HISTORICAL METHOD. 603 



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 posi- 

 tion of civil war ; and can never long remain free from 

 it in act and fact. 



" The third essential condition, which has existed 

 in all durable political societies, is a strong and active 

 principle of nationality. We need scarcely say that 

 we do not mean a senseless antipathy to foreigners; 

 or a cherishing of absurd peculiarities because they 

 are national; or a refusal to adopt what has been 

 found good by other countries. In all these senses, 

 the nations which have had the strongest national 

 spirit have had the least nationality. We mean a 

 principle of sympathy, not of hostility; of union, not 

 of separation. We mean a feeling of common inte- 

 rest among those who live under the same govern- 

 ment, and are contained within the same natural or 

 historical boundaries. We mean, that one part of the 

 community shall not consider themselves as foreigners 

 with regard to another part; that they shall cherish the 

 tie which holds them together ; shall 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 

 that they cannot selfishly free themselves from their 

 share of any common inconvenience by severing the 

 connexion. How strong this feeling was in the ancient 

 commonwealths every one knows. How happily Rome, 

 in spite of all her tyranny, succeeded in establishing 

 the feeling of a common country among the provinces 

 of her vast and divided empire, will appear when any 

 one who has given due attention to the subject shall 

 take the trouble to point it out. In modern times 

 the countries which have had that feeling in the 

 strongest degree have been the most powerful coun- 



