Papers of the Count de Maistre: "En premier lieu les nations sont
quelque chose dans le monde, il n'est pas permis de les compter pour
rien, de les affliger dans leurs convenances, dans leurs affections,
dans leurs interets les plus chers.... Or le traite du 30 mai aneantit
completement la Savoie; il divise l'indivisible; il partage en trois
portions une malheureuse nation de 400,000 hommes, une par la langue,
une par la religion, une par le caractere, une par l'habitude inveteree,
une enfin par les limites naturelles.... L'union des nations ne souffre
pas de difficultes sur la carte geographique; mais dans la realite,
c'est autre chose; il y a des nations _immiscibles_.... Je lui parlai
par occasion de l'esprit italien qui s'agite dans ce moment; il (Count
Nesselrode) me repondit: 'Oui, Monsieur; mais cet esprit est un grand
mal, car il peut gener les arrangements de l'Italie.'" (_Correspondance
Diplomatique de J. de Maistre_, ii. 7, 8, 21, 25). In the same year,
1815, Goerres wrote: "In Italien wie allerwaerts ist das Volk gewecht; es
will etwas grossartiges, es will Ideen haben, die, wenn es sie auch
nicht ganz begreift, doch einen freien unendlichen Gesichtskreis seiner
Einbildung eroeffnen. ... Es ist reiner Naturtrieb, dass ein Volk, also
scharf und deutlich in seine natuerlichen Graenzen eingeschlossen, aus der
Zerstreuung in die Einheit sich zu sammeln sucht." (_Werke_, ii. 20).]
[Footnote 329: _Considerations on Representative Government_, p. 298.]
[Footnote 330: Mill's _Considerations_, p. 296.]
[Footnote 331: "Le sentiment d'independance nationale est encore plus
general et plus profondement grave dans le coeur des peuples que l'amour
d'une liberte constitutionnelle. Les nations les plus soumises au
despotisme eprouvent ce sentiment avec autant de vivacite que les
nations libres; les peuples les plus barbares le sentent meme encore
plus vivement que les nations policees" (_L'Italie au Dix-neuvieme
Siecle_, p. 148, Paris, 1821).]
[Footnote 332: Burke's "Remarks on the Policy of the Allies" (_Works_,
v. 26, 29, 30).]
[Footnote 333: _OEuvres_, i. 593, 595, ii. 717. Bossuet, in a passage of
great beauty on the love of country, does not attain to the political
definition of the word: "La societe humaine demande qu'on aime la terre
ou l'on habite ensemble, ou la regarde comme une mere et une nourrice
commune.... Les hommes en effet se sentent lies par quelque chose de
fort, lorsqu'ils songent, que la meme terre qui les a portes et nourris
etant vivants, les recevra dans son sein quand ils seront morts"
("Politique tiree de l'Ecriture Sainte," _OEuvres_, x. 317).]
X
DOeLLINGER ON THE TEMPORAL POWER[334]
After half a year's delay, Dr. Doellinger has redeemed his promise to
publish the text of those lectures which made so profound a sensation in
the Catholic world.[335] We are sorry to find that the report which fell
into our hands at the time, and from which we gave the account that
appeared in our May Number, was both defective and incorrect; and we
should further regret that we did not follow the example of those
journals which abstained from comment so long as no authentic copy was
accessible, if it did not appear that, although the argument of the
lecturer was lost, his meaning was not, on the whole, seriously
misrepresented. Excepting for the sake of the author, who became the
object, and of those who unfortunately made themselves the organs, of so
much calumny, it is impossible to lament the existence of the erroneous
statements which have caused the present publication. Intending at first
to prefix an introduction to the text of his lectures, the Professor has
been led on by the gravity of the occasion, the extent of his subject,
and the abundance of materials, to compose a book of 700 pages. Written
with all the author's perspicuity of style, though without his usual
compression; with the exhaustless information which never fails him, but
with an economy of quotation suited to the general public for whom it is
designed, it betrays the circumstances of its origin. Subjects are
sometimes introduced out of their proper place and order; and there are
occasional repetitions, which show that he had not at starting fixed the
proportions of the different parts of his work. This does not, however,
affect the logical sequence of the ideas, or the accuracy of the
induction. No other book contains--no other writer probably could
supply--so comprehensive and so suggestive a description of the state of
the Protestant religion, or so impartial an account of the causes which
have brought on the crisis of the temporal power.
