them. Everywhere, in short, wherever a power is supposed to be founded
on nationality, the common feeling of mankind instinctively takes
language as the test of nationality. We assume language as the test of a
nation, without going into any minute questions as to the physical
purity of blood in that nation. A continuous territory, living under the
same government and speaking the same tongue, forms a nation for all
practical purposes. If some of its inhabitants do not belong to the
original stock by blood, they at least belong to it by adoption.

The question may now fairly be asked, What is the case in those parts of
the world where people who are confessedly of different races and
languages inhabit a continuous territory and live under the same
government? How do we define nationality in such cases as these? The
answer will be very different in different cases, according to the means
by which the different national elements in such a territory have been
brought together. They may form what I have already called an artificial
nation, united by an act of its own free will. Or it may be simply a
case where distinct nations, distinct in every thing which can be looked
on as forming a nation, except the possession of an independent
government, are brought together, by whatever causes, under a common
ruler. The former case is very distinctly an exception which proves the
rule, and the latter is, though in quite another way, an exception which
proves the rule also. Both cases may need somewhat more in the way of
definition. We will begin with the first, the case of a nation which has
been formed out of elements which differ in language, but which still
have been brought together so as to form an artificial nation. In the
growth of the chief nations of Western Europe, the principle which was
consciously or unconsciously followed has been that the nation should be
marked out by language, and the use of any tongue other than the
dominant tongue of the nation should be at least exceptional. But there