THE SPIRIT OF CONQUEST. 521 



The great North American federation is composed of forty-four 

 States, of from 1,250 square miles (the size of Rhode Island) to 

 265,780 square miles (the size of Texas). If one hundred States 

 should be established to-morrow of about 30,000 square miles each, 

 there would not necessarily follow either an increase or a diminution 

 of the welfare of the population. The Americans can make equally 

 rapid progress whether divided into forty republics or one hundred, 

 and as slow under one division as under the other. Wealth is not a 

 function of political divisions. So Europe is now divided into twenty- 

 four independent states, having from 8 to 2,100,000 square miles of 

 territorv. If it were divided to-morrow into one hundred inde- 

 pendent states of 35,000 square miles each, it would as easily be 

 poorer as richer. All would depend upon the interior organization of 

 each of these states, and on the relations which they might establish 

 with one another. 



Very few persons understand this truth. "When we see the 

 most civilized nations of Europe imagining that their welfare de- 

 pends on 5,000 or 6,000 square miles more or less, we stand really 

 stupefied before the persistence of the ancient routines. The 

 simple disarmament of three military corps would procure ten times 

 as many benefits for the German people as the possession of Alsace- 

 Lorraine. In short, as long as the false association between the ter- 

 ritorial extent of a state and its wealth persists its progress in real 

 wealth will be very slow. 



To return to the spirit of conquest. A great many things, as we 

 have shown in another place, are not appropriable. Foreign, ter- 

 ritories are not so for entire nations. A military chief with his staif 

 may be better off through the conquest of a country, but a nation 

 never. 



When William of Normandy seized England he committed an 

 act that was not according to his interest as properly understood. 

 He destroyed by war a considerable quantity of wealth, and he and 

 his barons in turn suffered by the general diminution of welfare. 

 These sufferings were, however, infinitesimal and very hard to ap- 

 preciate. True views of the nature of wealth were, moreover, not 

 accessible to the brains of men of the eleventh century. Certainly, 

 when William and his army had possessed themselves of England 

 they experienced an increase of wealth that was very evident to them. 

 The king had more revenue; every Norman soldier got land or a 

 reward in money, and he became richer after Hastings than he had 

 ever been before. 



But what did the Roman people, for example, gain by the con- 

 quest of the basin of the Mediterranean? Four or five hundred 

 grand personages divided the provincial lands alienated by the state 



VOL. LIV. — 38 