The _Symbolik_ of Moehler was suggested by the beginning of that movement
of revival and resuscitation amongst the Protestants, of which Doellinger
now surveys the fortunes and the result. The interval of thirty years
has greatly altered the position of the Catholic divines towards their
antagonists. Moehler had to deal with the ideas of the Reformation, the
works of the Reformers, and the teaching of the confessions; he had to
answer in the nineteenth century the theology of the sixteenth. The
Protestantism for which he wrote was a complete system, antagonistic to
the whole of Catholic theology, and he confuted the one by comparing it
with the other, dogma for dogma. But that of which Doellinger treats has
lost, for the most part, those distinctive doctrines, not by the growth
of unbelief, but in consequence of the very efforts which its most
zealous and religious professors have made to defend and to redeem it.
The contradictions and errors of the Protestant belief were formerly the
subject of controversy with its Catholic opponents, but now the
controversy is anticipated and prevented by the undisguised admissions
of its desponding friends. It stands no longer as a system consistent,
complete, satisfying the judgment and commanding the unconditional
allegiance of its followers, and fortified at all points against
Catholicism; but disorganised as a church, its doctrines in a state of
dissolution, despaired of by its divines, strong and compact only in its
hostility to Rome, but with no positive principle of unity, no ground of
resistance, nothing to have faith in but the determination to reject
authority. This, therefore, is the point which Doellinger takes up.
Reducing the chief phenomena of religious and social decline to the one
head of failing authority, he founds on the state of Protestantism the
apology of the Papacy. He abandons to the Protestant theology the
destruction of the Protestant Church, and leaves its divines to confute
and abjure its principles in detail, and to arrive by the exhaustion of
the modes of error, through a painful but honourable process, at the
gates of truth; he meets their arguments simply by a chapter of
ecclesiastical history, of which experience teaches them the force; and
he opposes to their theories, not the discussions of controversial
theology, but the character of a single institution. The opportunity he
has taken to do this, the assumed coincidence between the process of
dissolution among the Protestants and the process of regeneration in the
Court of Rome, is the characteristic peculiarity of the book. Before we
proceed to give an analysis of its contents, we will give some extracts
from the Preface, which explains the purpose of the whole, and which is
alone one of the most important contributions to the religious
discussions of the day.
This book arose from two out of four lectures which were delivered in
April this year. How I came to discuss the most difficult and
complicated question of our time before a very mixed audience, and in
a manner widely different from that usually adopted, I deem myself
bound to explain. It was my intention, when I was first requested to
lecture, only to speak of the present state of religion in general,
with a comprehensive view extending over all mankind. It happened,
however, that from those circles which had given the impulse to the
lectures, the question was frequently put to me, how the position of
the Holy See, the partly consummated, partly threatening, loss of its
secular power is to be explained. What answer, I was repeatedly
asked, is to be given to those out of the Church who point with
triumphant scorn to the numerous Episcopal manifestoes, in which the
States of the Church are declared essential and necessary to her
existence although the events of the last thirty years appear with
increasing distinctness to announce their downfall? I had found the
hope often expressed in newspapers, books, and periodicals, that
after the destruction of the temporal power of the Popes, the Church
herself would not escape dissolution. At the same time, I was struck
by finding in the memoirs of Chateaubriand that Cardinal Bernetti,
Secretary of State to Leo XII., had said, that if he lived long,
there was a chance of his beholding the fall of the temporal power of
the Papacy. I had also read, in the letter of a well-informed and
trustworthy correspondent from Paris, that the Archbishop of Rheims
had related on his return from Rome that Pius IX. had said to him, "I
am under no illusions, the temporal power must fall. Goyon will
abandon me; I shall then disband my remaining troops. I shall
excommunicate the king when he enters the city; and shall calmly
await my death."