DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONALITIES.
Each age through which civilized humanity has passed, has its special characteristic. If, as most people admit, the nineteenth century has inaugurated a new era in the history of mankind, the characteristic of that era will be found in the rapid strides which the various races are making toward the attainment of a national existence. This development of nationalities is not, however, peculiar to our time; on the contrary, through its entire course modern history presents the same scene—a scene varied indeed and often interrupted, but preserving its unity to such an extent as to justify us in discerning therein a law of Providence. The constant yearning of each individual after happiness is used by philosophers as a proof that he is destined to one day attain it, and we are not quite sure that the noble aspirations of the great popular heart do not indicate on the part of the great Ruler a design to one day furnish it with a realization of its hopes. The individual attains his end in the future world—the people in the present. Those who respect but Little the popular feeling call it mercurial. They are right. Dash some mercury on the ground, and observe how the particles you have separated float wildly on the surface as though seeking to be reunited. Do you see how naturally they coalesce when brought in contact? There is an affinity most perfect between these particles, and so there is between peoples of the same race. Both were originally separated by violence, and the process of reunion is in both quite natural. Modern history presents no picture more vivid than that of the disintegrated peoples of the earth slowly but uniformly tending toward a reunion of their separated portions. Just now the figures seem more distinct—they stand out in such bold relief that prejudice herself perceives them. A gigantic war, commenced and finished almost with the same cannon's roar, has knocked out the keystone of a governmental fabric once admired for symmetry, and rulers see that in their structures they must imitate those architects who seek for stones that fit well one with another. People say that Beelzebub once gave a commission to a painter, for the portrait of his good dame Jezebel, and that when the poor artist despaired of picturing a countenance fit for the queen of hell, the fiend turned to a collection of handsome women, and taking a nose from one, an eye from another, mouth from another and complexion from another, he manufactured so foul a visage, so dire an expression, as to cause the votary of art to die outright. Various fishes make a very good chowder, and various meats, well condimented, produce an excellent olla podrida; but history shows that the various races into which it has pleased God to divide mankind, cannot be indiscriminately conglomerated without entailing upon the entire body chronic revolution, with all its attendant evils. If you can so merge the individual into the country as the United States have done with their cosmopolitan population, no difficulty will be experienced; but if you take various peoples and fit them together as you would a mosaic, the contact will prove prejudicial to their several interests, and powers [{246}] which would have otherwise developed for the good of the body corporate, will either lie dormant or exercise a detrimental effect upon the neighboring victims of short-sighted policy. Something more than interest is felt in noticing the way in which the peoples now enjoying national existence have attained so desirable an end; we are enabled to thereby judge, with something like accuracy, of the map those who will come after us must give of the world. So long as man is man, just so long will it be in one sense true, that history repeats herself; but we do not believe in that system of Vico which would make of her a mere whirligig—introducing now and then something new to certain portions of mankind in rotation, but nothing new to the world in general. Such a system might satisfy that conservative of whom some one has said that had he been present at the creation, he would have begged the Almighty not to destroy chaos; but our prejudices are against it, and though in avowing some prejudice we are pleading guilty to the possession of a bad thing, we think that in this case history will turn our fault into a virtue. We do not contend that modern times present a picture of national development according to the system of races so uniform as to contain no deviation whatever, but history does show us that such deviations have been more than counterbalanced by subsequent changes. The general rotundity of the earth cannot be denied, because of the inequalities of its surface. The American Republic furnisher us with no conflict of races on account of the fact already alluded to. The various peoples of Asia and Africa scarcely afford us a theatre for observation if we take our stand upon modern history, since for all practical purposes they are yet living in the days of Antiochus. Europe shows us a field worthy of research, for there were thrown together the mongrel hordes of Asia and the North, and with their advent and to the music of their clashing weapons a new scene unfolded itself to the gaze of man. With the fall of the Western empire commence all reflections upon modern history, for then dawned our era by the release from the unnatural thraldom of the Roman Caesars of the innumerable peoples of the earth. To notice the manner in which these tribes grouped themselves into national and integral existence is our present purpose. In the early summer of 1866, had we been asked to classify the peoples of Europe, we would have spoken as follows: The nations of Europe worthy of consideration, and which are now regarded as united or "unified," are France, England, Spain, Sweden and Norway, and Russia proper. The nations as yet disintegral are Germany and Italy. The disnationalized peoples are those of Ireland, Poland, Hungary and her dependencies, Venice, Roumania, and Servia. Europe may hence be regarded as composed of, 1st, nations which are in se one and undivided and leading therefore a national existence; 2d, peoples not under are you foreign to themselves, but still not one with others of the same stock; 3d, peoples governed by foreign nations. Of this latter class the most prominent evil is furnished by the heterogeneous Austrian empire, to compose which a draft is made on Hungary and the Hungarico-Sclavic dependencies, on Germany, on Poland, and on Italy. The late war has changed the situation somewhat, but the classification may remain unchanged.
