tion
under separate governments, has been among the foremost of those
historical causes. The French nation consists of the people of all
that extent of continuous territory which has been brought under the
rule of the French kings. But the working of the cause has been
gradual and unconscious. There was no moment when anyone deliberately
proposed to form a French nation by joining together all the separate
duchies and countries which spoke the French tongue. Since the French
nation has been formed, men have proposed to annex this or that land on
the ground that its people spoke the French tongue, or perhaps only
some tongue akin to the French tongue. But the formation of the French
nation itself was the work of historical causes, the work doubtless of
a settled policy acting through many generations, but not the work of
any conscious theory about races and languages. It is a special mark
of our time, a special mark of the influence which doctrines about race
and language have had on men's minds, that we have seen great nations
united by processes in which theories of race and language really have
had much to do with bringing about their union. If statesmen have not
been themselves moved by such theories, they have at least found that
it suited their purpose to make use of such theories as a means of
working on the minds of others. In the reunion of the severed German
and Italian nations the conscious feeling of nationality, and the
acceptance of a common language as the outward badge of nationality,
had no small share. Poets sang of language as the badge of national
union; statesmen made it the badge, so far as political considerations
did not lead them to do anything else. The revivified kingdom of Italy
is very far from taking in all the speakers of the Italian tongue.
Lugano, Trent, Aquileia--to take places which are clearly Italian, and
not to bring in places of more doubtful nationality, like the cities of
Istria and Dalmatia--form no part of the Italian political body, and
Corsica is not under the same rule as the other two great neighboring
islands. But the fact that all these places do not belong to the
Italian body at once suggests the twofold question, why they do not
belong to it, and whether they ought not to belong to it. History
easily answers the first question; it may perhaps also answer the
second question in a way which will say Yes as regards one place and No
as regards another. Ticino mus