We may at least apply
the test negatively. It would be unsafe to rule that all speakers of the
same language must have a common nationality; but we may safely say that
where there is not community of language, there is no common nationality
in the highest sense. It is true that without community of language
there may be an artificial nationality, a nationality which may be good
for all political purposes, and which may engender a common national
feeling. Still this is not quite the same thing as that fuller national
unity which is felt where there is community of language. In fact
mankind instinctively takes language as the badge of nationality. We so
far take it as the badge, that we instinctively assume community of
language as a nation as the rule, and we set down any thing that departs
from that rule as an exception. The first idea suggested by the word
Frenchman or German or any other national name, is that he is a man who
speaks French or German as his mother-tongue. We take for granted, in
the absence of any thing to make us think otherwise, that a Frenchman is
a speaker of French and that a speaker of French is a Frenchman.
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