and violent changes. In the Roman empire we see a conquering people hold
sway over a number of vanquished peoples, but instead of treating them
like slaves, it gradually makes them its equals before the law; here
the resulting political body is much more nearly a nation, and its
government is much more stable. A Lydian of the fifth century before
Christ felt no sense of allegiance to the Persian master who simply
robbed and abused him; but the Gaul of the fifth century after Christ
was proud of the name of Roman and ready to fight for the empire of
which he was a citizen. We have seen, nevertheless, that for want of
representation the Roman method failed when applied to an immense
territory, and the government tended to become more and more despotic,
to revert toward the Oriental type. Now of the English or Teutonic
method, I say, war is not an essential part; for where representative
government is once established, it is possible for a great nation to be
formed by the peaceful coalescence of neighbouring states, or by their
union into a federal body. An instance of the former was the coalescence
of England and Scotland effected early in the eighteenth century
after ages of mutual hostility; for instances of the latter we have
Switzerland and the United States. Now federalism, though its rise
and establishment may be incidentally accompanied by warfare, is
nevertheless in spirit pacific. Conquest in the Oriental sense is quite
incompatible with it; conquest in the Roman sense is hardly less so. At
the close of our Civil War there were now and then zealous people to
be found who thought that the southern states ought to be treated as
conquered territory, governed by prefects sent from Washington, and held
down by military force for a generation or so. Let us hope that there
are few to-day who can fail to see that such a course would have been
fraught with almost as much danger as the secession movement itself.
At least it would have been a hasty confession, quite uncalled for
and quite untrue, that American federalism had thus far proved itself