NATIONALITY
275
blood, a crown besto\ved by the nation, were an anomaly and an outrage in that age of dynastic absolutism. The country \vas excluded from the European system by the nature of its institutions. It excited a cupidity which could not be satisfied. I t gave the reigning families of Europe no hope of permanently strengthening them- selves by intermarriage with its rulers, or of obtaining it by bequest or by inheritance. The Habsburgs had con- tested the possession of Spain and the Indies with the French Bourbons, of Italy with the Spanish Bourbons, of the empire with the house of Wittelsbach, of Silesia with the house of Hohenzollern. There had been wars between rival houses for half the territories of Italy and Germany. But none could hope to redeem their losses or increase their power in a country to which marriage and descent gave no claim. Where they could not permanently in- herit they endeavoured, by intrigues, to prevail at each election, and after contending in support of candidates who were their partisans, the neighbours at last appointed an instrument for the final demolition of the Polish State. Till then no nation had been deprived of its political existence by the Christian Powers, and whatever disregard had been sho\vn for national interests and sympathies, some care had been taken to conceal the wrong by a hypocritical perversion of law. But the partition of Poland was an act of wanton violence, committed in open defiance not only of popular feeling but of public law. For the first time in modern history a great State was suppressed, and a whole nation divided among its enem ies. This famous measure, the most revolutionary act of the old absolutism, awakened the theory of nationality in Europe, converting a dormant right into an aspiration, and a sentiment into a po1itical claim. " Nowise or honest man," wrote Edmund Burke, "can approve of that partition, or can contemplate it \vithout prognosticating great mischief from it to all countries at some future time." 1 Thenceforward there \vas a nation demanding 1 II Observations on the Conùuct of the Minority," Vorks, v. 112.
