But the making and consolidation of nations is not the only kind of state-building that has gone on since the end of the middle ages: for other sorts of construction have also been actively carried on, and they have resulted in the making of a number of states that are larger than nations. In some cases two European nations or a European nation and some other European population have been brought under a single government: in other cases a European nation has expanded by the foundation of colonies far away from its original abode: and yet again in some cases a European state has conquered a host of non-European peoples and formed them into a heterogeneous empire dependent on itself.
The most conspicuous instances of the union of a nation with another nation or people occurred in 1683 when Alsace was acquired by France, in 1707 when England and Scotland placed themselves under one government, in 1771, 1793 and 1795 when parts of Poland were annexed to Prussia, and in 1801 when the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was formed. The enlarged states which result from such unions can never be strictly called single nations immediately after the union has taken place, and for a time at least after the union they must be denoted merely as unitary states: but usually they have not for most purposes differed very greatly from nations: for in all cases one of the two peoples united together has been a large and well consolidated nation and the other has been much smaller and far less perfectly organized: and consequently the larger partner in the union has had a predominant share in the government, and has gradually succeeded in communicating its own national characteristics and feelings to some part at least of the population of the lesser partner in the union.
A state formed by colonial expansion presents difficulties to any one who tries to define its nature. It is like a family of plants all sprung from one stock; the stock has sent out offshoots, which have themselves struck root, but are still connected with the parent stock from which they sprang. In one sense such an expanded state is still a single political community: in another sense each of the colonies which belongs to it is also a political community, though it never possesses complete independence, and therefore is not to be counted as a state.
The greatest conquerors of distant lands outside Europe have been the Spaniards, the English and the Russians. Their conquests formed three great political aggregates or heterogeneous empires, the Spanish Empire in southern and central America, the Indian Empire, and the Russian Empire. The Indian and the Russian Empires are administered by methods more or less resembling those used in the old heterogeneous Empire of the Romans by Constantine the Great and his successors: the administration of the Spaniards was very defective from the outset, and at the beginning of the nineteenth century their empire broke up into a number of independent states.
And now I may attempt a classification of all the more important forms that have been assumed by groups or collections of men living under governments. First of all, some of these groups are mere political aggregates, having little in common save the fact of living under one government, and the rest are political communities whose members have much else beside government in common. The mere aggregates will not need to be further divided; they are all heterogeneous empires held together by force. The political communities must be divided into three classes, tribes, cities, and the larger political communities. The class tribes needs no subdivision: cities must be divided according as they are inexpansive or expansive: the larger political communities (a class identical with the nations and those communities which possess many of the qualities of nations) need be subdivided only into unitary states or large political communities each with a single government only, and federal states or large political communities in which there is one government for some purposes and many governments for other purposes.
The essentials of a perfect classification are four in number. Firstly, it ought to be exhaustive or to comprehend all individual specimens, so that no individual shall be without a place in it. Secondly, the marks which distinguish the classes should be easily recognisable. Thirdly, the marks of one class should never be present in a single individual together with the marks of another: for, if they are, the individual is in two classes at once. Fourthly (and this is most essential of all), the classes should be such that many important general propositions are true of all the individuals which compose any given class.
It will be well to try to ascertain in what measure these essentials are found in a classification of European bodies politic under the five heads of tribes, cities, nations unitary and federal, and heterogeneous empires. Firstly, the classification is, I believe, so far exhaustive that it includes all those bodies which most clearly deserve to be called both political and European: it does not however provide a place for mere feudal principalities which never grew into nations, nor is it intended to include the Asiatic Empire of the Turks in Europe. Secondly, the marks which distinguish the classes are easily recognisable. Thirdly, the classification is decidedly imperfect because it does not make it impossible for a political body to be in two classes at once. But the possibility that a political body may be in two classes at once does not occur except during those periods when a community is gradually growing out of one form and into another. Such periods of transition have occurred in the history of many peoples: there was one in Greek history when the tribes were growing into cities: one in Roman history when the Republic was ceasing to be a mere enlarged city and was growing into a heterogeneous empire: and one in English history when the English were losing the character of a tribe and acquiring the qualities of a nation. But such periods of transition do not occur in the life of all peoples, and where they do occur, they are not usually of long duration when compared with the whole of the people's history. Fourthly, there are many important general propositions which are true of all or of nearly all the individuals in any given class. To establish such general propositions by historical evidence will be my task in the present chapters and in any future additions which I may be able to make to them. Some of these general propositions may be at once indicated in an imperfect form, though the proofs of them must be postponed.
The most important of these propositions are those which assert that there is an intimate connexion between the form of a political body and the form of government by which it is ruled: and that each of the forms that a political body can assume has a certain type or certain types of government commonly and almost uniformly associated with it. The propositions may be set down in the following way. Firstly, all the tribes of which we have any good records have had governments not differing from one another in any important particular. Secondly, cities pure and simple or inexpansive cities have usually three kinds of government only, pure oligarchy, or pure despotism, or direct and almost unmixed democracy: and Republican Rome, the single example of an expanded city, had a government peculiar to itself. Thirdly, in the large unitary states or nations, it is, roughly speaking, true that three kinds of government have succeeded one another in regular sequence: at first, during the middle ages, they were under governments in which power belonged partly to a king and partly to an assembly of estates, the assembly consisting usually of the nobles, the prelates of the church, and representatives from rural districts and towns: afterwards, when they were in danger of disruption, they placed themselves under monarchies of unlimited or almost unlimited power, and these monarchies usually continued to exist after all danger of disruption had been removed: and now, in modern times, all unitary states are ruled by cabinets under the control or supervision of popular representative assemblies. Turning to federal states, which form the fourth class of political communities, we find that all of them are alike in having a central government both legislative and executive, whose sphere of action is strictly limited by the constitution to certain portions of the work of governing, and in permitting each of the states, which are joined together in the federation, also to have a government of its own, which controls all business except that portion which is allotted by the constitution to the central government of the federation. And, lastly, heterogeneous empires must, unless they are to break in pieces, have governments whose chief object is centralisation. Supreme power may belong to a despotic monarch or to a small body of men appointed by a foreign state which rules the empire: but in all cases the one thing necessary is that there shall be a central supreme power and that the commands of that supreme power shall be implicitly obeyed by everyone within the empire.
It will be observed that most of the propositions which I have enumerated are qualified with a saving word or saving clause to admit the existence of exceptions. The exceptions however are not, so far as I can judge, very numerous. Among the governments of city states the Cleisthenean constitution at Athens was exceptional, since, though it was more like a democracy than anything else, it was not by any means an unmixed democracy: and some similar exceptions occur, I believe, in the earliest part of the history of some medieval cities in Lombardy. During the middle ages, it was only in those peoples which best deserved the name of large political communities or incipient nations that an effective division of power between a king and an assembly of estates was to be found, and even in them it was not maintained without occasional interruptions: in England for example there were three periods (1258-1259, 1310-1322, and 1388-1389) of pure oligarchy, and two (1200-1215, and 1397-1399) of pure despotism: among the French and in some other peoples which had not truly acquired the character of political communities, we find a semblance of a division of power, but not the reality. The assertion that the nations during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were ruled by strong monarchical governments scarcely needs any qualification: there is however a short exceptional period in English history, 1649-1653, when the government was an oligarchy; and Poland never acquired a strong monarchical government, but was punished for the absence of such a government by ceasing to exist. In the course of the French Revolution 1789-1795 there occur some seeming exceptions to the propositions about forms of government which have been enumerated: but I believe they will be found not to be exceptions, if we observe that during those years Paris was practically an independent city state.