520 LOGIC OP THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



hope to be, for any long time exempt from internal dissension ; 

 for there neither is nor has ever heen any state of society in 

 which collisions did not occur between the immediate interests 

 and passions of powerful sections of the people. What, then, 

 enables nations to weather these storms, and pass through 

 turbulent times without any permanent weakening of the 

 securities for peaceable existence ? Precisely this that how- 

 ever important the interests about which men fell out, the 

 conflict did not affect the fundamental principle of the system 

 of social union which happened to exist ; nor threaten large 

 portions of the community with the subversion of that on 

 which they had built their calculations, and with which their 

 hopes and aims had become identified. But when the ques- 

 tioning of these fundamental principles is (not the occasional 

 disease, or salutary medicine, but) the habitual condition of 

 the body politic ; and when all the violent animosities are 

 called forth, which spring naturally from such a situation, the 

 state is virtually in a position of civil war ; and can never long 

 remain free from it in act and fact. 



"The third essential condition of stability in political 

 society, is a strong and active principle of cohesion among 

 the members of the same community or state. We need 

 scarcely say that we do not mean nationality, in the vulgar 

 sense of the term ; a senseless antipathy to foreigners ; 

 indifference to the general welfare of the human race, or an 

 unjust preference of the supposed interests of our own country; 

 a cherishing of bad peculiarities because they are national, or 

 a refusal to adopt what has been found good by other coun- 

 tries. We mean a principle of sympathy, not of hostility ; 

 of union, not of separation. We mean a feeling of common 

 interest among those who live under the same government, 

 and are contained within the same natural or historical boun- 

 daries. We mean, that one part of the community do not 

 consider themselves as foreigners with regard to another part ; 

 that they set a value on their connexion feel that they are 

 one people, that their lot is cast together, that evil to any of 

 their fellow-countrymen is evil to themselves, and do not 

 desire selfishly to free themselves from their share of any 



