ogic of its new political and social ideas. It remained, that is, a
nation whose political organization and policy had not been adapted to
its domestic needs, and one which occupied on anomalous and suspected
position in the European international system.

On the other hand, French democracy and Imperialism had directly and
indirectly instigated the greater national efficiency of the neighboring
European states. Alliances among European monarchs had not been
sufficient to check the Imperial ambitions of Napoleon, as they had
been sufficient to check the career of Louis XIV, because behind a
greater general was the loyal devotion and the liberated energy of the
French people; but when outrages perpetrated on the national feelings of
Germans and Spaniards added an enthusiastic popular support to the
hatred which the European monarchs cherished towards a domineering
upstart, the fall of Napoleon became only a question of time. The excess
and the abuse of French national efficiency and energy, consequent upon
its sudden liberation and its perpetuation of an illogical but natural
policy of national aggression, had the same effect upon Europe as
English aggression had upon the national development of France. Napoleon
was crushed under a popular uprising, comparable to that of the French
people, which had been the condition of his own aggrandizement. Thus, in
spite of the partial antagonism between the ideas of the French
Revolutionary democracy and the principle of nationality the ultimate
effect of the Revolution both in France and in Europe was to increase
the force and to enlarge the area of the national movement. English
national sentiment was enormously stimulated by the strenuous wars of
the Revolutionary epoch. The embers of Spanish national feeling were
blown into spasmodic life. The peoples of Italy and Germany had been
possessed by the momentum of a common political purpose, and had been
stirred by promises of national representation. Even France, unstable
though its political condition was, had lost none of the results of the
Revolution for which it had fought in the beginning; and if the Bourbons
were restored, it was only on the implicit condition that the monarchy
should be nationalized. The Revolutionary democracy, subversive as were
its ideas, had started a new era for the European peoples of national
and international construction.

Of course, it was by no means obvious in 1815 that a constructive
national a