is one nation in Europe, one which has a full right to be called a
nation in a political sense, which has been formed on the directly
opposite principle. The Swiss Confederation has been formed by the union
of certain detached fragments of the German, Italian, and Burgundian
nations. It may indeed be said that the process has been in some sort a
process of adoption, that the Italian and Burgundian elements have been
incorporated into an already existing German body; that, as those
elements were once subjects or dependents or protected allies, the case
is one of clients or freedmen who have been admitted to the full
privileges of the _gens_. This is undoubtedly true, and it is equally
true of a large part of the German element itself. Throughout the
Confederation, allies and subjects have been raised to the rank of
confederates. But the former position of the component elements does not
matter for our purpose. As a matter of fact, the foreign dependencies
have all been admitted into the Confederation on equal terms. German is
undoubtedly the language of a great majority of the Confederation; but
the two recognized Romance languages are each the speech, not of a mere
fragment or survival, like Welsh in Britain or Breton in France, but of
a large minority forming a visible element in the general body. The
three languages are all of them alike recognized as national languages,
though, as if to keep up the universal rule that there should be some
exceptions to all rules, a fourth language still lives on within the
bounds of the Confederation, which is not admitted to the rights of the
other three, but is left in the state of a fragment or a survival.[4] Is
such an artificial body as this to be called a nation? It is plainly not
a nation by blood or by speech. It can hardly be called a nation by
adoption. For, if we choose to say that the three elements have all
agreed to adopt one another as brethren, yet it has been adoption
without assimilation. Yet surely the Swiss Confederation is a nation. It
is not a a mere power, in which various nations are brought together,