should
simply be obedient to the supreme command. The denial of nationality,
therefore, implies the denial of political liberty.

The greatest adversary of the rights of nationality is the modern theory
of nationality. By making the State and the nation commensurate with
each other in theory, it reduces practically to a subject condition all
other nationalities that may be within the boundary. It cannot admit
them to an equality with the ruling nation which constitutes the State,
because the State would then cease to be national, which would be a
contradiction of the principle of its existence. According, therefore,
to the degree of humanity and civilisation in that dominant body which
claims all the rights of the community, the inferior races are
exterminated, or reduced to servitude, or outlawed, or put in a
condition of dependence.

If we take the establishment of liberty for the realisation of moral
duties to be the end of civil society, we must conclude that those
states are substantially the most perfect which, like the British and
Austrian Empires, include various distinct nationalities without
oppressing them. Those in which no mixture of races has occurred are
imperfect; and those in which its effects have disappeared are decrepit.
A State which is incompetent to satisfy different races condemns itself;
a State which labours to neutralise, to absorb, or to expel them,
destroys its own vitality; a State which does not include them is
destitute of the chief basis of self-government The theory of
nationality, therefore, is a retrograde step in history. It is the most
advanced form of the revolution, and must retain its power to the end of
the revolutionary period, of which it announces the approach. Its great
historical importance depends on two chief causes.

First, it is a chimera. The settlement at which it aims is impossible.
As it can never be satisfied and exhausted, and always continues to
assert itself, it prevents the government from ever relapsing into the
condition which provoked its rise. The danger is too threatening, and
the power over men's minds too great, to allow any system to endure
which justifies the resistance of nationality. It must contribute,
therefore, to obtain that which in theory it condemns,--the liberty of
different nationalities as members of one sovereign community. This is a
service which no other force could accomplish; for it is a corrective
alike of absolute monarchy, of de