And now, having ruled that races and nations, though largely formed by
the working of an artificial law, are still real and living things,
groups in which the idea of kindred is the idea around which every thing
has grown, how are we to define our races and our nations? How are we to
mark them off one from the other? Bearing in mind the cautions and
qualifications which have been already given, bearing in mind large
classes of exceptions which will presently be spoken of, I say
unhesitatingly that for practical purposes there is one test, and one
only, and that that test is language. It is hardly needful to show that
races and nations cannot be defined by the merely political arrangements
which group men under various governments. For some purposes of ordinary
language, for some purposes of ordinary politics, we are tempted,
sometimes driven, to take this standard. And in some parts of the
world, in our own Western Europe for instance, nations and governments
do, in a rough way, fairly answer to one another. And, in any case,
political divisions are not without their influence on the formation of
national divisions, while national divisions ought to have the greatest
influence on political divisions.
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