The first class of nations became integral by the grouping to gather of peoples of common origin; and the steadiness with which they pursued their destiny and the easy manner in which they consummated it, cause us to believe that the others will yet attain a like end. Up to the time of Alfred, England was composed of seven kingdoms. The old Briton stock had been hidden in the mountains of Wales, and the Anglo-Saxon race, which held undisputed sway over the land, became one. France, now [{247}] the most unified of all nations, was for centuries the meet distracted. In A.D. 613, she was composed of four kingdoms: Neustria, Austria, Bourgogne, and Aquitaine. After the conquest of Neustria, Austrasia conquers Aquitaine in 760. The Romans found a new power in the north, but the people bear ill the yoke. The French kings give them the aid of their arms, and after various losses and successes Charles VII., in 1450, unites the regions definitively. The powerful duchy of Burgundy, which, for five hundred years, impeded the unity of France, was at length united to the crown in 1470. Spain, once composed of Leon, Castile, Aragon, and Navarre, was not unified until 1516. Scandinavia (Sweden and Norway) was, before the tenth century, composed of twelve states. It was then reduced to two, Sweden and Gothia, while in the thirteenth century these two were united. In 1397, the "union of Calmar" added Norway, and to-day the probabilities are not very small for the annexation of the remaining Scandinavian power, Denmark. Especial attention is merited by Russia proper, by which term we mean the nation so called exclusive of her foreign conquests, Finland, Lapland, Poland and her dependencies, Caucasus, and Georgia. The groundwork or foundation of this people in blood, language, and customs, is Sclavic. The proper name of the nation is Muscovy. When, in the middle of the fifteenth century, Ivan lV. shook off the Tartaro-Mongol yoke, the Muscovites commenced that headlong career of annexation and amalgamation which in four centuries has united more than twenty once independent Sclavic peoples, and has formed what is now denominated the Russian nation. Although not directly coinciding with him, we must here allude to the prediction of the first Napoleon that in a century Europe would be either Republican or Cossack. We half suspect that he leaned toward the first horn of his dilemma, and we do not think he imagined that his second should include a physical sway of Russia over Western Europe. If, however, the lance of the Cossack seemed to him to weigh heavily in the balance of power, history sufficiently justified him to prevent our regarding his remark as absurd. When he saw that either by force or persuasion the Sclavic peoples were being slowly but surely united, he might naturally regard as probable the incorporation of the remaining Sclaves of Poland, Bessarabia, Roumania, and Servia. Thirty years after he so talked, Bessarabia went the way of her sisters, and Roumania and Servia are year by year nearing St. Petersburg. We do not think, however, that history will warrant the application of Napoleon's theory to Poland and her dependencies, although they are Sclavic. When history shows us the innumerable tribes of Europe, left free by the fall of the Western empire, little by little grouping themselves by races and situation, so that in a few centuries are formed the nations now integral, she informs us that if such groupings were sometimes violent, they were still conquests sui generis. They were not national but political. The great Baron de Jomini, in his Precis de l'Art de la Guerre, insists most strongly upon the importance of a general understanding whether the war he is about to undertake be a national or a political war. We think the principle is just as important for the historian. A national war is one of a people against another; a political war, of a dynasty against another, either to revenge an insult or to extend its own domain. The effects of a national war are terrible, and the prejudices engendered are not easily eradicated; those of a political war are light, while there are entailed but few prejudices since the people have had no voice in the matter. In a political war the people are not conquered—they merely change masters, and often instead of receiving any injury [{248}] experience a great benefit. Thus, when Ivan of Moscow conquers Novgorod, the Sclaves of Novgorod are not conquered—a dynasty falls and not a people. Such a conquest leaves behind it no heart-burnings in the masses, while, on the contrary, if the people united were hitherto not only disintegrated but also disnationalized, it is a consummation by all devoutly wished. Poland, however, belongs to another category, owing to the religious antipathy existing between her and Russia. So great has this hatred of late years become, that the war for the incorporation of the unfortunate kingdom is at last national, not political—a war of peoples and not of kings. Such a war cannot be terminated by annexation—nothing can end it but an annihilation of the popular spirit. Let us bear in mind, then, that if modern history shows us a gradual development of nationalities and of unity in national government, there are certain principles according to which changes are wrought. But how is it with the two nations of Europe as yet disintegral? Have they hitherto tended toward unity? An impartial and conscientious study of their history convinces us that they have been uniformly nearing the goal which more fortunate nations have already reached.
