In England the national feeling developed earlier than on the Continent, no doubt owing to her insular position and freer institutions; as Montesquieu observes, patriotism thrives best in democracies.[194] At the time of the English Reformation the sense of corporate national life had evidently gained considerable strength, and the love of England has never been expressed in more exquisite form than it was by Shakespeare. At the same time the sense of patriotism was often grossly perverted by religious bigotry and party spirit.[195] Even champions of liberty, like Lord Russell and Algernon Sidney, accepted French gold in the hope of embarrassing the King; and Sidney went so far as to try to instigate De Witt to invade England. Loyalism, in particular, proved a much stronger incentive than love of country. A loyalist like Strafford would have employed half-savage Irish troops against his own countrymen, and the Scotch Jacobites invited a French invasion.
[194] Montesquieu, De l’esprit des Lois, iv. 5 (Œuvres, p. 206 sq.).
[195] See Edinburgh Review, cxciv. 133, 136 sq.; Pearson, National Life and Character, p. 190.
In France the development of the national feeling was closely connected with the strengthening of the royal power and its gradual victory over feudalism. The word patrie was for the first time used by Charles VII.’s chronicler, Jean Chartier, and he also condemned as renégats those Frenchmen who, at the end of the hundred years war, fought on the side of the English.[196] But patriotism was for a long time inseparably confounded with loyalty to the sovereign. According to Bossuet “tout l’État est en la personne du prince”;[197] and Abbé Coyer observes that Colbert believed royaume and patrie to signify one and the same thing.[198] In the eighteenth century the spirit of rebellion succeeded that of devotion to the king; but the key-note of the great movement which led to the Revolution was the liberty and equality of the individual, not the glory or welfare of the nation. Men were looked upon as members of the human race, rather than as citizens of any particular country. To be a citizen of every nation, and not to belong to one’s native country alone, was the dream of French writers in the eighteenth century.[199] “The true sage is a cosmopolitan,” says a writer of comedy.[200] Diderot asks which is the greater merit, to enlighten the human race, which remains for ever, or to save one’s fatherland, which is perishable.[201] According to Voltaire patriotism is composed of self-love and prejudice,[202] and only too often makes us the enemies of our fellow-men:—“Il est clair qu’un pays ne peut gagner sans qu’un autre perde, et qu’il ne peut vaincre sans faire des malheureux. Telle est donc la condition humaine, que souhaiter la grandeur de son pays, c’est souhaiter du mal à ses voisins.”[203] In Germany, Lessing, Goethe, and Schiller felt themselves as citizens of the world, not of the German Empire, still less as Saxons or Suabians; and Klopstock, with his enthusiasm for German nationality and language, almost appeared eccentric.[204] Lessing writes point-blank:—“The praise of being an ardent patriot is to my mind the very last thing that I should covet; … I have no idea at all of love of the Fatherland, and it seems to me at best but an heroical weakness, which I can very readily dispense with.”[205]
[196] Guibal, Histoire du sentiment national en France pendant la guerre de Cent ans, p. 526 sq.
[197] Legrand, L’idée de patrie, p. 20.
[198] Block, Dictionnaire général de la politique, ii. 518.
[199] Texte, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Cosmopolitan Spirit in Literature, p. 79.
[200] Palissot de Montenoy, Les philosophes, iii. 4, p. 75.
[201] Diderot, Essai sur les règnes de Claude et de Néron, ii. 75 (Œuvres, vi. 244).