THE OLDEST NATION OF EUROPE 



399 



product of the actual living of a people 

 and their descendants upon the same ter- 

 ritory. It is of necessity a long growth, 

 because it cannot be thoroughly real until 

 these millions of people actually do see, 

 eye to eye, on the most essential subjects 

 and actually do feel for each other that 

 sympathy and mutual interest without 

 which the national tie can never be strong 

 or enduring. Such a feeling invariably 

 precedes nationality, often by centuries. 

 One has only to compare a Frenchman 

 in the armies of the Hundred Years' 

 War or a German in Wallenstein's camp 

 with a Frenchman of the time of Na- 

 poleon or with a German of the present 

 day to see how very real and striking 

 this difference is. There can be very lit- 

 tle question that the English attained 

 some actually national consciousness by 

 the end of Elizabeth's reign. 



re;ligious dii^ferEnces were compro- 

 mised IN ENGLAND, WHEREAS THE 

 CONTINENT WAS RAVAGED BY 

 RELIGIOUS WARS 



One of the great causes of disunion, 

 one of the great hindrances to the forma- 

 tion of one nation out of the people of 

 French stock scattered between the Medi- 

 terranean and the English Channel, and 

 those of German stock between the Alps 

 and the Baltic, was the perpetuation for 

 at least two centuries of the cleavage be- 

 tween Protestant and Catholic. What- 

 ever we may feel in regard to the eventual 

 gains of civilization due to the Protestant 

 Reformation, we cannot fail to see that 

 in some nations of Europe it tended to 

 retard national unity. So long as Prot- 

 estant Germans preferred an alliance 

 with Protestant countries to an alliance 

 with Catholic Germans, Germany, as a 

 united nation, could be no more than a 

 form.al phrase. 



Early in the seventeenth century the 

 English produced a working compromise 

 between Catholic and Protestant which 

 wiped out the religious line in all national 

 questions. One of the most striking facts 

 In the history of the period is the prefer- 

 ence of the English Catholics for the 

 Protestant succession to the throne and 

 their rejection with vigor and scorn of 

 the plan to make England Catholic by a 



Spanish conquest which should put a 

 Spanish ruler on the throne. Again and 

 again they insisted that they were Eng- 

 lishmen first and Catholics second. It is 

 surely not without significance that at this 

 time France and Germany were aligned 

 on different sides in great wars, whose 

 ostensible cause was religion. The Hugue- 

 not cities in northern France and Prot- 

 estant Brandenburg certainly felt no na- 

 tional unity with their Catholic neighbors. 



BEING EREED EARLY FROM RACIAL AND 



RELIGIOUS QUARRELS, THE ENGLIStl 



COULD DEVOTE CENTURIES 



TO WORKING OUT A 



CONSTITUTION 



The vital importance of the acquisition 

 by England of territorial unity, racial 

 unity, a consciousness of nationality, and 

 something approaching religious tolera- 

 tion are most evident when we come to 

 study the growth of governmental and 

 administrative unity and efficiency. 



The same great geographical factors 

 which had in early centuries erased the 

 consciousness of a difference in blood 

 wrought powerfully for the creation in 

 England of a common political experi- 

 ence. England was small in total area, 

 and by the practical exclusion of Wales 

 and Scotland from the administrative 

 area until the time of the Tudors and 

 Stuarts the Englishmen, whose descend- 

 ants were to work such apparent mira- 

 cles, were perforce huddled together in 

 southern and eastern England, where 

 propinquity compelled them to become 

 acquainted with each other. As they and 

 their descendants lived on a small, nar- 

 row island, pretty thoroughly isolated 

 from the rest of the world, they had, 

 perforce, political experiences in com- 

 mon. Furthermore, the Norman con- 

 quest had put into the saddle of power 

 the strongest feudal monarch in Europe, 

 a man strong enough usually to override 

 all local nobles, and strong enough to in- 

 stitute systems of taxation and of cen- 

 tral administration, to abolish most local 

 customs duties or tolls such as proved 

 the bane of central Europe until the nine- 

 teenth century, and to establish some- 

 thing like a uniform system of courts 



