Revolutionary France was its first evangelist, for the new gospel which
France preached was the gospel of Liberty, and nationalism is an extension,
a variant of this gospel. In France itself, at the time of the
Revolution, the doctrine of Liberty was interpreted in its individual and
constitutional sense, which involved the abolition of class privileges
and of political institutions that conflicted with or did not adequately
express what Rousseau called the "general will." There was no national
question to be settled in France, and she could therefore devote herself
exclusively to the development of the "social idea," the establishment of
democratic government, the foundation of a republic, and in general the
determination of what should be the relations between the individual and
the State, a question which in course of time led on to the problem of
Socialism.

But indirectly the French Revolution did an enormous deal to promote the
national idea in Europe. In the first place, the execution of Louis XVI.
and the proclamation of the Republic administered a blow to the theory of
legitimacy upon which the dynastic principle rested, from which it never
recovered. If the French nation could rise and abolish its native dynasty,
was there not hope that some day the Italian, Hungarian, and Polish nations
might also rise and throw off the still more objectionable yoke of their
foreign rulers? In the second place, the Revolution in and for itself
produced a tremendous effect upon the rest of Europe, and in every country
men awoke from the long sleep of feudalism to the desire of sweeping away
antiquated constitutions and rebuilding them upon a democratic basis.

It is, however, sufficient to glance at a map of Europe at the end of the
eighteenth century to see why these dreams could not be at once realised.
Of what real value were ideals of democratic reform to the peoples dwelling
in Italy, Germany, or the Austrian Empire? Look, for example, at Germany,