rpers, but as oppressors,--because they misgoverned,
not because they were of a different race. Then began a time when the
text simply was, that nations would not be governed by foreigners. Power
legitimately obtained, and exercised with moderation, was declared
invalid. National rights, like religion, had borne part in the previous
combinations, and had been auxiliaries in the struggles for freedom, but
now nationality became a paramount claim, which was to assert itself
alone, which might put forward as pretexts the rights of rulers, the
liberties of the people, the safety of religion, but which, if no such
union could be formed, was to prevail at the expense of every other
cause for which nations make sacrifices.

Metternich is, next to Napoleon, the chief promoter of this theory; for
the anti-national character of the restoration was most distinct in
Austria, and it is in opposition to the Austrian Government that
nationality grew into a system. Napoleon, who, trusting to his armies,
despised moral forces in politics, was overthrown by their rising.
Austria committed the same fault in the government of her Italian
provinces. The kingdom of Italy had united all the northern part of the
Peninsula in a single State; and the national feelings, which the French
repressed elsewhere, were encouraged as a safeguard of their power in
Italy and in Poland. When the tide of victory turned, Austria invoked
against the French the aid of the new sentiment they had fostered.
Nugent announced, in his proclamation to the Italians, that they should
become an independent nation. The same spirit served different masters,
and contributed first to the destruction of the old States, then to the
expulsion of the French, and again, under Charles Albert, to a new
revolution. It was appealed to in the name of the most contradictory
principles of government, and served all parties in succession, because
it was one in which all could unite. Beginning by a protest against the
dominion of race over race, its mildest and least-developed form, it
grew into a condemnation of every State that included different races,
and finally became the complete and consistent theory, that the State
and the nation must be co-extensive. "It is," says Mr. Mill, "in general
a necessary condition of free institutions, that the boundaries of
governments should coincide in the main with those of nationalities."[329]

The outward historical progress of this idea from an