In the eighth century Italy was, the Roman States alone excepted, entirely in the hands of the barbarian. From A.D. 1050, however, the two Sicilies commenced to enjoy a half-autonomous existence, there being but a personal union by means of a common sovereign between them and the countries whose rulers successively wore the Sicilian crown. In 1734 the kingdom became independent, and thus in this part of the peninsula was made the first step to unity, namely, independence of foreign rule. Parma became independent of the foreigner while under the sovereignty of the Farnesi in 1545. Tuscany became independent in 828, and with the exception of eighty years, during which the German emperors usurped the investiture of the duchy, remained so. The small republics need no allusion. Venice was independent from 697 to 1797. The Milanais was always more or less subject to the empire. Savoy and Piedmont were ever independent. Italy was slow in becoming free from foreign domination, but not so slow in the concentration of her strength. The innumerable states and principalities of which she was once composed gradually amalgamated, until in 1859 there were but seven; two hundred years ago there were twelve really independent of each other, and many more virtually so. We do not intend to touch upon the question of Italian unity in its bearings upon the independence of the Holy See. God will work out the problem long before any disputation of the point could come to a conclusion. This, however we feel, that if Providence has guided the peoples of Europe in the way of national development, it is for the good of man and in aid of true progress; and if in the case of Italy no compromise can be effected without injury to Holy Church, the future of Italy will prove that she has not attained the end of other countries; but history will show that until now she has tended to it. When studying the facts of history, one should not allow his feelings to blind his perception of the scenes that pass before him, for his insincerity would prevent his being a successful defender of any cause however good.
A few reflections upon German history as bearing upon the theory of national developments cannot but interest us, both on account of the late war, and on account of the apparent objection accruing to our position from the fact of Germany's seeming to be an example of a great nationality slowly disintegrating herself.
The history of Germany may be divided into three periods: 1st, under the "Holy Roman Empire" until the rise of Prussia; 2d, under the same from the rise of Prussia until 1806; [{249}] 3d, under the Confederation until the present day. In the first period there were an immense number of principalities, rivals not only of each other, but but also of him who held the imperial sceptre. The emperor depended so much upon his foreign vassals for his influence that he could scarcely be regarded as a German sovereign governing German states. Suddenly Prussia arose from nothing, and with majestic strides overran nearly all the north; then for the first time the Germans beheld a power of respectable strength, essentially German. When a nation is divided into many parts, its first step toward unity is the acquisition of a centre toward which all may tend. We pass by the origin of Prussia since we are dealing with facts and not principles at present. We know it is the fashion with a certain school to excite sympathy for Austria by alluding to Albert of Brandenburg; but as we are of those who believe that a man's own sins are scarcely less discreditable to him than those of his ancestors, and have our memory fresh with recollections of the long unbroken chain of outrages which the House of Austria, when powerful, heaped upon the Church of God, we ask to be excused if we allow no false sentimentality to intrude upon us. The rise of Prussia and the interest manifested in her by the unitarian party, forced the emperor and the secondary princes to be more German, less foreign, in their policy. This second period, therefore, had elements of unity which were wanting in the first. The third period, however, gave something more. In 1806 Napoleon I. bade Francis II. abdicate his title of Emperor of the Romans, and assume that of Emperor of Austria, and then disappeared even the name of that which for two hundred years had been a shadow. Then came the federal union of all the German, and only the German provinces—a confederation in which the interests of Germany might be consulted without prejudice from foreign connections—a union full of faults, we confess, and in many respects a sham, but yet an advance toward national unity.
We know of no records by means of which we can ascertain the exact number of independent states with which Germany was accursed under the feudal system, but we know that after Prussia had swallowed up many there were before 1815 nearly a hundred. Before the late war there were thirty-seven. How many there are now the telegraph has not informed us, but we imagine the number has become small by degrees and beautifully less.
Since 1815 the march toward German unity has been more steady and more uniform than at any other period. The pressure exercised upon Austria by Prussia, upon the secondary princes by their people, has forced them to seek German rather than foreign alliances, to study German more than dynastic or local interests. The Zollverein, the Reform associations, the hue and cry openly made about unity, the very entrance of Austria into the Holstein war, and latterly the alliance between the liberals and a statesman whose principles they have uniformly opposed, all indicate the popular effervescence, and excite a suspicion that ere long Germany will be united. All the machinery of which governments can avail themselves is used by Austria and the secondary princes to ward off the danger which menaces them.
