CHRISTIANITY AND PATRIOTISM. 



225 



fare of the commonwealth, especially in that ac- 

 tive embodiment of it which we are content to 

 call, somewhat vaguely, the state. 



It will be found, however, even under these 

 restricted conditions, that appetite for conquest 

 and a selfish desire to get advantages over neigh- 

 bors are by no means absent, nay, that they form 

 the most attractive part of the programme of pa- 

 triotism for the majority of so-called patriots. It 

 could hardly be otherwise, as must be seen when 

 once the student of ethnology and of political sci- 

 ence has mastered the facts which lie at the root of 

 every birth of a people. There is not any instance 

 known to history of a true nation (not even the 

 Hebrews) having grown up in patriarchal fashion 

 from the mere natural reproductiveness of a sin- 

 gle family or tribe ; far less of one which has 

 been gradually and peacefully welded together 

 by the voluntary confederation of all its original 

 (elements, without intrusion upon any separate 

 rights during the process. In every case, the 

 larger society has been constituted by the more 

 or less violent absorption of smaller or weaker 

 ones, with but little regard to their reluctance 

 to merge their separate existence in a more pow- 

 erful and numerous body — a rule which has held 

 good from the first dawn of history down to such 

 recent events as the War of the Sonderbund, the 

 American civil conflict, and the struggle, scarce- 

 ly eleven years ago, between Austria and Prussia 

 for the headship of Germany. Nor can a nation 

 be held together, after it has once been fully de- 

 veloped, without the suppression of a multitude 

 of separate rights whose exercise might prove in 

 any way inconvenient to the body politic — a fa- 

 miliar example of which is afforded in this coun- 

 try by the post office monopoly, whereby the car- 

 riage of letters is forbidden to ordinary carriers, 

 and indeed to the general public. It is not to be 

 expected, consequently, that patriotic feeling, 

 which is the ordinary corporate sentiment raised 

 to a higher degree, will at any time be tender of 

 rights which it may think likely to conflict with 

 the interests of its state : and till the altruistic 

 proposition is mastered by politicians, that the 

 welfare of each is best promoted by the welfare 

 of all, selfish considerations, which are really 

 hurtful by reaction, are almost certain to prevail 

 in legislation. So far as commerce is concerned, 

 this corporate selfishness displays itself most fre- 

 quently in protective tariffs, which are not mere- 

 ly enacted by a country against all foreign com- 

 petition, as in the United States, but actually by 

 one colony of the same nation against other con- 

 terminous colonies, as Australia proves. No po- 



15 



litical economist can doubt for a moment the in- 

 jury which erring patriotism of this kind works 

 to the very persons whom it is intended to bene- 

 fit : and, indeed, the present collapse of industry 

 throughout the United States, which has left two 

 millions of artisans unemployed, is almost exclu- 

 sively due to the unnatural stimulus given to 

 the mining and iron trades by high protective 

 duties, thereby bringing very many more hands 

 into them than a normal state of the market re- 

 quires, and, of course, turning them adrift on 

 the first reaction. It is plain that the Christian 

 teacher and the political economist are here at 

 one, and that the notion that a foreign country, 

 or an adjacent colony, is not a trade rival to be 

 repelled or outwitted, but a potential member of 

 exactly the same fellowship, whose free admission 

 to traffic in open market is for the advantage of 

 the whole community, however unpatriotic it may 

 be thought at Washington or Melbourne, is 

 sounder in science as well as in the purely re- 

 ligious aspect of the matter. 



Nor are the moral results of certain foims of 

 patriotism happier than the financial ones. That 

 temper which is called chauvinist ne in France, 

 "spread-eagleism" in the United States, and 

 " John-Bullism " among ourselves, is nothing but 

 personal vanity expanded to national dimensions, 

 and usually manifests itself in the simultaneous 

 refusal to learn from others, and effort to impose 

 the opinions of the hyper-nationalists on the 

 whole state, if not to propagate them forcibly in 

 other countries. The revolutionary propaganda 

 of France at the close of the last century is an 

 example in point of the last of these manifesta- 

 tions, while Russia is at this moment suffering 

 acutely from the too successful attempt of teach- 

 ers of Alexander Herzen's school to make purely 

 Muscovite ideas absolutely dominant throughout 

 the empire, to the exclusion of all lessons which 

 might be learned from countries with an older 

 civilization and a more advanced political and 

 educational system. It is, in its degree, exactly 

 the same distrust and hate of the foreigner which 

 semi-barbarous China displays in its comprehen- 

 sive grouping of all white men under the title of 

 fan-kwei, or " foreign devil." It leads, more- 

 over, far too often to unequal and oppressive 

 legislation against domiciled aliens, itself a policy 

 injurious to the nation which adopts it. For the 

 temper in question is exceedingly apt to develop 

 into po-itive hatred for those whose habits and 

 institutions differ from such as are locally usual, 

 and the bigotry of national custom proves quite 

 as bitter and unreasoning as any theological 



