Page:History of Freedom.djvu/342

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ESSAYS ON LIBERTY

body which claims all the rights of the community, the inferior races are exterminated, or reduced to servitude, or outla\ved, or put in a condition of dependence. If \ve take the establishment of liberty for the realisa- tion of moral duties to be the end of civil society, we must conclude that those states are substantially the most perfect which, like the Brj ish and Austrian Elnpires, include various distinct nationalities without oppressing them. Those in which no mixture of races has occurred are imperfect; and those in \vhich its effects have dis- appeared 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 o\vn 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 hvo chief causes. First, it is a chimera. The settlement at which it aims is impossible. As it can never be satisfied and exhausted, and ahvays 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 po\ver over men's mirftis 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 deIl1ocracy, and of constitutionalism, as well as of the centralisation which is common to all three. N either 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.