The friends of the system of which Austria is the last important standard bearer, give us a bit of news which, if true, would be interesting, since it would be the first time we could conscientiously receive it, that the cause of the Kaiser is the cause of the church; that to his banner are nailed her colors. The jackal follows the lion to pick up his leavings, but his eating them does not make him a lion. The fact of the matter is, that the history of the church gives so painful a picture of her struggles with kings and princes, that it is to us a matter of complete indifference whether the [{250}] victory be won by the impersonation of military autocracy, or by the sickly anomaly now catching at straws for an extension of life—unless, however, the victory of the former were to vindicate the principle that the peoples of the earth have rights to claim, and were to result in the end in the collapse of its winner, and the leaving thereby of a powerful nation in the hands of popular government. If this latter consummation is reached, we shall be ready to do what we can to attach the children of the church to a particular government, for we believe that then the church will have in Europe more than ever a fair show, so to speak, at humanity. The church is for the people, and for them alone—when she approaches a king, she approaches him as a man—and she need fear but little from those for whose interest she lives. The popular heart quickly conceives an affection, and is seldom mistaken in its impulses.
We have alluded to an opinion held by some that Germany is an example of a great nationality disintegrated after centuries of integral existence. If history deals with words and not with facts, if empty titles and enthusiastic notions are criterions of national condition, then that opinion is correct; but if the calling the Emperor of China the Child of the Sun gives him no solar affinity, we must hold the contrary one. The ancient so-called unity of Germany was not only an empty word, but the very title Emperor of Germany had no foundation in law. When the imperial crown was transferred from the French Carlovingians to the House of Saxony, its mode or conditions of tenure were not changed by the Holy See. Just as Charlemagne, though Emperor of the Romans, was not Emperor of France, but as before King of the Franks, so Conrad of Franconia, Otho of Saxony, and their successors were emperors of the Romans, and mere feudal superiors of the other German princes. If, in the lapse of time, the holder of the sceptre of the "Holy Roman Empire" (which alone was the legal title from which imperial rights derived) came to be called Emperor of Germany, the title did not originate in law, but in the common parlance of the Italians, French, and English, who recognized in the emperor a foreign Prince, and who—at least the two latter—being naturally repugnant to the universal monarchy system, constantly insisted upon the emperor's primacy being as to them purely honorary. So much for the title. As for the Holy Roman empire itself, nothing to prove the ancient unity of Germany can be deduced from it. The public law of the middle ages was based upon the principle, then the foundation of all economy, of sacerdotal supremacy and princely subjection—a blessed thing for humanity at that time by-the-by, which thus found some protection from the tyrants who then ruled the earth. European government became hierarchical; at the head stood the pope, then came the emperor, then kings, etc. Now, according to the titles of courtesy in use at the time, it might be supposed that France and England were subordinate to the emperor, yet their constant history proves them to have been independent of his sceptre. If, then, this so-called resurrection of the western empire was purely nominal, was it merely honorific? Was there no authority attached to it? If there were none, especially as to Germany itself, of a part of which the emperor was a hereditary prince, we would conclude at once that as Europe could not then be called one, so could not Germany. Our proposition, however, is not so self-evident.
