Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 2.djvu/103

IN THE WAR AGAINST KUSSIA. 1 ?> fare of the traders and workmen of the United CHAr. Kingdom ; and if he desired the welfare of the L_ other classes of the people with less intensity, it may fairly be believed that to all he wished to see justice done: so, if this worthy disposition of mind were equivalent to what a man calls his ' love of his country,' no one could fairly say that Mr Bright was without the passion. But in another, and certainly the old and the usual sense, a man's 'love of his country' is understood to re- present something more than common benevol- ence towards the persons living within it. For if he be the citizen of an ancient State blessed M-itli freedom, renowned in arms, and holding wide sway in the world, his love of his country means something of attachment to the institutions which have made her what she is — means something of pride in the long-suffering, and the battle, and the strife which have shed glory upon his country- men in his own time, and upon their fathers in the time before him. It means that he feels his country's honour to be a main term and element of his own content. It means that he is bent upon the upholding of her dominion, and is so tempered as to become the sudden enemy of any man who, even though he be not an invader, still attempts to hack at her power. Now in this the heathen, but accustomed sense of the phrase, Mr Bright would be the last to say that he was a lover of his country. He would rather, perhaps, acknowledge that, taking 'his country' in that sense, lie hated it. Yet at a time when the spirit