will be very different in different cases, according to the
means by which the different national elements in such a territory have
been brought together. They may form what I have already called an
artificial nation, united by an act of its own free will. Or it may be
simply a case where distinct nations, distinct in everything which can
be looked on as forming a nation, except the possession of an
independent government, are brought together, by whatever causes, under
a common ruler. The former case is very distinctly an exception which
proves the rule, and the latter is, though in quite another way, an
exception which proves the rule also. Both cases may need somewhat
more in the way of definition. We will begin with the first, the case
of a nation which has been formed out of elements which differ in
language, but which still have been brought together so as to form an
artificial nation. In the growth of the chief nations of western
Europe the principle which was consciously or unconsciously followed
has been that the nation should be marked out by language, and the use
of any tongue other than the dominant tongue of the nation should be at
least exceptional. But there is one nation in Europe, one which has a
full right to be called a nation in a political sense, which has been
formed on the directly opposite principle. The Swiss Confederation has
been formed by the union of certain detached fragments of the German,
Italian, and Burgundian nations. It may indeed be said that the
process has been in some sort a process of adoption, that the Italian
and Burgundian elements have been incorporated into an already existing
German body; that, as those elements were once subjects or dependents
or protected allies, the case is one of clients or freedmen who have
been admitted to the full privileges of the _gens_. This is
undoubtedly true, and it is equally true of a large part of the German
element itself. Throughout the Confederation allies and subjects have
been raised to the rank of confederates. But the former position of
the component elements does not matter for our purpose. As a matter of
fact, the foreign dependencies have all been admitted into the
Confederation on equal terms. German is undoubtedly the language of a
great majority of the Confederation; but the two recognized Romance
languages are each the speech, not of a mere fragment or survival, like
Welsh in Britain or Breton in France, but of a l