NATIONALITY
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up the country into as many republics as there were con1- munes. For true republicanism is the principle of self- government in the \vhole and in all the parts. I n an extensive country, it can prevail only by the union of several independent communities in a single confederacy, as in Greece, -in Switzerland, in the Netherlands, and in America; so that a large republic not founded on the federal principle must result in the government of a single city, like Rome and Paris, and, in a less degree, Athens, Berne, and Amsterdam; or, in other ,vords, a great demo- cracy must either sacrifice self-government to unity, or preserve it by federalism. The France of history fell together with the French State, which ,vas the growth of centuries. The old sovereignty was destroyed. The local authorities were looked upon with aversion and alarm. The ne\v central authority needed to be established on a new principle of unity. The state of nature, which \vas the ideal of society, was made the basis of the nation; descent was put in the place of tradition, and the French people "vas regarded as a physical product: an ethno- logical, not historic, unit. It was assumed that a unity existed separate from the representation and the govern- ment, wholly independent of the past, and capable at any moment of expressing or of changing its mind. In the words of Sieyès, it \vas no longer France, but some un- known country to which the nation was transported. The central power possessed authority, inasmuch as it obeyed the whole, and no divergence was permitted from the universal sentiment. This po\ver, endowed with volition, \vas personified in the Republic One and Indivisible. The title signified that a part could not speak or act for the whole,-that there \vas a po\ver supreme over the State, distinct from, and independent of, its members; and it expressed, for the first time in history, the notion of an abstract nationality. In this manner the idea of the sovereignty of the people, uncontrolled by the past, gave birth to the idea of nationality independent of the political influence of history. It sprang from the rejection of the
