ns and
governments do, in a rough way, fairly answer to one another. And, in
any case, political divisions are not without their influence on the
formation of national divisions, while national divisions ought to have
the greatest influence on political divisions. That is to say, _prima
facie_ a nation and government should coincide. I say only _prima
facie_; for this is assuredly no inflexible rule; there are often good
reasons why it should be otherwise; only, whenever it is otherwise,
there should be some good reason forthcoming. It might even be true
that in no case did a government and a nation exactly coincide, and yet
it would none the less be the rule that a government and a nation
should coincide. That is to say, so far as a nation and a government
coincide, we accept it as the natural state of things, and ask no
question as to the cause. So far as they do not coincide, we mark the
case as exceptional, by asking what is the cause. And by saying that a
government and a nation should coincide we mean that, as far as
possible, the boundaries of governments should be so laid out as to
agree with the boundaries of nations. That is, we assume the nation as
something already existing, something primary, to which the secondary
arrangements of government should, as far as possible, conform. How
then do we define the nation, which is, if there is no especial reason,
to the contrary, to fix the limits of a government? Primarily, I say,
as a rule, but a rule subject to exception--as a _prima facie_
standard, subject to special reasons to the contrary--we define the
nation by language. We may at least apply the test negatively. It
would be unsafe to rule that all speakers of the same language must
have a common nationality; but we may safely say that where there is
not community of language, there is no common nationality in the
highest sense. It is true that without community of language there may
be an artificial nationality, a nationality which may be good for all
political purposes, and which may engender a common national feeling.
Still this is not quite the same thing as that fuller national unity
which is felt where there is community of language. In fact, mankind
instinctively takes language as the badge of nationality. We so far
take it as the badge, that we instinctively assume community of
language in a nation as the rule, and we set down anything that departs
from that rule as an exception. The fi