Composite States.
When the State is very heterogeneous in composition, including several very different nationalities, there may be a tender sentiment in each nation for itself, but this is not likely to extend to the entire State. Thus, a Scotchman may have a tender feeling for Scotland, an Irishman for Ireland, but their tender affection is not likely to include England, still less Canada and Australia. They may be proud of belonging to so great an empire, but that is another feeling.
Effects of Religion and Poetry.
Utterance of Feeling.
Its Stoical Repression.
Every influence that increases the sensibility of the feelings is likely to increase the tenderness of patriotic sentiment. Religion and poetry are both strong influences in its favour, and a very powerful constant influence is that of a society in which feeling is habitually expressed as it is by the Irish and the French. A society in which the utterance of deep feeling of any kind is repressed by conventional good breeding, and by a kind of external stoicism, is repressive of tenderness in patriotic sentiment. This stoical tendency in the English is more favourable to pride than to love.
Habits of Travel.
Habits of travel, habits of living abroad, cosmopolitan experiences on a large scale, diminish the intensity of local affection by affording opportunities for comparison, and so destroying illusions, especially about the grandeur of landscapes that have been dear to us in youth, and the appearance of houses and towns. After the Alps the English mountains are seen to be only hills, after Paris the northern towns look dismal.
Prosperity, Commercial and Political.
Lastly, a sustained commercial and political prosperity is unfavourable to the tenderness of national sentiment, because a very prosperous nation does not appeal to the pathetic sympathies, does not call for commiseration. The sons of a powerful and rich mother do not feel themselves to be so necessary to her as if she were afflicted and sorrowful.