seeks the disintegration not only of Turkey, but of Austria. It must be observed, too, that in proportion to the new stress given to the claims of nationality comes an increased desire among rulers to extirpate in their dominions all alien national types, whether of race, or language, or creed, which may some day be called into active existence.

Few things are more curious to observe than the conflicting tendencies which are, in the same period of history, drawing nations in diametrically opposite directions. The tendency to great agglomerations and larger political unities has in our day been very evident. Railroads, and the many other influences producing a more rapid interchange of ideas and commerce, and more cosmopolitan habits and manners, act strongly in this direction; and the military and naval systems of our time throw an overwhelming power into the hands of the great nations. On the other hand, there has been in many forms a marked tendency to accentuate distinct national and local types.

It has been very clearly shown in national languages. As late as the days of Frederick the Great, French had a complete ascendency, even at the Prussian Court; and long after that date it seemed in many countries likely to displace all local languages in the common usage of the upper classes. Nearly everywhere this tendency has been checked, and national languages now fully maintain their ascendency. The late Queen Sophie of the Netherlands was accustomed to relate. that, at the time of her marriage in 1839, some of her counsellors told her that it was scarcely necessary for her to learn Dutch, as the use of it was so rapidly passing away among the upper classes in Holland; but she lived to see that usage constant and universal. It was, I believe, only under Nicholas that Russian super

seded French as the Court language at St. Petersburg, and, according to competent judges, the same change has in the present generation extended widely through all Russian society. In Belgium there has been a marked and most significant movement for maintaining the Flemish language and Flemish nationality; a similar tendency prevails in Bohemia and Hungary, and even at home it may be seen in the greatly increased stress laid upon the Welsh language. The war of 1870 strengthened it, and French has lost much of its cosmopolitan character as the language of diplomacy, while no other single language has taken its place. At no previous period, I suppose, has so large an amount of interest and research been devoted to the study of local customs, literatures, traditions and antiquities. Education, if it widens interests, also contributes to kindle political life in small areas, and the extension of the suffrage and of local government, and perhaps still more the growth of a local press, have all their effect in accentuating local divisions and awakening local aspirations. The vast military systems of the Continent may, perhaps, in some degree divert the minds of the great disciplined masses from internal and constitutional politics, and they weaken the lines of provincial differences, but they also bring into stronger and sharper relief national distinctions and national antagonisms.

Among the problems that weigh heavily on the statesmen of our age, few are more serious than those of reconciling local and particularist aspirations with the maintenance of imperial strength and unity, and with the stability of European peace. In all such questions many various, and often conflicting, circumstances must be considered, and no general and inflexible rule can be laid down. England, in 1864, made a remarka

ble concession to the rights of nationalities when, in response to a strongly expressed local wish, she abandoned her protectorate over the Ionian Isles and permitted their annexation to Greece. She certainly would not have acted in the same way if Malta, or Ireland, or some other vital portion of her Empire had demanded to be annexed to a foreign Power. Every great empire is obliged, in the interest of its imperial unity, and in the interest of the public order of the world, to impose an inflexible veto on popular movements in the direction of disintegration, however much it may endeavour to meet local wishes by varying laws and institutions and compromises. Nations, too, differ very widely in the strength of their national types, in their power of self-government, in their power of governing others, in their power of assimilating or reconciling alien types. There are cases where the destruction of an old nationality, or even of a nationality which had never fully existed, but had been prematurely arrested in its growth, leaves behind it in large classes hatreds which rankle for centuries. There are other cases where, in a few years, a complete fusion is effected, where every scar of the old wound is effaced, where all distinctions are obliterated, or where they subsist only in healthy differences of type, tendency, and capacity, which add to the resources without in any degree impairing the strength and harmony of the nation. There are cases where an extension of local representative institutions will amply satisfy local aspirations and appease local discontents, and where such institutions are certain to be justly and moderately used. There are other cases where they would be infallibly turned into instruments for revolution, plunder, and oppression, where they would only increase dissension, and perhaps lead to civil war.

All these elements of the problem must, in each separate case, be duly estimated. On the whole, the doctrine of the absolute and indefeasible right of nationalities to determine their own form of government seems to me now less prominent among the political ideas of the world than it was in 1848, and at the period of the emancipation of Italy. Both England and America have learnt, from their own experience, the dangers that may spring from its too unqualified assertion; Eastern Europe has shown how easily it may be converted into an instrument of aggression and intrigue; and the institution of the plebiscite has been much discredited since the fall of the second French Empire. France was once the most ardent champion of this doctrine in its extreme form, partly, perhaps, because her own territory is singularly compact, homogeneous, and well assimilated; but since 1870 her aspirations and alliances have carried her in very different directions. At the same time, the movement towards international Socialism, which has spread widely through the working classes of the Continent, is wholly alien to the idea of nationality, appeals to a different kind of enthusiasm, and seeks to divide the world by other lines. The chief apparent exception has been the greatly increased importance which the Irish Home Rule movement has assumed since the Irish suffrage was so extended as to give an overwhelming power to the lowest orders, since Parnell organised his agitation, and since Mr. Gladstone accepted his demands. But the nation, in 1886 and 1895, condemned this policy with an emphasis that it is impossible to mistake; nor would the movement in Ireland ever have attained its formidable magnitude if it had not allied itself with motives and interests very different from the pure nationalism of Grattan and of Davis.

CHAPTER VI

DEMOCRACY AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

THERE are few subjects upon which mankind in different ages and countries have differed more widely than in their conceptions of liberty, and in the kinds of liberty which they principally value and desire. Even in our own day, and among civilised nations, these differences are enormously great. There are vast countries where the forms of liberty to which the English race are most passionately attached, and which they have attained by the most heroic and persistent efforts, would appear either worthless or positively evil. There are nations who would recoil with horror from the unlimited liberty of religious discussion and propagandism which has become the very life-breath of modern Englishmen ; who care little or nothing for the unrestricted right of public meeting and political writing; who deem complete commercial liberty, with its corollary of unrestricted competition, an evil rather than a good; who regard the modern relaxations of the restrictions of creed or sex in employments and appointments as subversive of the best moral elements. in the community, and in whose eyes an Englishman's absolute right to bequeath his property as he wills is the source of enormous injustice. In some Western, and in nearly all Eastern nations, good administration is far more valued than representation, and provided men can obtain a reasonable amount of order, peace,