There was an authority resident in the imperial sceptre over the princes of Germany, but for all matters all practical importance it was, with the exception of a few privileges, the same as that enjoyed over Italy, Hungary, Bohemia, etc, viz., that of right of investiture. If, however, from this fact of imperial suzerainty any argument can be gathered for the ancient unity of Germany, we must say that at the present time Egypt, Roumania, and Servia are [{251}] one with Turkey, Liberia one with the United States. If before the late war Germany was not integral, it was not so under the ancient system. Then it had an emperor, in our days it had a federal diet—the emperors' decisions were generally laughed at, while the decisions of the diet were respected when allowed to decide. Nor, while speaking so disparagingly of the imperial power, do we allude to the time when the imperial dignity had become a mere puppet show—to the period between the rise of Prussia and the annihilation of the title. We need not confine ourselves to the time when the great Frederick could laugh at his "good brother, the sacristy-sweep," trying to rival his power; the same want of efficacious influence was ever felt from the day when Conrad accepted the diadem—one only period excepted, that of Charles V., and even he was wanting in force, and was obliged to succumb to his powerful "vassals." The history of no country, either in Europe or in Asia, can afford an example of such persevering strife for ascendancy as that which the princes of Germany presented, either among themselves—the emperor a spectator—or united in factions against him and his factions. The imperial dignity was in some things great, and over some periods of its existence there is a halo of glory, but only in its external relations. The Hohenstaufen emperors were by inheritance both internally and externally powerful princes; their principality of Suabia and their immense possessions of the Palatinate furnished them such a number of personal vassals that they did much toward making the imperial sceptre respected, while there kingdom of Sicily and lordship of Milan caused them to be feared without. But then it was not the emperor who was feared, but the Prince of Suabia, the Count Palatine, the King of Sicily, and lord suzerain of Milan and Tuscany; just as under the Habsburgs and the Lorraines it was not the emperor but the Archduke of Austria, King of Hungary, of Lombardy, of Naples, of Illyrium, who, by means of his personal and hereditary states in foreign lands, commanded that respect from his German rivals which a purely German emperor never extorted. The unity of Germany under the Holy Roman Empire was therefore not of fact. It was an idea—quite poetical certainly, but still an idea.
When we consider the obstacles which had to be surmounted by those peoples who have already attained a national existence, we must fain believe that those who are yet panting for it will not be long disappointed. Roumania and Servia have been for centuries dreaming of independence, but we must remember that only at a recent period did civilization commence to act upon their peasantry. Even now many of the boyards seem to be removed scarcely a generation from their Dacian ancestry. All the Sclavic peoples of Eastern Europe have much to acquire before they can be called fully civilized. The tyranny, however, to which they owe most of their backwardness has of late years very much diminished, and already they commence to ask themselves the question which has so long preoccupied other minds, Are the people created for the ruler, or is a ruler established for the people? When men commence to think seriously on such subjects, action is not far off. Bucharest and Jassy have been the scene of tumults which have made many a European conservative cry out that nothing but an iron rule will benefit the Roumanian—that Roumanian nationality will prove a seminary of trouble for Europe. We believe in lending a helping hand to a degraded people that they may in time raise themselves to the level of their fellows—we would deem ourselves worse than their tyrants if we regarded the passions which tyranny has engendered as an excuse for that tyranny's perpetuation.
A bright day seems to have dawned for Hungary—at least so think the Austrian wing of the Hungarian patriots. For these gentlemen the ungermanization of Austria means that Pesth is to be the capital of a new heterogenous empire. They should remember those long years during which they mourned the short-sighted policy which drowned Hungarian nationality for the benefit of Germany, and reap from them a knowledge of other sins they will commit if they repress those nationalities which are as sacred as their own. Heaven cannot bless those who claim liberty for themselves and deny it to others.
And in the midst of this conflict of the peoples of the earth for real or imaginary rights, how fares the church of God? Excellently well, for no change man will here below experience can ever unman him. So long as there are people on the earth, so long will there be souls to save, and the church will be ever on hand to do the work. But there is more to be said. Of those people who are now so strenuously laboring in the cause of liberty, a large proportion are outside of the church. Many of them are working from a pure love of justice, as God has given them the light to see it, and if they are true to their natural convictions the supernatural will yet be engrafted upon them. It cannot be denied, however, that there are many who throw their weight into the scale of liberty as for they think Catholicity is in the other scale, and that they will hence contribute to weakening the hold the church has upon man. Would they could live to see the day when liberty shall have triumphed—were it only to realize the true mission of that church they now so bitterly hate! From the day the church entered upon her glorious career she has been constantly contending with the potentates of the earth. Her first struggle was with brute force, and she triumphed. Her second contest was more terrible, for the means brought against her were more insidious. Under the pretext of honoring her, the gods of the earth encircled her limbs with golden chains. How pretty they seemed, and how complacently some of her members regarded them! How anxiously some yearn after them yet! But they were torn away, and—great providence of God!—by those who thought to thus ruin her. Her enemies say she yearns for that society now disappeared. Has she forgotten how much those struggles cost her? Gentlemen of the liberal world, you are mistaken if you think the church fears the success of your designs. You are another illustration of the truth of the saying, that God uses even the passions of men to further his ends. When you will have succeeded in obliterating all artificial distinctions of caste and privilege, and will have actuated your vaunted ideas of liberty and equality, the church will confront you, and thrusting you aside, will render real what with you would always be an idea—fraternity. Those who now applaud you will lift from the church their eyes of suspicion and jealousy, and will realize how greatly you were mistaken when you called her retrograde and tyrannical.