Page:History of Freedom.djvu/329

 NATIONALITY

28 5

like religion, had borne part in the previous combinations, and had been auxiliaries in the struggles for freedom, but no\v nationality became a paramount claim, which was to assert itself alone, \vhich might put forward as pretexts the rights of rulers, the liberties of the people, the safety of religion, but \vhich, if no such union could be formed, was to prevail at the expense of every other cause for \vhich nations make sacrifices. l\letternich is, next to Napoleon, the chief prOlTIoter 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 gre\v 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, \vhich 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." 1

1 Considerations on Representative Government. p, 29 8.