ce of despotism, or the disintegrating
action of democracy, are restored and educated anew under the discipline
of a stronger and less corrupted race. This fertilising and regenerating
process can only be obtained by living under one government. It is in
the cauldron of the State that the fusion takes place by which the
vigour, the knowledge, and the capacity of one portion of mankind may be
communicated to another. Where political and national boundaries
coincide, society ceases to advance, and nations relapse into a
condition corresponding to that of men who renounce intercourse with
their fellow-men. The difference between the two unites mankind not only
by the benefits it confers on those who live together, but because it
connects society either by a political or a national bond, gives to
every people an interest in its neighbours, either because they are
under the same government or because they are of the same race, and thus
promotes the interests of humanity, of civilisation, and of religion.

Christianity rejoices at the mixture of races, as paganism identifies
itself with their differences, because truth is universal, and errors
various and particular. In the ancient world idolatry and nationality
went together, and the same term is applied in Scripture to both. It was
the mission of the Church to overcome national differences. The period
of her undisputed supremacy was that in which all Western Europe obeyed
the same laws, all literature was contained in one language, and the
political unity of Christendom was personified in a single potentate,
while its intellectual unity was represented in one university. As the
ancient Romans concluded their conquests by carrying away the gods of
the conquered people, Charlemagne overcame the national resistance of
the Saxons only by the forcible destruction of their pagan rites. Out of
the mediaeval period, and the combined action of the German race and the
Church, came forth a new system of nations and a new conception of
nationality. Nature was overcome in the nation as well as in the
individual. In pagan and uncultivated times, nations were distinguished
from each other by the widest diversity, not only in religion, but in
customs, language, and character. Under the new law they had many things
in common; the old barriers which separated them were removed, and the
new principle of self-government, which Christianity imposed, enabled
them to live together under the same a